Longtime owner and breeder Leonard Riggio, founder of the bookstore giant Barnes & Noble, passed away Tuesday in New York City, according to the Wall Street Journal. He was 83 and had been battling Alzheimer's disease.
A native of Brooklyn, New York, Riggio acquired a single Barnes & Noble store in Manhattan in 1971 and turned the company into the country's largest bookstore chain, but he entered into racing almost by accident with a single purchase in 2001.
“My wife and daughter love the show horse world and they would be buying a horse every year or so and I finally said to my wife, 'Hey, is it OK if I buy one to race?” Riggio told TDN's Steve Sherack in 2017. “It really started out as innocently as that.”
One of his first acquisitions was Noble Causeway (Giant's Causeway), purchased for $1.15 million at the 2003 Keeneland September sale. On the racetrack, the chestnut finished second in the 2005 GI Florida Derby and in the breeding shed, he would go on to sire Samraat, who won the 2014 GIII Gotham Stakes and GIII Withers Stakes in the My Meadowview colors.
“Ultimately, we got the bug to have our own breeding operation when 'Noble' became a sire,” Riggio said in 2017. “We bought a bunch of mares for him and then we kind of got, I want to say, addicted. Being able to watch the horses being born, get on their legs for the first time, seeing them go through the paces of growing into adults–all of that, I must say, is more thrilling than the race itself. With every one of them, you're just full of hope and you really get to love these magnificent creatures.”
Homebred Tin Type Gal (Tapit) carried Riggio's colors to victory in the 2015 GIII Miss Grillo Stakes and 2016 GIII Boiling Springs Stakes, while Tapwrit (Tapit), sold for $1.2 million at the 2015 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sale, went on to win the 2017 GI Belmont Stakes. My Meadowview also bred and campaigned stakes-winner Marion Ravenwood (A.P. Indy), who would go on to produce champion Nest (Curlin), as well as Grade I winner Idol (Curlin) and graded-placed Lost Ark (Violence).
Riggio and his wife, Louise, created Project Home Again, a non-profit that built and gave away 101 homes in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. The couple were also at the forefront of the building of a contemporary art museum in Beacon, New York.
Riggio is survived by his wife, Louise, three daughters and four grandchildren.
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