Founding Member / Co-Owner

The Thoroughbred industry has always been a family affair for Belladonna Racing’s co-founder, Paul Manganaro. His first exposure to the “Sport of Kings” was in the early 1970s at which time he started to enjoy weekly barn visits on the backstretch and race days on the New England circuit with his father, grandfather, and uncles.

After a successful decade of competing in New England, the family moved its racing entity to the New York circuit and ventured into the breeding side of the Thoroughbred industry when they retired a filly, Stunning Native, to Spendthrift Farm in Lexington, Kentucky.

In 1986, Paul and his University of Massachusetts college football teammate Ned Toffey (current GM at Spendthrift Farm) spent the summer in Kentucky. In the mornings, Paul would attend an English class at the University of Kentucky, and he and Ned would spend the afternoons visiting as many farms as they could. This provided an opportunity to visit many of the top breeding operations and inspect some of the best stallions of that period, including Mr. Prospector, Danzig, Secretariat, Halo, Riverman, Alleged, etc.

Shortly after graduating from U-Mass in 1987, Paul started Manganaro Bloodstock, Inc. which has continued to be a successful business and remains heavily involved in racing, breeding, and stallion share ownership. Paul has developed an impeccable reputation within the industry and is known for his integrity and loyalty.

Paul met David Ingordo through their work relationship with Lane’s End Farm. In 2018, after many of Paul’s friends and family members had expressed a desire to get involved in Thoroughbred racing, Paul met with David and they outlined a philosophy of what a quality racing partnership should look like.

Paul and David shared many of the same values when it came to conducting business and their relationships with others. Their vision for a successful racing partnership included providing an opportunity that would allow members to compete at the highest level of the sport in a structure that was investor-friendly and provided full access and transparency to all its members. It was also important to establish a family-like atmosphere amongst our partners, and this could only be maintained by keeping the partnership numbers smaller than industry norm and by installing an exceptionally good system of communication as well as treating everyone with the same level of respect.

Paul’s decades of experience in the many facets of the Thoroughbred business, including previous involvement in other racing partnerships, was invaluable to the inception of Belladonna in early 2019.

Paul resides in Massachusetts with his wife, Barbara, and their three children, John, Paul, and Amy, all of whom enjoy being around the beautiful equine athletes.