Issue link: http://nytbreeders.epubxp.com/i/471532
32 New York Breeder | nytbreeders.org | March 2015 Al Fried's years in the business go well beyond Affirmed Success ADAM COGLIANESE/NYRA PHOTOS Familiar sighting: Al Fried in a NYRA winner's circle GROWING UP ON LONG Island, Albert Fried Jr. started riding horses, he said, when he was about 10 years old, in the early 1940s. A talented horseman even at that age, within a few years he was given an assignment that, if a little hyperbole can be forgiven, might well have changed the course of racing history. "I was friendly with a girl who rode at the stables with me," he recalled, a sly de - light in his voice, "and her father, a man called Sidney Schupper, thought he'd like to buy a horse." The way Fried tells it, the inexperienced Schupper, who owned a trucking compa - ny, went to a local Thoroughbred auction and purchased a pretty much sight-unseen flly for $2,000. By Discovery, a top horse in 1935, she was given the name Miss Disco and sent to the stable at which Fried rode to be broken for racing. "They told me, 'Yeah, you know how to do it; break her in,' " Fried reminisced. She would go on to be a multiple stakes winner, her victories including the 1947 Test Stakes at Saratoga, but it was her post-racing career, after she had been sold to Success Story B Y T E R E S A G E N A R O