"In a New York Minute, Everything can Change" - Don Henley

"A horse's value can totally change with a single winning race or a single bad step" - Robb Levinsky

This morning I received an email from one of our co-owners asking if one of his horses who was part of an entry in a two year old maiden race at Monmouth Park would be running. Exactly three minutes after sending him an email saying "yes, both horses are running" I received a call from our trainer saying his horse had strained his knee and would need a few weeks off at the farm. Fortunately this injury was nothing serious or career ending in the least, all that was needed was a little time for a nice two year old to mature, but the experience serves as a valuable “teachable moment”. Thoroughbred racing is a wonderful exciting game like nothing else, but it's also a difficult and challanging business that involves 1100 pound live animals standing on four legs thinner than ours which requires a great deal of patiance and perserverance. People frequently ask for statements of ‘values’ on their horses which from my personal perspective mean little or nothing because a horse can win a race by 10 lengths and you can have a cash offer of $250,000 for him and the next day come out of the stall lame and be retired and worth nothing. About 20 years ago in California we claimed a horse at Golden Gate Fields that won in a cakewalk and almost broke the track record. We won a three way shake for him and on the way back to the barn people were asking if we wanted to sell him. By the time he cooled out he was dead lame. Turns out he had broken the coffin bone in his foot during the race. He had so much talent we gave him over a year off trying to get him back to the races but eventually he had to be retired and was a total loss. On the other side there is Arrogate, who everyone knows by now won the Travers last Saturday with a freakish performance that I was privilaged to view in person from a front row box seat at Saratoga. He was clearly a talented, well-bred horse going into the race, but as a two time allowance winner of $114,000 when he entered the starting gate he was worth a tiny fraction of his value after winning the Travers by 13+ lengths in track record time. Those are obviously two extreme examples, but they show why this is not a business that lends itself to standard balance sheets and value metrics. Much as the many smart financial industry people who gravitate to thoroughbred racing try to treat this like investing in stocks or real estate or business start-ups, it just doesn’t work that way.

It's fair to say that every new owner with a barn full of promising young horses pretty quickly finds themsleves saying “wow, so many of these two year olds seem to come up with issues and need time off”. Right you are! Remember, statistically about 25% of all horses never make even a single start and and about 40% never win a single race. (As a side note we are proud to say that 100% of the horses Kenwood Racing has purchased at public auction over the last 6 years have started and nearly 90% are winners). Breeding the best mares to the best sires does not alter the overall stats nearly as much as people think. In the August 27, 2016 issue of The Blood-Horse the leading sire in North America is Tapit, who stands for a $300,000 stud fee. Through August 21, 2016 Tapit has had 254 runners, 106 winners, 16 stakes winners, 11 graded stakes winners, and 2 Grade One stakes winners. In other words, almost 60% of all his runners have yet to win a single race this year and less than 1% (2 out of 254) have won a grade one stake race. Tapit is truly an exceptional sire as his 11 graded stakes winners to date in 2016 will attest, but just as with human athletes, many horses just don’t make it as high-performance runners and almost all need time off at various points to recover from injuries and/or mental - physical wear & tear.

It’s NOT impossible to succeed in this business. IF you don’t overpay at the sales and do the right thing by the horse you can make real money with a stakes-quality runner and many of the decent claiming and allowance horses you buy will pay their way too, but this is not a game for little boys (or girls) in short pants. Our co-owner program makes it affordable, a modest one-time payment is all our owners ever risk, but if horses getting hurt, needing time off, being retired, and some being total losses are more than you can handle you are absolutely in the wrong business! This might not exactly be a good ‘sales pitch’ for owning racehorses but we prefer to give people the cold shower of truth rather than the warm bath of lies most often used to sell people something under false circumstances.