There, Saunders rode for prominent owners such as Wheatley Stable, Hal Price Headley, and William Woodward.

He won the 1934 Rochambeau Handicap at Narragansett Park aboard Woodward's Belair Stud colt Faireno, who was trained by "Sunny Jim" Fitzsimmons.

Weight problems interrupted his career, as did the outbreak of World War II, when he joined the United States Army and served overseas in the Pacific Theater.

During his four years in the military, a bout of malaria, contracted while overseas, resulted in considerable weight loss that allowed him to resume his career in racing once the war ended.

He and a friend, Walter Schaeffer, went out on the town in Louisville, Kentucky, where they met two women at a bar and the foursome proceeded to carouse well into the night.

While driving on a dark road, one of the women, Evelyn Sliwinski, vomited in the car and Saunders made her leave the vehicle.

Because there was also an allegation that Philip Scholtz, one of the teens who found the body, had told witnesses he thought he had struck Sliwinski, there was sufficient reasonable doubt raised and Schaeffer was acquitted.