Martin Wigod, who parlayed his financial success as a healthcare executive into becoming a prominent thoroughbred racing owner and breeder, has died. He was 84 years old.
Del Mar Race Course announced Friday that his wife, Pam, had informed him that he died in his sleep Thursday at Scripps Hospital in La Jolla, near his home in Rancho Santa Fe.
There appears to be at least one more chapter in Wygod's racing career.
He gave Resilience, a 3-year-old stallion he bred with his wife, to his daughter Emily Bushnell and longtime pedigree consultant Rick Waldman. The horse won the Wood Memorial in New York last week, qualifying him for the 150th Kentucky Derby on May 4.
None of Wygod's horses have ever competed in the Kentucky Derby.
As a teenager in his native New York City, Wygod would stretch his back after morning workouts at the Walking Horse at Belmont Park and Aqueduct. At that time, he met and became friends with another young New Yorker named Bobby Frankel, who would later become a Hall of Fame trainer.
After graduating from New York University in 1961, Mr. Wygod worked as a stockbroker on Wall Street before moving into management. He founded and sold several companies and was a millionaire before he was 30.
Among his early acquisitions was Glassrock Medical Services in the 1970s, which he sold five years later for a significant profit. In 1983, Wygod founded Medco Containment Services and grew it into the largest mail-order pharmacy in the United States. In 1993, he sold the company to medical giant Merck & Company for more than $6 billion. Mr. Wygod later served as chairman of WebMD Health Corp., one of the nation's leading medical information service providers, before selling the company in 2017.
Wygod discovered horse ownership on his 25th birthday, when he received two racehorses from his friend and business partner Fletcher Jones in California. Eventually, Wygod and his wife Pam moved New York to California and began breeding and operating a farm in Buellton in 1994.
Wigod won the 2004 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies with Sweet Catomeine, who won the Eclipse Award as national champion 2-year-old filly. She won the 2009 BC Classic with Life is Sweet. His other major stakes winners include Tranquility Lake, After His Market and Courageous Cat.
Wigod and his wife's lifetime earnings from horse racing operations exceeded $21.1 million, with the highest total in 2009 being $2,754,324.
Wygod was honored as California's Leading Breeder in 2006, 2007, and 2008.
Among the notable trainers he worked with were Hall of Famers Bill Mott, John Shirreffs, Jimmy Jerkens, and John Sadler.
Wigod is a director of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association and has been a member of the Jockey Club since 1996. He joined the board of the Thoroughbred Club in 1999.
“Having Marty join our board of directors has proven to be a blessing time and time again,” said Del Mar CEO Joe Harper. “His insight and feel for both the business world and our racing game have helped us repeatedly make good decisions and helped us rise to the top of the national racing community. . We will miss him very much.”
In addition to his wife and daughter, Wygod is survived by his son, Max;
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