Ryan Exline and Justin Border

Ryan Exline will never forget the feeling after he bought his first horse at the 2013 Ocala March Two-Year-Olds in Training Sale for himself, his dad and three friends who had decided to take a shot and buy their first Thoroughbred. “I remember sweating profusely in an Uber heading to the airport,” he said. There was a good reason. The group had agreed to budget $50,000. On the advice of bloodstock agent Marette Farrell, Exline spent $100,000 to purchase Sheza Smoke Show, who had worked a furlong in :10 flat.

“I called the others and said, `Congratulations, we bought a horse. We spent a little more than we wanted,’” Exline said. “We gave them the option of going in or not. Every single person went in.” 

Justin Border was one of the friends he called. “I’m following along the sales online. Obviously, it was a shock. I was fine, once I got up from falling down on the floor,” he laughed. “We were just two guys getting into this crazy game.” 

They’re two guys who are 50-50 partners in Exline Border Racing, which did just fine with Sheza Smoke Show. “Thankfully, she went on to win a Gr1 at Santa Anita,” Exline said. “She earned $150,000 racing. And we sold her for over $200,000 at a broodmare sale. We had to retire her a little early because of injuries.”

Exline, 38, is a senior living management administrator who was born in Oklahoma, moved to Indianapolis with his family when he was three, and ultimately moved to San Diego in 2006. He’d watched the Kentucky Derby on TV but never attended a racetrack.

That changed when some high school friends who had moved from Indiana to San Diego decided to go to the track—Del Mar—near Exline’s condo. “I’d never been before,” he said. “We all went. It seemed like we couldn’t lose a race. I said, `Wow, it’s an easy way to make money.’”

He quickly learned that bettors can lose too, but his fascination with the sport had taken root. “I started researching it and studying it,” he said. “One day, I decided I wanted to own a horse. How do you do that? I needed to surround myself with people who are smarter than me. I got referred by a friend to Marette.”

Border, a 45-year-old occupational therapist from Northern California, had been raised around horses in Brentwood, a small town near San Francisco. He learned to ride at the age of five on a Quarter Horse named Red Bert Bailey. Unfortunately, the horse died when Border was seven. “It was a life lesson for a little kid, but it certainly didn’t put me off loving horses and wanting to take care of them,” he said.

He met Exline through work at a senior rehab facility in San Diego. “Immediately, I saw he had a lot of Indianapolis Colts paraphernalia, so I knew he was into sports,” Border said. “A big Colts fan, he had gone to the Super Bowl. We got talking about sports then about work. We became fast friends from there.”

Now they’re partners. And, after purchasing their first Thoroughbred, they needed a trainer. “We knew we needed a trainer who would have patience with us,” Border said. “Peter Eurton was highly recommended by another trainer. I said, `I think we have our guy.’ Ryan took the lead on reaching out to Peter. He called him and said, `Peter you don’t know us, but we have a horse, and we want to go into your barn.’ He saw the video from the sale, looked up the page in the catalog and said, `That’s a pretty nice filly.’”

Since then, Exline Border Racing has mostly hit home runs. After spending $100,000 to buy Bayonet—a Colonel John filly who didn’t make money on the track and became a broodmare—they campaigned the hard-hitter Giant Expectations, a winner of four of 23 starts including a pair of Gr2 stakes. He will race as a seven-year-old this year. “He’s been a special horse for us,” Exline said.

So was their brilliant 2016 Two-Year-Old Filly Champion Filly Champagne Room, who won the 2016 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Filly at 33-1; and Storm the Court, a two-year-old they purchased at Ocala in April 2019, for $60,000 who gave them their second Breeders’ Cup victory in the 2019 Juvenile.

“It’s been the stuff of dreams,” Border said. “Then again, it’s the result of a lot of hard work and a lot of great people helping us—a trainer like Peter and an agent like Marette. It’s a reflection of their talent and their expertise, and that the horse always comes first. We’re very humbled by the success we’ve had in such a short time.”

Before Storm the Court became “the stuff of dreams,” Exline, Border and their other partners on the horse, Dan Hudock, Susie Wilson and David Bernsen, had to survive a frightful moment in the Gr1 Del Mar Futurity on Sept. 2. Just a few steps out of the gate, Storm the Court was knocked sideways by Eight Rings when he ducked inside. Both horses lost their jockey, Flavien Prat and Drayden Van Dyke.

“We had the rail,” Border said. “We were happy with the break. We felt fine. Then all of a sudden, here comes Eight Rings looking like he was turning to go into the infield. We see our jockey went down. Storm was running loose on the track. With a two-year-old, that’s just a nightmare. We were looking back to see if the jockey was okay. We were looking at our horse. An outrider finally caught him on the turn. We walked on the track—a really upsetting moment at least. Flavien got up. The horse came off the track okay, not hurt, not lame.”

In his first race back, Storm the Court finished third by 8 ¼ lengths to Eight Rings in the Gr1 American Pharoah Stakes Sept. 27. Then Storm the Court won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile wire-to-wire by a neck at odds of 45-1. “Maybe two steps before they hit the finish line, all the blood left my body,” Border said. “There was this rush, knowing he had done it. Everybody exploded. Couldn’t find enough people to hug.”

He knows which horse to hug. “We love our boy,” he said.

Asked how he can possibly not dream about the 2020 Kentucky Derby, Border said, “It’s impossible.”