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NYRA mourns passing of Chuck Simon

by NYRA Press Office

The New York Racing Association, Inc. (NYRA) mourns the loss of trainer Chuck Simon, who turned a well-traveled career assisting Hall of Fame legends H. Allen Jerkens, D. Wayne Lukas and Nick Zito and later running his own stable into a more recent role as one of the racing’s most knowledgeable and passionate advocates.

Simon, who retired from training in 2019 to host a podcast about horse racing and lead the newly created Gulfstream Horsemen’s Purchasing Association, died Sunday of cancer at Saratoga Hospital. He was 57.

A skilled horseman, Simon combined a memorable wit and story-telling prowess to collect a legion of friends from the frontside to the backstretch of racetracks across the country. As a Saratoga Springs native, Simon accompanied his father to Saratoga Race Course, and once said that he never really wanted to work in any other industry.

“When you’re growing up in Saratoga, you don’t realize that everyone does not have what you have,” Simon told Trainer Magazine in 2020. “Not every place has a racetrack right in the backyard. Not every kid has access to Affirmed and Alydar.”

A graduate of Saratoga Central Catholic High School, Simon played basketball for two years at a junior college in the Albany area before enrolling in the University of Arizona’s Race Track Industry Program [RTIP], where future Hall of Fame trainer Todd Pletcher was a classmate. During a summer break, Simon interned at Yonkers Raceway, where he returned after graduation to work full-time in the racing office.

Simon’s conversion from standardbreds to thoroughbreds kicked off several years later when he was visiting Belmont Park and caught up with Pletcher, then working for Lukas. That led Simon to his own position in the Lukas barn, followed by a series of jobs assisting leading trainers in New York including Pete Ferriola, Tom Skiffington and Zito. Later, Simon interviewed with Jerkens who asked him point-blank, “You work for all those fancy guys (so) why do you want to work for me?”

‘I don’t want to be a movie star,” Simon said he told the legendary trainer. “I want to be a horse trainer. He liked that.”

Simon spent 5 1/2-years assisting Jerkens; and in 1999, opened his own barn. Training primarily for Ken and Sarah Ramsey, Simon won his first stakes at the Spa in 2000, when Saratoga Sunrise took the West Point Handicap, and was a regular every summer at the Spa through 2007.