Nick Cosato - Slam Dunk Racing

Nick Cosato’s unique journey through Thoroughbred racing has led him to two different partnerships with two different trainers who produced two Gr. 1 stakes victories. He earned those accomplishments.

“I’m pretty passionate about the game,” Cosato said. “You have to be. Owning horses is difficult. Running a partnership is difficult. I’ve got more than skin in the game. I’ve got bone marrow in it. I’m all in.”

Now 54, Cosato lives in Sierra Madre, Calif., two miles from Santa Anita. He was born in nearby San Gabriel. “I was pretty much born on the apron of Santa Anita,” he said. “Every Sunday, I was there with my father—like clockwork.”

He grew up idolizing Bill Shoemaker. “I was obsessed with Shoemaker,” he said. “I wanted to be a jockey, and he was the best. Everything he wanted to do, I wanted to do. My parents would have been all right with that.”

Unfortunately, growth re-routed his dream. He guesses he was 10 or 11 when he realized he was too big to become a jockey: “I said, `This isn’t going to happen.’” He would grow to be 5’7” and 170 pounds.

He went to college at California Poly Pomona, majoring in animal science, while he worked in a restaurant, umpired baseball games and officiated basketball games. “I’m a sports junkie,” he said.

The sport he loved the most was horse racing. “I would always watch jockey agents from my fascination with Shoemaker,” he said. “I thought it was a very interesting job—a pretty cool job. I was fascinated with it.”

After college, an opportunity came his way. “I knew a jockey agent, Tony Strangio, who represented an apprentice jockey, Christine Davenport,” Cosato said. “She was the first jockey he ever had. He was going to open a business. He asked me if I’d take her book. I thought it was a perfect opportunity.”

He entered his new profession with an unrealistic outlook. “I thought this was going to be easy,” he said. “I found out it wasn’t as easy as I thought. I didn’t expect to start with Eddie Arcaro, but it was difficult getting her mounts. She didn’t have a lot of business. She was struggling.”

Cosato struggled, too. “You pay your dues,” he said. “I paid, and then some.”

He survived those difficult early years to carve out a 21-year career as a jockey agent, handling Patrick Valenzuela three different times, Corey Nakatani, Garret Gomez, Victor Espinoza, Michael Baze and Aaron Gryder.

Then he walked away to invest in a medical research business in 2010. “I didn’t work on the racetrack, but it never left my heart,” he said. “About a year later, I thought I’d want to dabble owning some horses. I partnered up with a couple other people. I thought, I’m going to start this little partnership. I liked college basketball, so I named it Slam Dunk Racing. I’d make it a fun thing. Our trainer was Peter Eurton. It rapidly began growing. We currently have 18 partners for 75 horses.”

He hit a home run when he reached out to Ron Moquet, who was training Whitmore. “I knew Ron a bit from being a jockey agent,” Cosato said. “Whitmore won at first asking.”

Cosato wanted in. Moquet asked his partners, and they declined not to sell any interest in Whitmore—a wise decision considering he would win the 2020 Breeders’ Cup Sprint and be named Eclipse Champion Sprinter. But Cosato had another idea after he was turned down as a co-owner. “I called Ron back and I said, `I want to buy his mom.’ I called the owner. At first, he said no. Two weeks later, he called me back and sold her to me. That was my foray into buying mares.”

He’s prospered ever since. Asked if being a former jockey agent gives him an edge, Cosato said, “I think it does. My whole life has been around horse racing. I have a decent amount of knowledge from the game. I majored in animal science. I know about things like feeding. I think the most important thing is placing horses. Trainers often lean on jockey agents for upcoming races.”

Cosato said that Slam Dunk Racing owns all of its breeding stock itself. “I would say 35 to 40 percent of my race horses are owned by Slam Dunk solely,” he said.

The others are in partnerships. Slam Dunk Racing’s partners on Drain the Clock (trained by Saffie Joseph) are Sal Kumin, Marc Lore and Michael Nentwig. Slam Dunk Racing’s partners on Maxim Rate (trained by Simon Callaghan) are Doug Branham and Stable Currency.

In the span of six days, Maxim Rate won the Gr. 1 Gamely Stakes at Santa Anita on May 31; and Drain the Clock captured the Gr. 1 Woody Stephens Stakes at Belmont Park on the Belmont Stakes undercard on June 6.

Two Gr. 1 winners in a week? Even Bill Shoemaker would have been impressed with that.