Good article remembering him:
Remembering a Legend
The death of Hall of Fame trainer Frank “Pancho” Martin was felt all over the backside this week, and the stories flowed:
Hall of Fame trainer Allen Jerkens: “Pancho bought Never Bow from us on Monday and he was in the stake on Saturday. He said ‘I want you to keep the horse until Saturday, train him the same way, I will stake the groom and everybody, and after the race I will take him home as if I claimed him.’ And I did that. We trained the horse for the race, he won and I finished second in the race. True story. Absolutely true. You can look it up. Knight in Armor was my horse. My son was so mad. It’s incredible. We trained the horse as if we wanted him to win the race and he did. He won the race, and beat us.”
Retired jockey Angel Cordero: “He could have a bad temper sometimes, but he was a good man when you needed him. He opened a restaurant near Belmont, wouldn’t let anybody pay. Everybody went there. He would come sit at the table with you, get a bottle of wine, drink with you, talk with you. When you got up to pay the bill, they would say Mr. Martin took care of it. Everybody was his friend. That’s how he was. He was one of the most accomplished trainers I ever saw in my life – talented, tough, a good man.”
Trainer (and grandson) Carlos Martin: “He was natural, he’d take a horse out of the stall and the blacksmith wouldn’t see the bruise in his foot, but my grandfather would find it and cut it out. He’d work on horses for a year, paint their legs for a year and get them back. He had a lot of perseverance.”
Trainer Bob Ribaudo: “He was incredible. I was claiming horses at the time. Whenever you ran anything, you’d think ‘Is Pancho looking at him?’ That was the last guy you wanted to claim from you because he was great, he was just a good horseman. Not too many people remember him around here, he was born in 1925, but he was a legend in his own time, a phenom, a real racetrack character.”
http://www.st-publishing.com/cms2/in...2196-mr-martin
