Who Was Peb? Pierre Bellocq, Racing's Great Cartoonist, Dies at 99

Who was Peb, the cartoonist of American racing?

Peb was the pen name of Pierre E. Bellocq, the French-born Peb cartoonist whose drawings ran in the Morning Telegraph and Daily Racing Form from 1955 until December 2008. He died on Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026, at Princeton Medical Center in New Jersey after a brief illness, at age 99 and 13 days before his 100th birthday.

Daily Racing Form, BloodHorse and a family statement released through the New York Racing Association all confirmed the news the same day. Services were still pending when those reports were published.

He is survived by his wife, three sons, a daughter, a stepdaughter, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, according to Daily Racing Form. One son, Remi Bellocq, draws racing cartoons too and said in the family statement that he hopes to carry on the tradition.

If you never held a paper copy of the Form, here is the short version. For 53 years, Peb was the person who made a serious, numbers-heavy sport laugh at itself.

From a French racing family to Daily Racing Form

Pierre Bellocq was born on Nov. 25, 1926, in Bedenac, France. Racing was the family trade: BloodHorse reports that his father was a jump jockey, his grandfather a trainer and his great-grandfather a breeder.

As a young man he sketched horses and jockeys at the training center of Maisons-Laffitte, near Paris, where his father worked. At 19, a French racing paper printed his cartoon of a jockey signed with three letters: Peb.

The Keeneland Library says the short signature was a nod to Sem, a famous French caricaturist he admired.

The road to America

• 1954: The owner of Laurel Race Course in Maryland hired him to create artwork, including a program cover, for the Washington, D.C. International.
• 1955: He moved to the United States. His first cartoon for the Morning Telegraph, the Form's sister paper, ran on April 1, timed to opening day at Jamaica Racetrack in New York.
• 1958 to 1961: He also drew for Sports Illustrated.
• 1960 to 1972: He drew political cartoons for The Philadelphia Inquirer. When he started, Walter Annenberg owned both the Inquirer and the Form; the Inquirer passed to Knight Newspapers on Jan. 1, 1970.
• 1961: He painted his first racetrack mural, at Aqueduct.
• December 2008: His regular run at the Form ended after 53 years.

After 2008 he kept drawing, contributing cartoons to Thoroughbred Daily News. He made his home in Princeton, New Jersey.

Peb also founded the Amateur Riders' Club of America, which organized races for amateur riders at U.S. racetracks.

Peb's style: horses with human feelings

A Peb drawing is easy to spot. The horses have long, elastic faces and very human expressions, and the people are caricatures: a real person's features, stretched just enough to show who they are.

Daily Racing Form's obituary points to a few examples that explain the whole idea:

• After the 1975 match race in which the filly Ruffian was fatally injured, he drew her rival, Foolish Pleasure, looking sad and wearing a Ruffian pin.
• For the 2004 Belmont Stakes he drew Smarty Jones, the Philadelphia hero, as the movie boxer Rocky Balboa. BloodHorse says it was one of his own favorites.
• Trainer Bob Baffert came out cool and confident, trainer Jack Van Berg rough and gruff, and jockey Julie Krone as an imp.

His family's statement adds that he made 50 caricatures of Secretariat and his stablemate Riva Ridge, imagining the pair's friendship in almost human terms.

That was his gift. A racehorse in the glossary sense is a set of past performances; in a Peb cartoon it is a character with opinions.

People have been drawing horses to say something about themselves for a very long time, as our guide to horses in cave art shows. Peb did it on a daily deadline.

Awards and books

Daily Racing Form lists five books: Peb's Equine Comedy (his first, from 1957), Peb 71, Peb at Keeneland, Forty Years of Peb and Peb: The Art of Humor. Used copies are the realistic way to find them today.

Where to see Peb's work today

Peb painted long, crowded murals for racetracks, packed with recognizable faces. Some are easy to visit and some are not, so check before you plan a trip around one.

The Churchill Downs murals

The best-documented one is at the home of the Kentucky Derby. Churchill Downs says the 36-by-5-foot painting shows every jockey who won the first 130 Derbys, from 1875 to 2004, and that jockeys with more wins are drawn bigger.

In 2008 the track commissioned a second piece showing Derby-winning trainers. Peb updated it after the race for several years.

What happened to the Peb mural at Belmont Park?

This is the question many fans asked on Nov. 12. Peb's mural hung on the second floor of the old Belmont clubhouse, a building that was demolished in 2024 for the track's rebuild.

Daily Racing Form reported in April 2024 that the New York Racing Association preserved all the artwork before demolition, and named the Peb mural specifically. So it was saved.

What we could not confirm is where it is now. The rebuilt Belmont reopened for racing on Sept. 18, 2026, and the family's statement lists the Belmont mural among those the public can view. But we found no statement from the track that the mural is on view in the new building, so ask before you go looking for it. Our guide to the new Belmont Park and the 2027 Breeders' Cup covers the rebuild itself.

The Keeneland archive

The Keeneland Library in Lexington holds the Peb Collection: thousands of drawings and caricatures published from 1955 to 2009. Its online exhibit, The Artistry of Peb, sorts them into jockeys, features by decade, his Equine Comedy cartoons, Keeneland scenes and posters.

It is free and it is the easiest way for anyone, anywhere, to see how his line changed over five decades. To research the original drawings in person, the library asks you to book an appointment so staff can be on hand. If you visit the track, our Keeneland guide explains the grounds.

Other tracks named by BloodHorse and Keeneland as mural sites include Aqueduct, Oaklawn Park, the Meadowlands and the former Arlington Park. Oaklawn said on Nov. 12 that it displays many of his works on its property.

What to watch next

• Services. The family had not announced arrangements as of Nov. 12. Daily Racing Form and BloodHorse are the places to check.
• Tributes. Expect tracks and the National Museum of Racing, which honored him in 2020, to share more of his work in the coming days.
• The Belmont mural. Watch for word from the New York Racing Association on where the preserved painting will hang.
• Remi Bellocq's cartoons. The family tradition continues in racing publications.

How to look at a Peb cartoon

1. Find the horse's eyes first. The joke or the sadness usually lives there.
2. Look for the real people in the crowd: owners, trainers, jockeys and track characters of the day.
3. Check the date. Most cartoons answer a race or a news story from that week.
4. Read the small background details, which often carry a second joke.

Please enjoy his art through the official archives and the publications that own it, not through unlicensed copies. And if you have a Peb memory, share it with other readers in our community.