Andrea Phipps, the matriarch of the Phipps Stable and co-owner and breeder of Golden Tempo, died Tuesday in New York City after a short illness. She was surrounded by her children when she died, leaving behind a family that had long been part of one of racing's most familiar names.
Golden Tempo is not just any horse in that family story. The colt won the 2026 Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes, making his name part of the record that now sits alongside Phipps' own. The loss is immediate because it comes at the moment readers are most likely to be searching for the woman tied to that horse's rise and to the stable that helped shape it.
Phipps, a native of Oneonta, NY, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania before pursuing work as a registered nurse. Those details mattered in a life that moved between public racing success and private service, and they help explain why her family remembered her as more than a name on a sale pedigree. Her husband, Ogden Mills Phipps, died April 6, 2016.
What the family has not spelled out is the exact reach of her hand in Golden Tempo's racing career beyond the title of co-owner and breeder. That gap matters because the horse's victories have put the Phipps name back in the center of the sport, including the kind of run that had already drawn attention when Golden Tempo was being mapped toward the Belmont Stakes and the Kentucky Derby. The family said a private celebration of Phipps' life will be held later, and asked that donations replace flowers to Let's Win Pancreatic Cancer or The Jockey Club Safety Net Foundation.
She is survived by six children, 24 grandchildren and two great grandchildren. For a family that has spent decades inside the sport, the next public moment will be a private one, and the larger question is how the Phipps Stable moves forward without the woman who anchored it.
