California trainer Stephen Ferraro dies at 83 after long illness

Stephen Ferraro’s name still shows up in pedigrees and stakes records, which is the clearest measure of the California horseman who died Monday at his home in Sierra Madre after a lengthy illness. He was 83.

Ferraro trained in California from 1970 through 1990, and he did it the old Southern California way, with a small stable and a reputation built barn by barn. His son, Evan Ferraro, said his father kept a 12-to-16 horse operation that was enough to make a good living in that era, before Ferraro retired in 1990 and joined the family vending-machine business.

The horses tied to Ferraro’s name show how far that influence reached. The California Thoroughbred Breeders Association noted that he conditioned the California-bred Painted Wagon and was the breeder-owner of Ismene, a Cal-bred multiple stakes winner. Bill Spawr, a close friend of Ferraro’s, trained Ismene to multiple stakes victories, and she went on to become the champion California-bred 2-year-old filly of 2011.

Ferraro’s family stayed inside the sport, too. Evan Ferraro is now director of marketing at Fasig-Tipton, and he said his father treated everyone on the backstretch with the same warmth, from hotwalkers to swing grooms and the rest of the barn staff. That matters in a game where the horse gets the headlines but the people in the shed rows keep the whole thing moving.

The Southern California circuit Ferraro knew has changed, and the numbers tell that story. Evan Ferraro recalled Santa Anita drawing about 30,000 fans on weekday cards and 50,000 on weekends while he was growing up, a different scale entirely from the modern backstretch. Stephen Ferraro still retained a box at Santa Anita, a small sign that he never really left the game.

The family line kept producing horses after Ferraro stopped training. In 2023, Liberal Arts won the GIII Street Sense Stakes at Churchill Downs, and pedigree notes identified him as out of Ismene by Arrogate. Ismene also started in the 2013 GI Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint, giving Ferraro’s breeding work a footprint that reached well beyond his years in the barn.