Owner-Breeder Brian Daniel Burns has passed at the age of 78 following a brief battle with cancer.Larger than life with an entrepreneurial spirit, Burns launched his own company in 1980, underwriting disability insurance for athletes. The high-profile company worked with major sports leagues like the NFL and the MLB and their players. He eventually sold the company in 2007.Burns's first foray into the horse racing game was an instant and spectacular success.He and his father Jimmy–“The name's Jimmy,” he would say if addressed by the formal Mr. Burns–had long aspired to purchase a racehorse together. But Jimmy died before that became a reality.At the March 1991 Ocala Breeders' Sale of Two-Year-Olds in Training, Burns bought a colt for a song and called him after his father.The Name's Jimmy won the 1992 GIII Will Rogers Handicap and GII American Derby, in the process minting a long and successful relationship with the sport for his owner, who went under the Mount Joy Stables moniker. At his side through most of that run was Crestwood Farm, where Burns boarded his mares for decades.Three years later at the Keeneland September Yearling sale, Burns bought a Known Fact filly with crooked legs who paddled when she walked. He named her Twin Propellers. She won the 1996 Thelma Stakes. But she was an even better broodmare.Twin Propellers' French Deputy filly Air France produced two graded stakes winners. Overdriven (Tale of the Cat) won the 2011 Sanford Stakes for trainer Todd Pletcher and owner Mike Repole.Burns held onto Smooth Air (Smooth Jazz), who finished second in the 2008 GI Florida Derby. After running down the field in that year's Kentucky Derby, Smooth Air won the GII Ohio Derby and the following year's GII Gulfstream Park Handicap for trainer Bennie Stutts Jr.The Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association (TOBA) named Burns their member of the month in March of 2021. In an accompanying profile, Burns discussed his approach to owning and breeding.“We got in the game to breed to sell to pay for the racing, to be honest,” he said, “and if they didn't get the price that we wanted, we'd race the horses. And in fact, one horse, Predawn Raid, nobody would give me a thousand for him and he won the [2003] Fred [W.] Hooper [Handicap], which was a grade three.”Burns added: “I firmly believe it's the female families that make racehorses. And when you're lucky enough…if it's a boy, it'd go in the ring; colts, I'd sell. But the girls from the family, they stay with me now.”One of the fillies that stayed was Mount Joy homebred Super Phoebe (Malabar Gold), another out of Air France.In 2015, Super Phoebe produced a filly by Crestwood Farm stallion Get Stormy named Got Stormy, who would go on to become a mare of rare brilliance and durability for trainer Mark Casse.During a career that encompassed $2,096,553 in earnings, Got Stormy won the GI Fourstardave Handicap at Saratoga in 2019 and 2021, the GI Matriarch Stakes at Del Mar in 2019, and finished second in the 2019 GI Breeders' Cup Mile.An active outdoorsman, Burns spent much of his later years either fishing in the waters of Cabo San Lucas or golfing and clay shooting in the mountains of Montana. He carried on riding until a ripe age.The 2021 TOBA profile recounted a riding incident the year prior, when Burns fractured 11 ribs, punctured a lung, and went into septic shock. For two hours, Burns was apparently pronounced dead.“The doctors said they'd done everything they could,” he recalled, in the TOBA profile. “They were calling Jan, my wife, to turn the machine off.”Quite suddenly, however, Burns's vitals sprung back to life. He was home nine days later.According to an online obituary, a visitation will be held on Wednesday, April 29th, 11:00 AM until the memorial mass starting at 12:00 PM – St. Patrick Church (New) – 928 W Everett Road, Lake Forest, IL 60045.In lieu of flowers, the obit notes, please consider making a donation in Burns's name to one of his favorite charities: Old Friends Equine for Retired Thoroughbreds, the Folded Flag Foundation, St. Judes Childrens Hospital, or The Billfish Foundation.The post Owner/Breeder Brian Burns Passes Aged 78 appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.