Don Pierce

Don Pierce died on October 5, 2026, in Denton, Texas, at age 89, following a lengthy battle with cancer, according to BloodHorse reporting based on family accounts. The death was publicly confirmed in the days that followed by family voices on social media, including brother Larry Pierce, and by the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, then covered by BloodHorse, the Associated Press, Daily Racing Form, and Southern California newspapers. He had moved from Oceanside, California, to assisted living in Denton about a year earlier so he could be nearer family as his health declined. A resting place has not been made public in major reports.

Donald Pierce was born on April 13, 1937, in Clebit, Oklahoma, into a blue-collar family of six children. His father worked as a mechanic on logging trucks, and the family's livelihood followed timber work from rural Oklahoma into the forests of western Oregon and the wider Pacific Northwest. Pierce worked on farms as a boy, shone shoes to help the household, and, because of his size and comfort with horses, was steered toward bush tracks and county-fair match races. Those contests often paid five dollars for a win and nothing for a loss. He rode without a helmet or flak jacket, in Levi's, a T-shirt, a backward baseball cap, and tennis shoes. Formal schooling details from those years have not been made public in major obituaries or Hall of Fame materials; what is documented is a childhood shaped by hard work, horses, and itinerant logging life rather than by published academic records.

Pierce's first start at a pari-mutuel track came on June 13, 1954, at Ruidoso Downs in New Mexico, where the 17-year-old won aboard Supplier on opening day and became the meeting's leading rider. Early tutors included Las Vegas trainer Jack Howard and contract holder A.J. Horn. After stops on minor circuits in Washington, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada, he established himself in Southern California against the era's deepest jockey colonies.

Between 1954 and 1984 he recorded 3,546 wins from 28,740 mounts, 351 of them stakes, with purse earnings of $39,018,422. His California ledger includes four Santa Anita Handicaps (Linmold 1960, Physician 1962, Hill Rise 1965, Triple Bend 1972), five consecutive Los Angeles Handicaps (1969-73), five Santa Anita Oaks, five Hollywood Oaks, and two Santa Anita Derbies (Hill Rise 1964, Flying Paster 1979). He also won multiple editions of the Del Mar Derby, Del Mar Oaks, Santa Monica, Santa Ana, and Santa Margarita Handicaps, plus Del Mar Debutante titles. Away from California he took riding titles at Belmont and Saratoga and won Saratoga's Hopeful and Jim Dandy. In 1966 he captured the Del Mar riding title after a six-year absence. In 1973 he led North America with 32 stakes wins.

Signature mounts included Hill Rise (which he later called his best horse), Silky Sullivan, Ack Ack, Flying Paster, Triple Bend, Kennedy Road, Quack, Princessnessian (1968 Hollywood Gold Cup over males), B. Thoughtful, and Fabulous Notion. He rode for elite trainers such as Mesh Tenney, William Molter, Charlie Whittingham, and Robert Wheeler. In 1967 peers awarded him the George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award. He made five Kentucky Derby starts (best: fourth on Super Moment, 1980) and finished fourth in the 1979 Preakness on Flying Paster. After retiring from riding he trained from 1985 to 1995 (37 winners) and later worked as a Del Mar clocker.

Pierce made Southern California home for most of his adult life, living for years in Encinitas and Oceanside near Del Mar, the track he called a summer vacation as much as a workplace. The family once owned a ranch near Escondido and still rented a Del Mar house during the meet so the children could enjoy the seaside season. Daughter Connie Markum remembered him as a natural athlete who competed hard at golf, swimming, and water and snow skiing, and who never gave an inch at the family's octagon pool table. She also recalled the constant pranks he shared with close friend Bill Shoemaker, often at the expense of quieter colleagues such as Fernando Toro.

He is survived by Connie Markum; sons Don Pierce Jr. and Edward Pierce, both in California; five grandchildren; one great-grandchild; and brother Larry Pierce, a successful Northwest jockey inducted into the Washington Racing Hall of Fame in 2008. Public obituaries around his death did not name a surviving spouse. About a year before he died, health needs drew him from Oceanside to assisted living in Denton, Texas, closer to family. Staff there, Markum said, kept coming by to say goodbye, drawn by the same joking personality that had marked the jocks' room decades earlier.

In 1967 Pierce received the George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award, given to a rider whose career and personal conduct exemplify the best of thoroughbred racing. He treasured the trophy, saying it ranked close to anything he achieved in the sport. In 2010 the historic review committee elected him to the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, New York. Fellow Hall of Fame jockey John Rotz introduced him at the induction ceremony. Career totals cited by the Hall of Fame and BloodHorse remain the standard measure of his riding resume: 3,546 wins, 28,740 mounts, 351 stakes wins, and $39,018,422 in purses. Track records and riding titles at Del Mar, Belmont, and Saratoga, together with four Big 'Cap victories and the five-straight Los Angeles Handicap streak, underpin that Hall of Fame case.

Pierce is remembered as a classic California money rider of the Shoemaker era: reliable in rich stakes, competitive without theatrics, and deeply tied to Del Mar's summer culture. His four Santa Anita Handicap wins and five consecutive Los Angeles Handicaps remain landmarks on the Southern California calendar. He helped define a generation that rode day to day against Arcaro, Longden, Shoemaker, Pincay, and McCarron, and he carried that standard east to Belmont and Saratoga titles. After the saddle he stayed useful to the sport as a trainer and then as a Del Mar clocker who still rose before dawn. When news of his death reached the racing world in October 2026, Del Mar Racetrack, BloodHorse, Daily Racing Form, and peers such as Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens and writer Jay Privman marked the loss of a rider Privman called a Hall of Fame person as much as a Hall of Fame jockey. His brother Larry's parallel Hall of Fame path in Washington underlines how far two Pierce boys traveled from Clebit bush tracks to racing's permanent record.

Pierce spoke on camera during Keeneland's 2016 Hall of Fame Jockeys Day, recalling Silky Sullivan and other mounts. Archival race films preserve parts of his book, including his 1979 Santa Anita Derby win on Flying Paster and the 1979 Preakness in which he finished fourth on the same horse behind Spectacular Bid. The National Museum of Racing holds still photographs of Pierce with the George Woolf Award, in the winner's circle, and aboard horses such as Kennedy Road. Contemporary obituaries in BloodHorse and the Associated Press, plus Ed Zieralski's 2010 San Diego Union-Tribune profile written for his Hall of Fame induction, remain the principal long-form records of his life.