Horse Trainer Sidney Watters Jr.; Known for Champion Slew o' Gold

Mr. Watters was the trainer of the 1983 champion Slew o' Gold, a 3-year-old sired by Seattle Slew with almost as much potential as Hoist the Flag. In 1984, Slew o' Gold won the Jockey Club Gold Cup, Woodward Stakes and the Wood Memorial Stakes.

He also managed to breed a few of his own mares to Hoist the Flag and sell the resulting foals. For almost a decade, the horse who might have been was a valuable broodmare sire until his premature death as a 12-year-old in 1980, after he was kicked by a mare. "He had very brittle bones," Small said.

Mr. Watters, who was inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in 2005, was a gentle man, his nephew said. "Racetracks are a pretty tough environment with everybody criticizing everybody else -- you know they're competing every day -- but nobody ever criticized him," Small said.

For many years, Mr. Watters lived year-round at New York's Belmont Park racetrack, in a bunkhouse between two barns. "He came back when all his old owners died off and faded away," his daughter, Nonie Watters, said. He spent the last years of his life at Dunmore Farm, near Monkton, Md., which has been in the Watters family for many years.

Small recalled how his uncle in recent years would stroll out to the pasture most days and his favorite horse, a large gray stallion named Big Diamond Jim, would come galloping to the fence from a half-mile away. "He loved all creatures -- horses, dogs, chickens, not just racehorses," Small said.

Mr. Watters's wife died in a riding accident in 1993.

Survivors, in addition to his daughter, of Leesburg, include a son, Eric Watters of Monkton.