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Ogden Phipps (November 26, 1908 – April 21, 2002) was an American stockbroker, Real tennis champion and Hall of Fame member, thoroughbred horse racing executive and owner/breeder, and an art collector and philanthropist. In 2001, he was inducted into the International Court Tennis Hall of Fame.
During World War II, Ogden Phipps served with the United States Navy. After the war, he became a partner in the prominent brokerage firm, Smith Barney then used his training to head up Bessemer Trust, a private holding company that managed the fortune left to Phipps family members by their grandfather.
After World War II, Ogden Phipps bought a group of horses from the estate of Colonel Edward R. Bradley that formed the basis for what would become his major horse racing operation. Like his family's Wheatley Stable, Phipps too would use Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky, for breeding and developing of his horses. In 1959 he became a founding member of the New York Racing Association and a member of its board of trustees. Approaching his 80th birthday, he resigned in 1988 and was named a director emeritus. He also served as a chairman of The Jockey Club for twenty years and at the time of his death was the club's longest-reigning member.
Ogden Phipps owned and bred Reviewer, who sired Ruffian for his sister, Barbara Phipps Janney. He inherited the stallion Bold Ruler from his mother's estate, who was mated with the mare Somethingroyal in 1969. Through the toss of a coin, Penny Chenery, on behalf of her father Christopher Chenery, got the red chestnut colt Secretariat, the 1973 Triple Crown Winner.
Ogden Phipps bred nine champions of his own, winning for both leading owner and leading breeder in 1988. His most famous horses include Buckpasser, Personal Ensign, and Easy Goer, all of whom are in the United States Racing Hall of Fame. He never won the Kentucky Derby but came close twice, finishing second with Dapper Dan in 1965 and second again with Easy Goer in 1989, who went on to win the Belmont Stakes. He won two British Classic Races, taking the St. Leger Stakes with Boucher in 1972 and the 1,000 Guineas at Newmarket Racecourse with Quick As Lightning. He won four Breeders' Cup races. First with the undefeated Personal Ensign in 1988, then Dancing Spree in 1989, Inside Information and My Flag in 1995.
Four Hall of Fame trainers conditioned Phipps' horses, beginning with the renowned Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons, who also trained for his mother's Wheatley Stable. After Fitzsimmons' retirement, Bill Winfrey came out of retirement to train for him in 1963 then Eddie Neloy took over in 1966, followed by John Russell in 1973, Angel Penna Sr. in 1977 and Shug McGaughey in 1985.
In 2003, Ogden Phipps was voted the Eclipse Award of Merit and in 2019 the American Thoroughbred horse racing industry's highest honor as a Hall of Fame Pillar of the Turf.
After the divorce, Ruth Phipps remarried in 1936 to Marshall Field III. Ogden Phipps remarried on November 4, 1937, to divorcee Lillian Stokes Bostwick McKim (1906–1987), the sister of Hall of Fame steeplechase jockey George Herbert Bostwick. Lillian would become a major figure in American steeplechase racing who owned two U.S. Racing Hall of Fame horses and won the American Grand National eight times. She was also the mother of three daughters from her first marriage to Robert McKim, and together, Ogden and Lillian had two more children:
Ogden Phipps was 93 when he died on April 21, 2002, at Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Florida. Friend and fellow Thoroughbred owner Marylou Whitney called Phipps's death "the end of an era in racing".
An honorary governor of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Phipps continued the family's philanthropy work. The Ogden Phipps Handicap at Belmont Park is named in his honor.
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