John Mazza

Pop quiz: The $400,000 GII Man o' War S. is scheduled to run this weekend at Belmont at the Big A at 11 furlongs on the grass. What previous Man o' War winner still holds the course record at Belmont Park for the distance? If you guessed Influent (Ascot Knight--Katerina Key, by Key to the Mint), you'd be right. Two months before he won the Man o' War in 1997, then a Grade I, he covered the same 1 3/8 miles on Belmont's Widener Turf Course in 2:11.06 in the...

The minute owner Vincent Annarella of Holly Crest Farm named a New Jersey-bred he owned and bred Great Navigator (Sea Wizard), the colt had a lot to live up to. The name was borrowed from the first Great Navigator (Gulch), who was trained by a longtime Monmouth Park stalwart, the late John Mazza, and won the 1992 GI Hopeful S. at Saratoga. Could this one be as good? It's not out of the question. Running in an open-company maiden special weight race on the June 4 card at Monmouth, Great...

Trainer John Mazza, a regular at Monmouth Park since the track opened in 1956 and one of the most beloved members of the New Jersey racing fraternity, passed away Friday. He was 82. According to his companion, Rosemary Shockley, Mazza died from complications related to congestive heart failure. He passed away at Aventura Hospital in Aventura, Florida. Mazza was a throwback, a product of a time when racing was more a sport than a business and trainers like Mazza considered everyone on the backstretch family. He didn't have a bad...

Cameron Beatty was at that stage in life--young, healthy, athletic, motivated, naive--where he never even imagined the possibility that everything he had could be taken away from him. He was the starting quarterback at Freehold Township (NJ) High School and had accepted an offer to play at Fairleigh Dickinson, where he had an academic scholarship. He was going places, and on the fast track. In an instant, everything changed. In 2010, Beatty, now 27, was on his way to the gym to workout when he had a motorcycle accident so...