James Spence

James Spence, a 73-year-old real estate developer and builder in Terre Haute, Ind., owns a company, James C. Spence & Associates, which specializes in multi-family developments. Spence is pretty good with equine families, too.

Most Thoroughbred owners don’t get to start a horse in a Grade I stakes, let alone win one. Even fewer win a Grade I stakes with a home-bred, but that’s exactly what Spence did with Aubby K., a daughter of Street Sense who captured the Humana Distaff at Churchill Downs. Earlier this year, she won the Grade II Inside Information Stakes at Gulfstream Park in her four-year-old debut

Aubby K.’s dam is Spence’s graded stakes winner Lilly Capote, who has also produced Grade II stakes-placed Mythical Pegasus and Flying Pegasus, as well as America’s Storm by Storm Cat who sold for $3.6 million at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale. Lilly Capote produced five winners from six foals.  

Spence’s other top horses include $200,000-plus earner Forty Won and Forty Dolls, a home-bred who won the Louisiana Futurity.