When Kenwood's Racing's Shake It Up Baby made his three year old debut on Janaury 15th at Gulfstream Park, he ran in a race which offered a perfect ‘teachable moment’ about how this game really works. In his race were two runners trained byTodd Pletcher for Starlight Racing. Healy's Hope by top sire Ghostzapper cost $240,000 as a yearling, while Klatter by Flatter cost $200,000 as a yearling. Both were making their debuts here, for $32,000 claiming. Understandably most owners, particularly those new to the game, will find it hard to fathom how someone can pay $240,000 for a horse, invest at least $75,000 more in training costs over the next two years, and offer it for sale for just $32,000 before it’s even had a shot to run a single race. The bottom line is these horses were working very slowly and obviously had demonstrated limited talent after months of training. At least 85% of the time (more like 90%+ actually), even if you pay hundreds of thousands of dollars at a premier sale for a really well-bred, good-looking individual what you end up with is a slow horse. Top owners and trainers run them where they have a shot to compete, even if it’s for a fraction of what they paid. The horse doesn’t know what you paid for him; if they are slow and you run them over their heads in a non-claiming race you almost always end up the track, start the horse off on the wrong hoof, and it may never recover from that. Very tough for most people to wrap their heads around how this business works, especially in terms of claiming, but like it or not this is reality. That’s why we don’t overpay at sales AND run horses where they belong, just as these smart and highly successful owners did here. Buying an unraced yearling or two year old is nothing like investing in stocks or bonds or real estate, it’s like trying to find a 14 year old high school kid who is going to make it to the NBA or NFL. Thousands will try and a few dozen will actually make it to the big leagues.