Thoroughbred Racing
The very wealthy Dr. Plesch shared Etti Plesch's passion for Thoroughbred horse racing, something that had been influenced by her maternal grandfather Alexander Baltazzi who won the 1876 edition of the Epsom Derby with Kisber. She and her husband began racing Thoroughbreds in 1954 and would win major races such as the 1959 Coronation Cup with Nagami and that year's Irish Oaks with Discorea. Their 1961 Epsom Derby winner Psidium was bred by Etti Plesch and raced by the couple. Following her husband's death in 1974, she continued to race horses and in 1970 won France's most prestigious race with Sassafras. In 1980, Etti Plesch became the only female to ever win the Epsom Derby twice when her horse Henbit won England's most prestigious race. As at the end of 2011, she remains the only double winner.
Among her other notable horses, Etti Plesch owned and raced Miswaki who was a Group 1 winner in France as well as a stakes race winner in the United States and who became an important sire of 97 stakes race winners and was the Leading broodmare sire in Great Britain & Ireland in 1999 and 2001.
The Plesches lived on the Avenue Foch in Paris, and at the Villa Leonina at Beaulieu-sur-Mer in the South of France, where he had a famous botanical garden.
After her husband's death in 1974, she took up partying and writing her memoirs, which were almost completed at the time of her death. They were edited by Hugo Vickers and published posthumously in 2007 as Horses and Husbands.
She died 28 April 2003 in Monte Carlo.
Read more about this topic: Etti Plesch
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