Longtime thoroughbred owner-trainer Bruce Wagar, who fought for Playfair’s survival, dies at 87

Thoroughbred trainer, owner and breeder Bruce Wagar, who fought for the survival of Spokane’s Playfair Race Course, died last Tuesday. He was 87.

Along with his friend and rival, Dan McCanna, Wagar became one of the most successful owner-trainers, often called hobby horsemen, who ran a small stable as a supplement to a full-time job. He hated the term, noting that hobbies don’t involve early mornings cleaning stalls and late hours at the races. Both men went on to win two Playfair training titles apiece.

Fans knew Wagar, a longtime Kaiser Aluminum employee, for 1988 2-year-old star Iwillgetuintheend. But he took up the sport in the early 1960s. Although Equibase, the industry’s statistician, did not digitize its records until 1976, it credits him with 395 winners and almost as many second and thirds. Playfair records show him with six victories as early as 1963. The complete total might be close to 450.

Wagar remained active until after Playfair closed at the end of the last century. He saddled Promise Keeper, a 4-year-old maiden gelding, on Dec. 17, 2000, to win the final race on the final day. After that, he had only a handful of starters at other tracks.

As Playfair, faced with financial and operational difficulties, began to lose its standing with the Washington Horse Racing Commission, Wagar became the president of Lilac City Racing, a horsemen’s organization that tried unsuccessfully to stave off the track’s demise.

Wagar had expanded his stable and joined the list of Playfair’s leading trainers in 1983, when he shared sixth place with 22 wins. He finished fifth with 25 winners in 1986 and saddled 30 more the next year to claim fourth place behind McCanna.

Then, the South Dakota native won the 1988 championship with 56 wins, third best in the track’s first half-century, five ahead of McCanna and Kim Wright. Iwillgetuintheend dominated the meet, winning six times with two seconds in eight starts. The front-running bay gelding, teamed with longtime Playfair jockey standout Aki Kato, breezed to a three-length victory in the $43,545 Spokane Futurity.

The precocious Washington-bred was named Horse of the Meeting, as well as best 2-year-old and champion handicap horse. He helped his owners, Larry, Claudia and Stacy Rayburn, bank $59,389, the one-season Playfair record.

Wagar also won Playfair’s 1995 title. His other best known stakes-winners included Rocket Thruster (1975) and Bookie Buster (1989).

He is survived by a son, Kevin, and a daughter, Annette, who assisted her father for many years and trained horses in her own name late in the 1990s.