Roger Stein’s hulking presence around the racetrack made him easy to recognize, be it in early years as a harness racing trainer or later when he switched to thoroughbreds. It was his larger-than-life personality, which he brought to radio listeners every Saturday and Sunday morning for almost three decades, that made him a horse racing institution in Southern California. He died Friday at 65.
Stein went off the air on June 25 of last year, his fight with diabetes, neuropathy and other medical issues too much for him to keep going. He had been in poor health for more than a decade and was unable to walk the last three years.
On Friday morning, after requesting last week to be taken off all life-prolonging treatments and being sent home, he died surrounded by family, according to his son, Sam Stein.
“When he was in the hospital he didn’t like the food, so he always brought a portable refrigerator and we would have to go out and buy him his meals,” said Barry Shapiro, a longtime friend and horse owner. “Just recently, he wanted a bigger TV, so he sent me out to buy a 36-inch TV for his room. We installed it and there was some trouble with the sound, so he had operations fix it. Everyone knew who he was.”
Stein started as a harness racing trainer in 1977 and found great success, winning 17 consecutive trainer titles, mostly at Hollywood Park and Los Alamitos.
“It was incredible that he would have more wins as a trainer than the leading drivers, who would go many times a night,” Sam Stein said.
In 1987, he moved to thoroughbreds and started 4,179 horses with 470 winners over his career. His horses won more than $14 million in purses.

“He won a lot of races,” said Bob Baffert, a friend and Hall of Fame trainer. “Those harness trainers are pretty good horsemen. He was smart and a good handicapper. He was pretty sharp, even beat me a few times.”
Through those years, Stein used his personality and knowledge of horses to recruit owners, all with the idea that it would be an adventure.
“I won 150 races with [trainer] Mike Mitchell, but I never had more fun than with Roger,” Shapiro said. “He would take chances, like buying a horse for $40,000 and then entering him into a stakes race. And sometimes it would work out.”
Stein was seemingly successful at whatever he did.
One of his biggest victories came against the California Horse Racing Board in 1988, when one of his horses tested positive for cocaine. The stewards, while saying he was being charged only because he was the trainer of record, suspended him for six months and fined him $2,000.
He fought the punishment for two years and eventually won, even though he believed it tarnished his reputation.
No doubt, Roger Stein liked a challenge.
“I remember going to the Wells Fargo Bank,” Sam Stein recalled. “He had a slip of paper from Bank of America offering a better interest rate. He says he wanted Wells Fargo to match it. They say, ‘Roger, we can’t do that.’