By Bill Heller
Armed with an innovative mind and utter faith in his blue-collar stallion Bucchero, Harlan Malter and his newly created Ironhorse Stallions are hoping to make a lasting impact on New York racing and the state’s breeding industry.
“He thinks outside the box,” said John Dowd, Ironhorse’s head of bloodstock and operations. “He’s very, very creative. He ruffles some feathers with the way he thinks and what he does. I’ve asked him that point blank. He said, `That’s me. That’s who I am.’”
Malter is very excited about the potential of a new Belmont Park reopening in 2026 and the role of New York-breds in it. “It’s such a great time to be in New York,” he said. “I have a vision and I’m going to run with it. I really believe in this. I don’t have an agenda. I have a horse. To me, this New York-bred program is so strong. Let’s really make New York awesome. I want to be a positive influence.”
To that end, he has moved Bucchero from a successful year at McMahon of Saratoga Thoroughbreds to stand in 2025 for Ironhorse Stallions at Questroyal North in Stillwater. Due largely to the success of Bucchero’s Grade 1 stakes winner Book ‘em Danno, Malter has also upped his stallion’s fee from $7,500 to $10,000 while offering a $2,500 discount for anyone who will foal a mare in New York in 2025. “I think anything we can do to encourage more breeders to drop their foals in New York will pay rich dividends for the whole program down the line, and I want to make sure I play my part in that mission,” Malter said.
He’s had many missions over the years, some forged at Columbia University, where he played baseball just like Lou Gehrig did. Gehrig, the Pride of the New York Yankees, played in 2,130 consecutive games, earning the nickname Iron Horse. Malter named his horse operation to honor him.
They weren’t quite on the same level baseball wise. Gehrig was one of the greatest players in baseball history. Malter? Not so much. “I had been a student of the game,” Malter said. “I was a shortstop, then a third baseman, a catcher and a pitcher. I had the infield range of a turtle.” On the mound? “I was just a decent pitcher, but I pitched a lot of innings.”
Now he’s pitching Thoroughbreds, a pursuit made possible by an ongoing successful career with his financial planning firm.
He grew up in Boston, where his dad was a doctor, and lived in New York from 1989 to 2010. He now lives in California. “I was a complete sports fanatic with my father and my brother,” he said.
Malter was three when Secretariat won the 1973 Triple Crown, and more tuned into racing when Triple Crown Champion Affirmed and Alydar staged their incredible rivalry in 1977 and 1978. “I always wanted to own a racehorse,” he said. “I’d go to the OTB on 72nd St. (in Manhattan). I really liked the handicapping. Then Cigar came along. I was all in. I saw both his Mass Cap wins (at Suffolk Downs in 1995 and 1996). I said I’d like to get involved.”
But how? “It’s a hard game if you don’t know somebody,” Malter said. “How do I even do this? There aren’t many guidebooks.”
He could have used some advice. He and his late son Cory bought a 10-percent share of a $5,000 claimer, Press Gently. “The horse immediately developed a breathing problem,” Malter said. “Immediately he was no good. But that got me in the gate. I got hooked up with (trainer) Ron Dandy, a major player in New England.”
Malter and his partners began Ironhorse Racing Stable in 2007. “It was just a bunch of guys,” Malter said. “It wasn’t a formal syndicate.”
On August 18th, 2008 at Saratoga, Ironhorse claimed Sweet Sugar from D. Wayne Lukas, with the intention of giving the gelding to Dandy to train. They discovered after the race that he had a bowed tendon.
“We had to give the horse a year off,” Malter said. “Then he came back.”
In consecutive starts at Philadelphia Park (now Parx) in the fall of 2009, Sweet Sugar finished a distant third in a pair of Pennsylvania-bred stakes. “The thrill I had when this horse was third in a stakes was the greatest thing in the world,” Malter said. “I had to pinch myself.”
In 2014 Ironhorse bought Bucchero, a son of Kantharos out of Meetmeontime by General Meeting, for $43,000 as a two-year-old at Ocala. Go to the head of the class if you know that Kantharos is an Etruscan chalice and that Bucchero is a style of Etruscan pottery.
Bucchero’s mere existence was a miracle. His dam was rescued from neglect by his breeders. A picture of the mare when she was rescued is difficult to look at, her ribs sticking out from her emaciated chest. “The horse had no business being alive,” Malter said.
But she lived, ultimately leading to sprint star Bucchero, who put together quite a resume for trainer Tim Glyshaw. He won 11 of 31 starts with six seconds, three thirds, earning $947,936 at 15 different racetracks, including Keeneland, where he won the Grade 2 Woodford Stakes twice, and Royal Ascot, finishing fifth of 14 in the Group 1 Kings Stand Stakes at 40-1 odds. Bucchero finished fourth by one length in the 2017 Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint at Del Mar at 29-1 and, in his final career start, eighth in the 2018 Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint at 27-1 at Churchill Downs on a yielding course.
“He left the track as a six-year-old one hundred percent sound,” Malter said. “I pitched the idea of why don’t we stand this horse to my partners. All of them said, I’m in. I give them credit. It was a little bit of my crazy idea. Florida made tremendous sense. Kantharos had been successful there. We were well-received.”
Malter knew that moving Bucchero to the Empire State after five years in Florida might be a wise decision. “I’m a New Yorker,” he said. “I know the New York-bred program. There’s nothing even close.”
So Bucchero spent this year at McMahon of Saratoga Thoroughbreds, where he’s had tremendous success. As of November 5th, Bucchero was 66th nationally in progeny earnings with $4,587,016. Ironically, McMahon’s Central Banker is 65th with $4,612,695 in earnings. McMahon also stands Solomini, who is 116th nationally.
Malter decided to create a new entity, Ironhorse Stallions, and move Bucchero to that new entity at Questroyal. He is especially proud of Bucchero’s progeny’s 49 percent in-the-money rate. “It’s stunning to me that I’ve got a horse like Bucchero,” Malter said. “All of his progeny, they try.”
Dowd noted, “They have grit. They win races.”
Malter said he now has 25 babies, mares and racehorses with trainers Mark Casse, Joe Orseno and Mike Trombetta.
“To me, this New York program is so strong,” Malter said. “It’s built for something I want: producing competitive horses who stay sound.”
