Former trainer John Salzman, Sr., passes
Conditioned Hall of Famer Xtra Heat
Frank Vespe
September 28, 2026
John Salzman, Sr., who trained a bargain-basement daughter of Dixieland Heat named Xtra Heat to a Hall of Fame career, has died, the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association said. He was 81.
Salzman won 828 races in a career that began in 1978, generating purse earnings of more than $16 million. He picked up his first win in 1979 – his runners made just two starts in ’78 – and his final one on April 13, 2025 when Happy Hour Joker won a maiden claimer.
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Salzman won a career-high 57 races in 1992 and had his highest seasonal earnings in 2001, when his runners won 42 times and earned nearly $1.7 million. In his career, he won 14 graded stakes.
Eleven of those, including his lone Grade 1 triumph, came courtesy of Xtra Heat, whom Salzman had purchased for just $5,000 at the 2000 Fasig-Tipton two-year-old sale in Timonium.
“When you go to that sale, you want to buy a useful horse,” Salzman said in 2015.
He did that and far, far more. Racing for most of her career for Salzman himself, Kenny Taylor, and Harry Deitchman, Xtra Heat made her debut six or so weeks after that purchase in a $25,000 maiden claimer, winning that.
She never again competed outside of stakes company, running in 34 consecutive stakes.
At two she won her first five starts at Laurel, Delaware, and then-Philadelphia Park before trying graded company in the Grade 2 Astarita at Belmont Park. There, she held off favored Gold Mover to win by a neck for the first of her 11 graded wins.
The following year she was even better, winning nine of 13 starts while never finishing worse than third. She won four graded stakes that year, including the Grade 1 Prioress. In that fall’s Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Sprint, facing the boys, she threw down torrid fractions and turned aside pace rival Caller One before Squirtle Squirt parlayed a perfect trip into a narrow victory.
“She ran her eyeballs out,” Salzman said. “And Squirtle Squirt had a dream trip.”
She won that year’s Eclipse Award as champion three-year-old filly, and in her career, Xtra Heat won 26 of 35 starts and earned nearly $2.4 million. In 2015 she was elected to the national racing Hall of Fame.
“She was a good story from the ground up,” Salzman said.
“John Salzman is as good as they get when it comes to training babies,” Kenny Taylor said. “For spending a little bit of money, to get as many wins as he gets and how many horses he gets to the racetrack: a lot of people don’t understand, a lot of horses don’t even get to the racetrack, and his percentage of getting horses to the racetrack is much better than others. John just trained [Xtra Heat] as well as anybody can train a horse and put her in the right spots.”
Salzman’s sons John, Jr. and Tim both followed their father into the Thoroughbred industry. John, a trainer, is based at Laurel Park. Tim was also a trainer but passed away this past February at age 54 after battling cancer.
“It is with a sad heart I have to say Maryland racing has lost one of the truest horsemen I ever knew,” John Salzman Jr. said, according to the MTHA. “My father passed away today at noon—post time for the first race. You will be truly missed. Rest in peace, dad.”
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