Hopeful Stakes Stretch

Bob Coglianese was an American photographer whose career became inseparable from the history of Thoroughbred racing in New York. Born in 1934, he entered the racetrack photography world as a teenager, beginning in 1952 as an assistant to his uncle, photographer Mike Sirico. A decade later, in 1962, he founded Coglianese Photos, beginning a professional career that would span more than half a century. He became the official track photographer for the New York Racing Association, documenting racing at Aqueduct Racetrack, Belmont Park, and Saratoga Race Course, while his company also developed a longstanding presence at Gulfstream Park in Florida.

Over the course of his career, Coglianese photographed many of the most celebrated horses and defining races of the 20th century, including Kelso, Dr. Fager, Secretariat, Affirmed, and Cigar. Working trackside gave him access not only to the races themselves, but to the full visual culture surrounding the sport: horses in motion, jockeys, trainers, winner’s circles, paddocks, and moments behind the scenes. His photographs combined the documentary responsibility of an official track photographer with an instinct for timing and composition, creating images that became historical records while also standing on their own as compelling photographs.

Coglianese is particularly remembered for his head-on photograph of Secretariat winning the 1973 Belmont Stakes by an extraordinary 31 lengths, completing the Triple Crown. The image captures Secretariat dramatically separated from the rest of the field and became one of the defining photographs in racing history. Sports Illustrated later recognized it as the greatest horse-racing photograph of the 20th century, an image that secured Coglianese’s place not only within racing photography but within the broader visual history of American sport.

Coglianese retired in 2013 after more than six decades around New York racetracks, but the photography operation he founded continued under his son, Adam Coglianese. By the time of Bob Coglianese’s death in 2022 at age 88, his archive represented generations of Thoroughbred racing and countless moments at Saratoga, Belmont, Aqueduct, and beyond. His photographs remain an essential record of the horses, people, and races that shaped the sport, preserving an era of American racing through the perspective of someone who spent a lifetime at the rail.