Longtime trainer John Salzman Sr. passes away at age 81

John Salzman Sr., a stalwart of Maryland Thoroughbred racing for decades, passed away September 28 at age 81.

Salzman began training in 1978 and stepped away in 2025 due to illness. His last winner came on April 13, 2025, at Laurel Park with Happy Hour Joker for longtime client Gracie Mae Stables.

Salzman began a family operation that continued in later years through his sons John Jr., who currently has a stable at Laurel, and Tim, a trainer who passed away earlier this year. Tim Salzman’s wife, Megan, who took over training duties, won her first race in September at Laurel with a horse that had been trained by her husband.

“It is with a sad heart I have to say Maryland racing has lost of the truest horsemen I ever knew,” John Salzman Jr. said. “My father passed away today at noon—post time for the first race. You will be truly missed. Rest in peace, dad."

Horses trained by John Salzman Sr. won 828 races and earned more than $16 million. The period of the mid-1980s through the early 2000s produced many of his most productive years by number of starts and victories.

Salzman is best known nationally as the trainer of National Racing Hall of Fame sprinter Xtra Heat, who won 26 of 35 starts and set a modern record for a filly or mare with 25 stakes wins.

Xtra Heat fittingly won her first start (a $25,000 maiden claimer at Laurel in June 2000) as well as her final start in the Grade II Barbara Fritchie Handicap at Laurel in February 2023. In the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Belmont Park in 2001 against colts and geldings, then 3-year-old Xtra Heat led from the start through quick fractions only to be caught late by Squirtle Squirt. The $200,000 for finishing second was just part of her overall career earnings of $2.3 million.

Salzman also won the Grade III Martha Washington Stakes at Laurel with Tee Kay in 1984 and the Grade III Laurel Futurity with Lord of the Bay in 1992.

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