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Elliott Burch, Hall of Fame trainer, dies at 86

Posted: Sunday, January 30, 2011 5:10 PM

ELLIOTT BURCH

NYRA photo

by Reg Lansberry

Elliott Burch, a third-generation trainer whose election to the Racing Hall of Fame in 1980 cemented his family’s unique place in turf annals, died on January 29 in Rhode Island. He was 86.

During a 31-year training career (1955-1985), Burch trained six champions and the winners of three Belmont Stakes, including 1959 victor Sword Dancer and 1969 conqueror Arts and Letters, both of whom went on to be named Horse of the Year at season’s end. Among Burch’s prominent owners were Paul Mellon (Rokeby Stakes), Mrs. Isabel Dodge Sloane (Brookmeade Stable), James Cox Brady, Alfred G. Vanderbilt, and C.V. Whitney.

“I’ve known Elliott for every bit of 50 years. We were very good friends,” said Tommy Trotter, a longtime racing secretary who spent his own decades-long career in racing administration. “He was a first-class guy and always ran a great operation.”

A viewing for friends and family will be held on Thursday February 3 from 5 -7 p.m. EST at the O’Neill-Hayes funeral home, 465 Spring Street, Newport, Rhode Island. A memorial service will be held United Congregational Church, 524 Valley Road, Middletown, Rhode Island, on Saturday February 12 at 11:30 a.m.  The family will also hold a private service at a later date.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Newport Hospital or the National Museum of Racing in Saratoga, New York, at www.racingmuseum.org.

Born John Elliott Burch on March 3, 1924, in Washington, D.C., although it would take more than a few years for him to gravitate to the day-in, day-out, all-consuming life of conditioning racehorses, clearly the apple had not fallen far from the tree. His grandfather, William Preston Burch, who trained for 61 years (1866-1926), was inducted along with five other trainers as part of the Racing Hall of Fame’s inaugural class of 1955.

Elliott’s father, Preston M., whose renown as a trainer of infinite skill and master of the condition book was legendary, trained horses covering parts of six decades (1902-1957), saddling his first winner at age 17. Breeder of the hickory tough Hall of Fame racemare Gallorette, who defeated males on many occasions, Preston Burch was the nation’s leading money-winning trainer in 1950 and entered the trainer’s wing on Union Avenue in 1963.

While matriculating at Lawrenceville, Yale University—before and after an army hitch—and then transferring to the University of Kentucky, Elliott Burch was edging closer to fulfilling his destiny: learning the trainer’s craft as assistant to his father, as his own father had done. The real reason, Burch admitted years later, was that he loved the racetrack. Prior to taking the plunge full time, Burch spent two years as a correspondent for Daily Racing Form.

Burch began as his father’s licensed assistant in 1949, their lone client the high-profile Brookmeade Stable of Mrs. Isabel Dodge Sloane. When Preston Burch suffered a heart attack in 1957 and retired, son succeeded father as head man. Though it took time to land a major stakes victory, Burch and Brookmeade broke through in February 1958 when Oligarchy defeated 1957 Kentucky Derby victor Iron Liege to win the Widener Handicap at Hialeah Park. Brookmeade would go on to be 1958’s leading stable.

In 1959, though he had to settle for second-place finishes in the Derby and Preakness with a small horse of quality named Sword Dancer, the trainer was unperturbed. Following a training pattern unthinkable today, as a prep for the Belmont Stakes, Burch entered the son of Sunglow against older horses in the one-mile Metropolitan Handicap, won it, then took down the Belmont a fortnight later.

Striking a blow for symmetry, it remains a noteworthy feat in Burch’s dossier that he repeated the pattern at five-year intervals with 1964 Belmont winner Quadrangle (who finished second in the Met), and in 1969 with Arts and Letters, a son of *Ribot, who duly won his Met prep prior to posting a stylish victory in the Belmont.

“Arts and Letters was special from the moment I first saw him,” Burch said. “What a truly great horse he was.”

Both triumphs were for Mellon’s Rokeby Stables, which would play an integral part in Burch’s career, and both served to deny Triple Crown bids: Quadrangle downing Northern Dancer and Arts and Letters repulsing Majestic Prince. The losing rider on each occasion was five-time Kentucky Derby winning rider Bill Hartack.

For Mellon, Burch also unleashed a theretofore unsuspected grass terror named Fort Marcy, who secured champion turf horse honors in 1967, 1968, and 1970, when he was named Horse of the Year in the Daily Racing Form’s year-end poll.  (Three-year-old Personality, winner of the 1970 Preakness Stakes, was named Horse of the Year in the Thoroughbred Racing Associations poll.) Fort Marcy was elected to the Racing Hall of Fame in 1998.

Looking back over his career, Burch was proud that his horses competed without help of any kind—just hay, oats, and water. He was also quick to heap praise upon his stable help through the years. That was fully in keep with being “someone who does not believe in tooting my own horn,” he said.

It remains beyond irony to realize that at one time Preston Burch tried to discourage his own son from pursuing a life on the backside. As Elliott told turf writer and former Thoroughbred Times correspondent Bill Heller in 1999, “My father tried to discourage me from the racetrack because he thought it wasn’t a good life for a Yale man. I did everything I could to get closer to it.”