Longtime Horseman Elliott Fuentes Dies
Blood-Horse
Florida breeder and trainer Elliott Fuentes, who played a key role in the development of 1985 Horse of the Year Spend a Buck, died Jan. 18 of natural causes. He was 86.
Fuentes helped his friend Dennis Diaz get involved in horse racing. Their families were so close that Diaz named his adopted son Elliott.
While visiting Irish Hill Farm near Owensboro in Western Kentucky in 1983, Fuentes and Diaz were attracted to a yearling colt by Buckaroo out of Belle de Jour, by Speak John. They liked the yearling so well they also bought his dam, paying $12,500 for the colt and another $62,500 for Belle de Jour. These were the first two Thoroughbreds Diaz ever owned.
Fuentes raised and broke the colt named Spend a Buck at Hayman Fuentes Farm near Odessa, Fla. The colt would later be sent to the barn of trainer Cam Gambolati where he started making racing history.
Spend a Buck won two stakes as a juvenile including the grade I Arlington-Washington Futurity. At 3, he won the Cherry Hill Mile Stakes and Garden State Stakes at Garden State Park before taking the Kentucky Derby (gr. I) by 5 1/4 lengths under Angel Cordero Jr.
Fuentes’ daughter Mary Ann Hamilton told the Tampa Bay Times that the Diaz family sent her family a dozen roses after the Derby with a card stating: “We want you to smell the roses with us.”
Diaz caused a stir that year by choosing to bypass the Preakness Stakes (gr. I) in favor of running in the Jersey Derby (gr. III) to pursue a $2 million bonus offered by Robert Brennan, then chairman of Garden State Park. Spend a Buck won the Jersey Derby and the bonus, which guaranteed a spot at the top the general leading sire list for Buckaroo. Spend a Buck would go on to finish second in the Haskell Invitational Handicap (gr, I) and win the Monmouth Handicap (gr. I) to sew up champion 3-year-old male and Horse of the Year honors.
Fuentes, a fourth-generation Tampa resident, kept a stable at Tampa Bay Downs. He had been a trainer since 1954.
He bred and raised several other stakes winners including Dasharoo and Teddy’s Top Ten, who he co-bred with Alice Hayman. Fuentes and S.L. Hayman were also the breeders of unplaced 1983 Kentucky Derby starter Law Talk.
The Fuentes family will receive friends on Saturday, Jan. 24, from 10 a.m. until time of service at 11 a.m. at Trinity Memorial Gardens Funeral Home Chapel near Avon Park, Fla. Burial will follow. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations suggested to Meals On Wheels.
