JIM BOND HAS BEEN TRAINING horses for 40 years. He’s won dozens of graded stakes races, including the Whitney Handicap, the Travers Stakes, the Metropolitan Handicap, and the Donn Handicap. But after his 3-year-old Rinaldi won the New York Stallion Stakes Spectacular Bid Division June 23 at Belmont Park, he declared, “This is the most beautiful day of my life.”

Bond wasn’t at Belmont Park to see the Posse gelding get his first win; he was in Saratoga Springs, attending the wedding of his son Ryan, who, along with Bond’s other son Kevin, works as an assistant trainer at the Bond barn.

“We were a little behind schedule at the ceremony,” said Bond, still jubilant a day after the race and the wedding. “I said to the priest, ‘With all due respect, I have a horse running at 5:18. Can we step this along?”

Continue reading at New York Breeder (p. 24)…

Rinaldi and Luis Saez. NYRA/Adam Coglianese photo”