Pioneering Sportswoman Virginia Kraft Payson Dies at 92

Virginia Kraft Payson, a pioneer with a buoyant spirit who often referred to her life as “a magic carpet ride” woven from a whirlwind of adventure travel, a passion for outdoors journalism, and a mid-life immersion into the world of Thoroughbred racing and breeding, died Jan. 9 at age 92 at her Payson Stud farm in Lexington, Kentucky.

The cause of death was complications from Parkinson's disease, as confirmed by Christian Erickson, a decades-long family friend and the trustee of the Payson estate.

Payson's entry into Thoroughbred ownership was the product of a whim, when her second husband, the late Charles Shipman Payson, bid on impulse on at an auction in the late 1970s. That first horse wasn't an on-track success, but the couple's breeding operation later yielded such noteworthy runners as St. Jovite, the 1992 European Horse of the Year, and the 1984 GI Travers S. winner Carr de Naskra.

Payson Park Training Center in Florida still carries the family's name and a reputation as an idyllic place for developing racehorses. Although Payson sold that property in 2019, for years beforehand she had been a highly enthusiastic participant in its operation. She often visited her horses stabled there by driving a Corvette painted in her family's blue and white racing colors.

A native of New York City, a graduate of Barnard College, and a self-described “outdoor adventuress,” Payson was among the first dozen writers (and the only woman) hired by the fledgling Sports Illustrated when that landmark magazine first launched in 1954.

Competition was fierce and staff turnover was high, but Payson (writing under her maiden name, Virginia Kraft) helped the publication flourish for 26 years as it grew into the era's pre-eminent weekly sports publication.

“Every guy who was hired looked around and figured, 'I can knock her off first,'” Payson once recalled in an interview. “I just did my job and created the opportunities.”

“Opportunities” was an understatement. Payson hunted big game on six continents, including tracking wild boar with General Francisco Franco of Spain, going on the prowl for tigers with the Queen of Nepal, and shooting birds from horseback with King Hussein of Jordan.

She also piloted hot-air balloons and competed in international sport fishing tournaments. Her prowess as a scuba diver led to her election into the Underwater Hall of Fame, and Payson even raced sled dogs through the Alaskan wilderness.

In addition to her work with Sports Illustrated, Payson was the author of five books on boating, training dogs, shotgun sports, and tennis. Siena College in New York State presented her with an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters in recognition of her lifetime body of work.

St. Jovite winning the G1 King George and Queen Elizabeth S. at Ascot in 1992 | racingfotos

In a 2013 podcast with the Blood-Horse, Payson detailed the humorous story of how she and Charles Payson acquired their first racehorse around the time they got married in 1977. The two both had experience riding horses, but not in owning Thoroughbreds.

They had taken a trip to Lexington to visit Secretariat as tourists. They then attended a Fasig-Tipton auction and sat down front. Caught up in the excitement, Charles bid on a horse sired by Arts and Letters, whose name Virginia had recognized. Charles even mistakenly bid against himself at one point, but eventually won the bid.

When it came time to sign the sales slip, Charles wasn't aware that a buyer was expected to have first established credit. He said someone he knew at the well-respected Greentree Stable would be able to pay on his behalf.

“We went back to the hotel and ordered a bottle of champagne and stayed up until two o'clock in the morning congratulating ourselves on owning a racehorse,” Kraft reminisced nearly four decades later.

“At about five o'clock in the morning the phone rang and it was the then-manager at Greentree, who, after quite a string of expletives, [wanted to know why] we were buying a horse for Greentree,” Payson recalled with a laugh.

The purchase got okayed, but Kraft said the horse, later named Romanair, turned out to be “absolutely insane” and extremely difficult to train.

“He was a beautiful horse, but he was just absolutely crazy in the head,” Kraft said.

Romanair raced three times in Kentucky before he was ruled off. They first time, Kraft said, he unseated the jockey. The second time he bolted in the wrong direction. The third time he tried to savage the horse next to him soon after breaking from the gate.

The Paysons gave away Romanair, but Kraft was always proud that, after four years off, a patient steeplechase trainer had managed to calm down the horse enough that he competed over jumps, and eventually won a steeplechase race at age nine. After a second retirement, Romanair became a successful sport horse for a number of years, which also delighted Payson.

After Charles's death in 1985, Virginia kept the Payson racing and breeding operations going. Other prominent horses she bred and campaigned included L'Carriere, Salem Drive, Lac Ouimet, Strawberry Reason, Uptown Swell, and Milesius. Her mare, Northern Sunset, was honored as 1995 Broodmare of the Year. In 1997, Payson was honored as Breeder of the Year by the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association.

Payson raced most of the horses she bred until 1999, keeping the number of foals each year relatively small, at about 12. In 2000, she decided to make Payson Stud more commercial, selling half her yearlings. The following year, she sold all of them. From those two early crops came a pair of 2002 divisional champions, the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile winner Vindication, and GI Kentucky Oaks winner Farda Amiga.

According to a biography provided by the family via Erickson, Payson's first marriage, to Robert Dean Grimm, ended in divorce.

After being widowed from Charles Payson, in 1994 she married a third time, to the Thoroughbred owner Jesse M. Henley, Jr. After his death, Payson in 2008 married David Libby Cole, a real estate broker from Colorado.

Cole, now of Lexington, survives Payson, as do three daughters from her marriage to Grimm, plus three grandchildren.

Arrangements for services are pending.