Barry Irwin, now the head of Team Valor International, was entering his teenage years in Southern California when Swaps burst onto the scene in 1955.

“He just really excited me and caught my imagination,” Irwin recalled.

Irwin was hardly alone. Swaps’ popularity became so enormous that Union 76 gas stations began distributing posters of him. “I kept pushing my father to get gas there so I could get more pictures,” Irwin said.

Flint S. “Scotty” Schulhofer spent almost all of his 80 years on this earth around horses and racetracks, but in a sense he was much like a fine wine.

Born as the son of a horse owner/riding academy operator, he went to work at the racetrack as a 17-year-old youth. Yet when he approached his 60s – at a time when most men would look to slow down and eye retirement – he enjoyed his greatest run of sustained success and assembled a stable that rivaled any in the sport.