Isabelle de Tomaso

Isabelle de Tomaso died on 29 October 2026 at the age of 96. The Thoroughbred Breeders Association of New Jersey announced her death and extended condolences to her family and friends, describing her as a tremendous supporter of the New Jersey bred programme and noting her parallel career as a businesswoman and race car driver. The place and cause of death were not made public, and funeral arrangements had not been announced in the first published notices.

Isabelle Tilford Haskell was born on 28 May 1930 in New York City to Amory Lawrence Haskell and Annette Tilford. She was the second youngest of five children and was raised on the family farm in Middletown, New Jersey, near Red Bank.

Her father was a General Motors executive who fought for the legalisation of pari mutuel wagering in New Jersey, built Monmouth Park, and served as president of its Jockey Club until his death in 1966. The Haskell Stakes carries his name. Her mother brought a passion for Thoroughbreds into the household and died in a car accident in 1946, when Isabelle was a teenager.

As a young adult she used money her father had intended for a practical car to buy an MG TD sports car in Philadelphia, a first step toward a racing life that would take her far from New Jersey.

In October 1953, while working for a battery company in Palm Beach whose owners raced, she took a Sports Car Club of America licence at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa and competed in her first race the same day. She raced an MG and later a Siata 300BC in SCCA events, then a Maserati 150S.

In 1955 she became the first woman to race in the 12 Hours of Sebring, sharing a Bandini with Dick Irish. That year she also raced at Nassau Speed Week in the main events rather than the ladies races. In 1956 she finished seventh in the Buenos Aires 1000 km with Carlos Lostalo and met Argentine driver Alejandro de Tomaso at the Maserati works. They married in Palm Beach on 9 March 1957, raced as partners, and in 1958 won the Index of Performance at Sebring.

In 1959 they founded De Tomaso Automobili in Modena to build prototypes and single seaters, later road cars such as the Vallelunga, Mangusta and Pantera, and briefly Formula One machinery. After Alejandro's stroke in the 1990s and his death in 2003, the family sold the company in 2004. Isabelle later returned more fully to the United States while keeping ties to Italy.

Horse breeding remained a lifelong thread. Isabelle began breeding Thoroughbreds in 1969 and, with her sister Hope Haskell Jones, built a successful New Jersey and Maryland based programme trained in later years by Graham Motion at Herringswell Stables.

She bred more than 100 New Jersey breds. Her standout homebred was Irish War Cry (Curlin), who won three graded stakes, ran second in the 2017 Belmont Stakes (Grade 1), and earned 1,257,060 dollars. She also bred Grade 3 winner Irish Strait (English Channel) and black type winners including No Cents, Irish Boolum, Irish Mias and Regally Irish. In 2017 Irish War Cry ran fourth in the Haskell Stakes, the race named for her father.

She also bred prize winning Cocker Spaniels and lived between Italy and Palm Beach in later decades.

De Tomaso bridged two sporting worlds. In motorsport she was among the few American women of the 1950s to race internationally against men and to co found a Modena sports car marque whose Pantera became a cultural marker. In Thoroughbred racing she sustained her father's Monmouth Park legacy through decades of New Jersey breeding and through Irish War Cry's Triple Crown trail and graded stakes career.

The TBA of New Jersey and the racing press remembered her as a lasting presence in Garden State breeding and as a living link to the mid century founding of modern New Jersey racing.