NEWS
Virginia Kraft Payson
Posted: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 2:57 PM
VIRGINIA KRAFT PAYSON
PhotosByZ.com
Payson Stud
Through the years, Virginia Kraft Payson has tracked and bagged wild game in Africa, piloted hot air balloons, competed in international sport fishing competitions, and endured a 75-mile sled dog competition in Alaska.
Payson also has become one of the industry’s most respected owners and breeders. In 2002, a pair of horses bred by her Payson Stud, Vindication and Farda Amiga, captured Eclipse Awards as champion two-year-old male and champion three-year-old filly, respectively.
Payson was a writer for Sports Illustrated in the early days of the magazine in the 1950s and ’60s, traveling to exotic locales and writing about her experiences in adventure sports such as hunting, fishing, and scuba diving.
She became involved in the Thoroughbred industry after marrying Charles Shipman Payson, a widower, in 1977, whose first wife, Joan Whitney Payson, was a partner with her brother, John Hay “Jock” Whitney, in the well-known Greentree Stud operation. Virginia Kraft met Charles Payson while writing a story for Sports Illustrated about his Florida hunting lodge in 1962.
Virginia Kraft Payson campaigned a handful of prominent horses, including Carr de Naskra, winner of the 1984 Travers Stakes (G1); ’92 European Horse of the Year St. Jovite; and graded stakes winners L’Carriere, Salem Drive, and Lac Ouimet.
Payson campaigned most of the horses she bred until 1999, when she decided to reverse field and become a commercial breeder. In 2000, she sold half her yearlings and the following year sold her entire crop.
From those two early crops came Vindication, who won the 2002 Bessemer Trust Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (G1), and Farda Amiga, winner of the ’02 Kentucky Oaks (G1) and runner-up to Azeri in the ’02 Breeders’ Cup Distaff (G1).
Recent top homebreds include Grade 1 winner Rutherienne and Grade 3 winner and sire Scipion.
Birthplace: New York, New York
Residences: Indiantown, Florida, with other homes in Kentucky, New York, and Colorado
Title: Owner, breeder
Company: Payson Stud in Lexington; Payson Park Training Center in Indiantown, Florida
Family: Married, four children
Career: Self-proclaimed “outdoors adventuress” as a writer in the inaugural days of Sports Illustrated; author of books on such varied topics as boating, dog training, shotgun sports, and tennis; became involved in Thoroughbred industry after marrying Charles Shipman Payson in 1977
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READER COMMENTS
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Posted by: Cml, Lex, KY on May 20, 2011 at 12:26 AM
I don't think this article would be published, if they knew what a racist she is.
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Posted by: Daniel Williams, Philadelphia, PA on August 30, 2010 at 04:42 AM
A gracious, interesting and dynamic woman who also enjoys classical music while in Saratoga Springs, NY. for the racing season there.
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