NEWS
Former exercise rider Pizzo dies after accident
Posted: Saturday, May 30, 2009 12:27 PM
by Tom Law
Liz Pizzo, a former exercise rider who worked for some of racing’s most prominent trainers in the 1970s through the ‘90s and most recently as a noted equine artist, died May 16 at age 57 after an accident near her home in Paris, Kentucky.
Pizzo was struck by a car during a heavy late morning rainstorm while walking across the road to retrieve her mail. She was airlifted to the University of Kentucky Medical Center and pronounced dead approximately four hours after the accident.
Pizzo was born in Monmouth, New Jersey, and grew up on New York’s Long Island. She started her career in racing in 1969 breaking yearlings with trainer Sherrill Ward at Greentree Stables, according to her husband and former trainer, Peter Pizzo. She later worked for a number of trainers based on the East Coast, including Racing Hall of Fame conditioners Sidney Waters, LeRoy Jolley, and Frank Martin.
“She galloped Honest Pleasure during his two-year-old season when he was champion and won the Arlington Washington Futurity (G1),” Peter Pizzo said. “She was great on a horse and had some great times. She galloped for some great trainers and got on some really good horses.”
After a stint as an exercise rider in France, Pizzo met her husband in the track kitchen at Sportsman’s Park in 1975. The couple married in 1976, and eventually worked together with horses in a number of places, including Chicago, Delaware, Louisiana, Texas, New York, and North Carolina. Pizzo rode in four pari-mutuel races in 1979 and ’82, finishing unplaced in each start.
She retired as an exercise rider in 2001 and dedicated herself to her artwork.
“She always painted, growing up and as an adult,” Peter Pizzo said. “But once she gave up riding she got really into it.”
Pizzo painted on glassware, tiles, ornaments, and on canvas, and a show at the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event in Lexington a few weeks prior to her death was “a great show for her. She had a lot of orders.”
Tom Law is managing editor of THOROUGHBRED TIMES
