David Romanik (Argos)
Thirty-six years have given David Romanik a healthy perspective on racing a horse in the Breeders’ Cup. In 1989, his three-year-old colt Caltech finished fifth in the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Turf at Gulfstream Park, where Romanick served as an attorney and was once track president briefly in 2000.
“It’s been 36 years and it’s not that I haven’t been nominating horses for the Breeders’ Cup,” Romanik said. “I’ve come to appreciate how great a horse Caltech was. I didn’t really appreciate how hard it is to get there, to the Breeders’ Cup. Horses that get there are in rarified air.”
Argos will take Romanik back to the Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar to contest the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf off his dramatic head victory under Flavien Prat in the one-mile Gr.1 Summer Stakes at Woodbine. “Flavien is a European-type rider,” Romanik said. “They like to win at the wire and give you a heart attack.”
To make that afternoon even sweeter, just a little bit more than an hour after the Summer Stakes, Romanik’s Private Thoughts won a $53,700 allowance/optional $25,000 claimer by two lengths at Gulfstream Park.
Romanik is a racing lifer. It’s in his genes; his family history is tied to racing in South Florida: “Gulfstream Park re-opened in 1944, and my grandfather Benny was the comptroller and a stockholder in the beginning. Someone asked me how long I was involved in Gulfstream. I have a picture. I was five years old and I had a corncob pipe in my mouth in my grandfather’s office at Gulfstream Park. He was a horrible handicapper. He’d leave his picks by program number on his door every day. One day, people said, `Benny, you’re having a great day,’ and he hadn’t cashed a ticket. He found out he had left the prior day’s selections on the door and they hit eight of nine races. It’s racetrack lore.”
Romanik’s father, Leonard, was an attorney who graduated from the University of Miami Law School. “He was hired by a firm that was doing Gulfstream Park’s legal work at the time,” Romanik said. “He retired in 1981, and I took over.”
His father died on November 2nd, 2023, four days after a car crash which took the life of Romanik’s brother-in-law: “My dad was 97. He had a property in Maine he visited in the summer. They were driving back. They were driving through Maryland. He was with his sister and my brother-in-law. Some car going 100 miles an hour back-ended them. I lost my brother-in-law. He was in the front seat. He died instantaneously. My dad survived, but only for four days.”
Romanik, who will celebrate his 74th birthday a week after the Breeders’ Cup, was born in Miami Beach and lived in Hollywood most of his life. He attended Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Economics in 1973. He got his doctorate at the University of Florida with honors two years later. Romanik worked at Romanik Lavin Huss & Paoli in Hollywood specializing in Pari-Mutuel Gaming Law, Administrative Law and Real Estate Law and is still practicing.
He’s been living in Ocala since 2009: “I do a little bit of a law practice there. I used to joke that the only reason I go to work is to pay for my horses. I wanted to move up here because I really wanted to be more of a horseman than a lawyer.”
His first horse was Zero Coupon, who had been offered as a payment for a lawyer fee to one of his friends, Brad Beilly. He offered a third of the horse to Romanik. Zero Coupon won a maiden race at Gulfstream Park and then finished a distant third in a $25,000 stakes in 1987. “It got me in the game,” Romanik said.
Caltech gave Romanik and his partners, Beilly and Beilly’s father, quite a ride two years later. After finishing ninth and first in a pair of $25,000 claiming races, Caltech upped his game to a new level for trainer Eduardo Azpurua Jr. He won four straight: an allowance race and a $75,000 stakes at Calder, a $100,000 stakes at Belmont Park and the $750,000 International at Laurel Park by 1 ¾ lengths over the talented Yankee Affair, who had won the Grade 1 Man o’ War and Turf Classic.
The Breeders’ Cup Turf was next.
Sent off at 4-1 under Rene Douglas in the field of 14, Caltech broke first then ceded the lead to Ile de Chypre. Caltech stalked him in second the whole way, then took the lead at the top of the stretch. In deep stretch, he tired, finishing fifth, 4 ½ lengths behind Prized.
“The mile and a half was just a little beyond his compass,” Romanik said. “I just don’t think Caltech was bred to go a mile and a half against the best horses in the world.”
Caltech, raced only three times after the Breeders’ Cup Turf, finishing sixth, third and sixth, bowing a tendon and then re-bowing it. He recovered only to lose his rider during a workout: “The rider fell off him in the morning. He crashed into an outside fence and broke a leg and we had to put him down. I’m glad I wasn’t there that day. I didn’t go back to the track for a couple months. It was really just devastating.”
He recovered and now is involved with some 20 horses including partnerships. And he has his second Breeders’ Cup starter. “Winning never gets old,” Romanik said. “The fact that he won the Summer Stakes verified me still being in the game.”
He never left.