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Nicholas Zito |
| Training Career: | 1972-present |
| Stakes winners: | 122 through 2004 |
| Champions: | 2 |
(Nick) Zito won his first Triple Crown race when Strike the Gold captured the Kentucky Derby in 1991. It was the beginning of an eventual sweep of all three of the races for the trainer. Zito was back in 1994 to add another Derby, with Go for Gin, and two years later came a victory in the Preakness Stakes with Louis Quatorze. That left only the Belmont Stakes. Zito's horses had placed in the final leg of the Triple Crown six times, and then won the Belmont in 2004 when he saddled Birdstone to defeat Smarty Jones.Birdstone later gave the trainer another milestone, winning the historic Travers Stakes. Zito, born in New York City in 1948, began training in 1972. Through 2004, he had won 1,370 races from 10,944 starts and had earnings of $65,468,460. In addition to his sequence of success in the Triple Crown races, he had scored multiple wins in some of the other top races in the country. He won the Champagne Stakes three times in a row and a total of four times, with The Groom is Red, Greenwood Lake, A P Valentine, and Birdstone. He won the Blue Grass Stakes three times, with Strike the Gold, Halory Hunter, and The Cliff's Edge.
Zito sent out Storm Song to win the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies en route to championship honors in her division in 1996, and he also trained champion Bird Town, winner of the Kentucky Oaksas top 3-year-old filly of 2003. Zito's other important victories include the Jockey Club Gold Cup, Suburban Handicap, Pimlico Special twice, Wood Memorial twice, The Donn Handicap, Belmont Futurity, the Corn, Flower Bowl, Florida Derby and Frizette Stakes. Nick Zito was inducted in 2005.
Swaps and Shoemaker in the San Vincente © 1955 Santa
Anita Photo; NMR - Mike Kane
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