Jeff Siegel, a popular racehorse handicapper for years in Southern California News Group papers, has died at age 74 following a battle with cancer.
His death Saturday morning was first reported by Eric Sondheimer, the Los Angeles Times sportswriter who was Siegel’s friend and a partner in horse ownership.
“Respected by all,” Sondheimer said of Siegel in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
Siegel parlayed his skill at assessing horses into winning major races as an owner and founder with Barry Irwin of Clover Racing Stable and Team Valor, most famously scoring upsets in the 1989 Santa Anita Handicap with Martial Law (at 50-1 odds) and 1989 Breeders’ Cup Turf with Prized (6-1).
Growing up in Los Angeles and attending Fairfax High, L.A. Valley College, Cal State Northridge and San Jose State, Siegel was a UCLA fan and became a fixture in recent decades at Bruins events, helping the sports-information office by recording postgame video interviews.
But he was known first as a horse handicapper, starting in the Los Angeles Daily News, Pasadena Star-News, Orange County Register, San Diego Union-Tribune and Los Angeles Times, co-founding the Handicapper’s Report newsletter and in recent years providing analysis on racetrack TV.
“(As for) many others on the West Coast, it was a privilege to know Jeff Siegel and learn from him,” Brad Free, the Daily Racing Form handicapper who started at the Star-News, wrote on X.
In a 2024 interview in SCNG papers, Siegel recounted studying radio and TV journalism in college and going to work at KLAC radio with plans to be a broadcast reporter. Sportscaster Jim Healy, knowing Siegel was a racing fan, had a different plan for him. Healy set Siegel up with a job in the Hollywood Park racetrack publicity department.
Siegel used his access to leading trainers to learn how to judge equine talent and anticipate improvement.
“I very much believe a horse is an athlete, the way they move, the way they run, the acceleration they give,” Siegel said in 2024. “I think that’s an edge I have over people who just think of horses as a graph on a piece of paper. It’s not a big edge, but it’s an edge that put me over the top.”
In an era when practically every Southern California newspaper had at least one handicapper and local track press boxes were full of egos, Siegel seemed to be one admired by all. His reputation went national when Andrew Beyer, the Washington, D.C., racing columnist and creator of Beyer speed figures, wrote in his 1993 book “Beyer on Speed” about a day Siegel suggested six horses for Beyer to bet on and all six came in. As a result, Beyer wrote, “I was happy to hail him as the World’s Greatest Handicapper.”
In 2024 and 2025, Siegel became morning-line oddsmaker at Del Mar and Santa Anita. Illness forced him to step aside from that role last winter.
More to come.