Gifford was a major owner of Thoroughbred racehorses and in 1925, with two different horses, he won two of the most prestigious races in the United States, the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes.
In the mid-1910s, William Midgley trained for Cochran then in the early 1920s Edward Evans and later former star jockey Frank Keogh.
At the time, the son of the U.S. Hall of Fame horse Whisk Broom was considered one of the best two-year-olds in the United States but he failed to perform beyond that age level.
Duke, a future U.S. Hall of Fame inductee had been a champion trainer in France where he had worked since 1888, notably for the Haras du Quesnay racing stable of American Willie K. Vanderbilt, a friend of Gifford Cochran.
Their son, Gifford Cochran, Jr., was an artist who was married to actress/author Dorothy Fletcher who in the 1930s wrote novels under the pseudonym, Lady Mary Cameron.