Richard Santulli

Richard Santulli, a native of Brooklyn, New York, earned his bachelor and master’s degrees in applied mathematics and a master’s degree in operations research at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. Santulli worked as an investment banker, then as a vice president with Goldman Sachs & Co. from 1969-1980. Four years later, he purchased Executive Jet in 1984. He created NetJets Inc., which offered a new concept of fractional jet ownership and revolutionized the private and corporate business jet market. He sold the company to Berkshire Hathaway for $750 million in 1998, but stayed on as CEO through August, 2009.

Santulli got involved in racing in the early ’80s. With George Prussin, David Orlinsky, and the late Jules Fink as partners, Santulli formed Jayeff B Stable, whose top horses include 1989 champion sprint Safely Kept, who won the 1990 Breeders’ Cup Sprint, and 1998 champion filly Banshee Breeze (owned in partnership with her breeder James B. Tafel). Santulli serves as the managing general partner of Jayeff B.

A member of the Jockey Club since 2002, he has served on the Board of Directors of the Breeders’ Cup and the New York Racing Association.

Jay Em Ess Stable

Jay Em Ess Stables, which was the leading owner at both the 2007 spring/summer meet at Hollywood Park and at the 2009 Del Mar meet, was created from the first letter of the three owners’ first names, Jan and Mace Siegel and their daughter Samantha. Jan died in 2002, and Mace passed away nine years later, leaving 49-year-old Samantha to head the stables. Jay Em Ess purchased its first horse at the 1964 Timonium Sale and named their filly Najecam, the backward spelling of Mace and Jan. Mace, a racing fan growing up in New York and New Jersey, met Jan on a blind date at Aqueduct in 1962. They married two months later. Mace founded Santa Monica-based Macerich Co., which develops, owns and manages regional shopping malls. He was a founding member and vice-president of the Thoroughbred Owners of California. Jan was a big band singer and named her daughter for her favorite Cole Porter song, “I Love You, Samantha.” Samantha served with the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders’ Association and the Gregson Foundation Board. She and her dad were honored by the Gregson Foundation in 2008. Jay Em Ess’ top horses include the 2004 champion two-year-old colt Declan’s Moon, millionaire Urbane and Rail Trip. The stable now has 80 horses in Kentucky and California.

Let's Go Stable & WinStar Farm LLC

Let’s Go Stable was founded in 2006 by 33-year-old Kevin Scatuorchio and his brother-in-law, Bryan Sullivan, who married Scatuorchio’s sister, Courtney. Scatuorchio became a fan through his dad, Jim, who has owned horses for more than 25 years. Jim campaigned multiple-graded stakes winner and million-dollar earner More Than Ready and 2007 Eclipse Turf Champion Older Male and Breeders’ Cup Turf winner English Channel. Jim is a partner in Let’s Go Stable. “I’ve been going to the racetrack with my dad since I was a little kid,” Kevin said. Sullivan was a trader for the Clinton Group until he decided to concentrate on Let’s Go Stable in 2007.

    The stable name came from a favorite expression of one of Kevin’s friends, Rob Petitti, who played in the NFL with the St. Louis Rams and is now an investor in the stable.

    Many of Let’s Go Stable’s investors are from the New York City metropolitan area, which is why the stable named a son of More Than Ready Verrazano—the name of the double-decker suspension bridge connecting Brooklyn and Staten Island. Let’s Go Stable bought Verrazano for $250,000 at the Keeneland September 2011 Yearling Sale and he won six of 13 starts, including the Grade 1 Wood Memorial and the Grade 1 Haskell Invitational, earning more than $1.8 million.

Sam-Son Farm

Sam-Son Farm in Ontario is Canadian horseracing royalty. Its origin traces back to Samuel, Son, & Co. Ltd., a steel and aluminum distribution family business founded in 1855 and operated since then by the Samuel and Balaz families. The late Ernie Samuel, whose great-grandfather founded the company, opened Sam-Son Farm in the 1960s as a site for hunter/jumper competitions. A Sam-Son horse, Canadian Club, won the 1967 Pan American Games individual jumping gold medal, and, under rider Jim Day, was a member of the Canadian Equestrian Team that won gold at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico. Sam-Son horses also competed in the 1972 and 1976 Olympics. 

Sam-Son Farm entered Thoroughbred racing in 1972. Jim Day was the farm’s trainer until Mark Frostad took over in 1995. Sam-Son has produced a litany of champions, including seven Canadian Horses of the Year who accounted for eight titles. Chief Bearhart, who won the 1997 Eclipse Award as outstanding male turf horse, was a two-time Canadian Horse of the Year.

Mary & Chester Broman

As happy as he was when his two-year-old New York-bred filly Artemis Agrotera upped her record to two-for-two by winning the Frizette at Belmont Park by a length and a quarter, trainer Mike Hushion was even happier for Chester and Mary Broman, who own and bred the filly. “Any time you win for the Bromans makes it even better,” Hushion said. “Chester and Mary are wonderful people.”

And successful. The Bromans were named Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association New York Breeder of the Year in 2004 and 2005. They were the New York Thoroughbred Breeders’ Breeders of the Year in 2004 and 2012. In 2009, they were the leading owners at the Belmont Park Fall Meet with nine victories, each by a homebred who was foaled and raised at Chestertown Farm, a 300-acre spread in the foothills of the majestic Adirondacks they purchased in 1995. Previously, the property had been known as Assunta Louis Farms, whose owner, the late oral and maxillofacial surgeon Dr. Dominick DeLuke, shepherded the early growth of the New York-bred program in its infancy as president of the New York Thoroughbred Breeders Inc.

Chester was born in Pinelawn, New York, and became the owner, president, and CEO of Clifford Broman & Sons, Inc., a general contracting corporation in West Babylon, New York, established in 1938. The company, which specializes in trucking, now has a staff of 50.

The Bromans have two sons, Chester Jr. and Christopher, and a daughter, Rachel.

Chester was appointed to the New York Racing Association Board of Trustees in 1995 and has served multiple terms on the New York Thoroughbred Breeders Board of Directors.

Artemis Agrotera, named for an ancient Greek temple site in Athens, was not their first Grade 1 winner. In 2004, their New York-bred Friends Lake won the Florida Derby. Artemis Agrotera’s ability was the worst-kept secret of the Saratoga meet. In her debut in a New York-bred maiden race on August 16, she was bet down to 2-5 and won by 11¾ lengths.

Good Friends Stable

“Good” Friends doesn't seem to do justice to the bond of brotherhood in this stable. “Great” Friends would be more accurate for these owners: Hilton Gordon, Joe Casciato, former Chicago Blackhawks star Denis Savard, Dave Flanbaum, Larry Slavin, and former jockey Rene Douglas, who was paralyzed in a gruesome accident at Arlington Park on May 23, 2009.

It’s easy for Savard to remember the date. It’s his and his wife’s anniversary. They were in Las Vegas celebrating their anniversary when they received the call about Douglas’ accident, which left him paralyzed from the waist down.

Douglas, who has benefitted from the support of his wife Natalie, deeply appreciated the additional encouragement he received from his friends. With Douglas, they are an eclectic collection. “There’s a Frenchman; there’s a Panamanian, an Italian, a Jewish person. You’ve got them all,” Savard told Mike Spellman in a story in the Chicago Daily Herald last March.

The 46-year-old Douglas, who won more than 3,500 races in his career, is the Panamanian, born in Panama City. While watching racing in his native country on TV from his home in Florida a couple years ago, Douglas spotted two horses he thought he and his friends should buy. The first was Golden Moka. He won four of 11 starts and earned $331,102. The second one was Private Zone.

Priscilla Vaccarezza

Priscilla Vaccarezza and her husband Carlo are no strangers to celebrities. They co-owned restaurants with baseball star Rusty Staub in New York and actor Mickey Rourke in Miami, and had New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner as a client when they operated Break of Dawn Farm near Ocala, Florida.

Carlo, a native of Genoa, Italy, moved to New York and had a brief stint as a hotwalker at Aqueduct in the late 1960s. He bought his first horse in the early ’70s as he continued his incredibly successful restaurant career. In New York, he and Priscilla, who is 13 years younger than her husband, teamed with Staub to run Rusty’s, and they operated Mickey’s with Rourke. Now, the Vaccarezzas operate two restaurants in Florida: Damiano in Boca Raton and Dino’s in Deerfield Beach.

They’ve had a handful of successful horses, including stakes winners My Due Process and Little Nick, Little Mike’s half-brother.

Little Mike has taken the Vaccarezzas to a whole new level. After losing his first four starts on dirt – a surface he has not run on since – he has prospered on grass, where he displayed his dazzling early speed. Dale Romans took over as Little Mike’s trainer after he won the 2011 Grade 3 Fort Lauderdale by a nose. He had previously been trained by William White, who had him for his first two starts, and Allen Iwinski.

Last year, Little Mike won the Grade 1 Woodford Reserve Turf Classic at Churchill Downs and the Grade 1 Arlington Million. When he didn’t make the lead in last year’s Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Turf, who would have expected him to change running styles on that stage? Yet Little Mike did. He relaxed under jockey Ramon Dominguez and rated in third. And then he won. It was a ride for the ages.

Little Mike, though, hadn’t even hit the board in four starts this year, the first two in Dubai, until the Joe Hirsch Turf Classic Invitational Stakes. Yet he displayed his huge heart by grimly holding off challenges on his outside and inside to prevail in the race by a nose for his thirteenth victory in 21 grass starts. He has earned more than $3.4 million. That’s enough to open several restaurants.

Martin Schwartz

Alterite is the latest talented European runner Martin S. “Buzzy” Schwartz has brought to North America to have great success, giving him his second consecutive victory in the Garden City following Samitar’s triumph last fall. Before their victories, Schwartz imported subsequent Grade 1 stakes winners Angara, Asi Siempre, Gorella, Stacelita, and Zagora.

Schwartz is a 68-year-old native of New Haven, Connecticut. “I used to go to the races when I was a kid,” he said. “I grew up in Connecticut and I’d go to the races in New York in the ’60s. I always found it to be a spectacular sport.”

After he graduated from Amherst College in 1967, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve from 1968 to 1973, leaving with the rank of captain. By then, he had earned his MBA from Columbia University.

Schwartz made a fortune on Wall Street. After working several years as a financial analyst for E.F. Hutton, he took $100,000 he had saved and bought a seat on the American Stock Exchange, where he began trading stocks, stock options, and futures. In his first full year, he made $600,000. The next year, he doubled that total. He was so proficient in his profession that he was profiled in the national bestseller “Market Wizards” by Jack Schwager. Then Schwartz wrote his own book, “Pit Bull Lesson from Wall Street’s Champion Trainer,” which was published by Harper Collins in 1998.

Two years later, he purchased his first Thoroughbred, Bowman’s Band. Trained by Hall of Famer Allen Jerkens, Bowman’s Band won the 2003 Meadowlands’ Cup, earned more than $1.2 million, and went on to sire champion Groupie Doll before dying as a relatively young stallion.

Now Schwartz has horses in England, France, and North America. They are trained by Mick Channon, Jean-Claude Rouget, and Chad Brown, respectively. 

Let's Go Stable - Michael B. Tabor, John Magnier and Derrick Smith

Bryan Sullivan was an investor on Wall Street before deciding in 2007 to launch Let’s Go Stable with his brother-in-law Kevin Scatuorchio, whose father, Jim, campaigned 2007 champion turf male English Channel and More Than Ready, the sire of Verrazano. Sullivan described his stable’s first Thoroughbred purchase, Ready’s Echo for $100,000, as “half exhilaration and half nausea.” Ready’s Echo turned out fine, dead-heating for third in the 2008 Belmont Stakes. “That worked out well,” Sullivan said.

So have most of his horses. Verrazano, a $250,000 yearling purchase as the 2011 Keeneland September Sale, gave Let’s Go a New Year’s present earlier this year when he won his debut at Gulfstream Park by 7¾ lengths. Quickly, Let’s Go was contacted by representatives of Michael Tabor, Mrs. John Magnier, and Derrick Smith, who offered to buy a percentage of Verrazano. “We owned horses with them in the past,” Sullivan said. “This made sense. We’d keep part.”

The deal was consummated the day before Verrazano’s second start, when he won an allowance race at Gulfstream by 16¼ lengths. “A lot of people called after that race,” Sullivan said. All of them were too late.

 “The anxiety before the Haskell was incredible,” he said. “I live two miles away.” Verrazano won the Haskell by nearly 10 lengths. “It was unreal,” Sullivan said. “It really was. Outside my wedding and the birth of my children, it was probably the most unforgettable day in my life.”

Juddmonte Farms

Typically, talented Thoroughbreds owned by Prince Khalid Abdullah’s Juddmonte Farms don’t take second billing. Since buying his first Thoroughbred in 1977, and winning his first graded/group stakes two years later, Abdullah has developed Juddmonte into an international racing empire whose list of champions will be forever linked to the unbeaten Frankel, named for the late Hall of Fame trainer Bobby Frankel, who raced Juddmonte’s horses in the United States for 20 years before his death in 2009.

Juddmonte boasts multiple Classic winners in England, France and Ireland, and has amassed 11 Eclipse Awards in North America, including five for breeding and two as owners. Empire Maker’s victory in the 2003 Belmont Stakes gave Juddmonte its only Triple Crown Classic winner. He was trained by Frankel.

Now another Hall of Fame trainer, Bill Mott, handles Juddmonte’s horses in North America. 

Cot Campbell's Dogwood Stable

When Wade Cothran “Cot” Campbell surrendered to his passion, selling his Atlanta advertising agency to race Thoroughbreds in the 1960s, he took a leap of faith. When he literally began a new era of racehorse partnerships through his Dogwood Stable in Aiken, South Carolina, he asked others to make that same leap.

He was up front about their prospects, telling them that if they invest, they best do it with discretionary income. He didn’t make any promises. Rather, he told them that if they were lucky, they might enjoy a special moment and have a heck of a good time pursuing the next one.

There’s nothing more special than winning a Triple Crown race. And on June 8th at Belmont Park, 23 years after Dogwood’s Summer Squall won the 1990 Preakness, Dogwood’s Palace Malice captured the Belmont Stakes. Campbell, now 85 years young, is co-owner of Palace Malice with Carl Myers in Monmouth, New Jersey; Paul Oreffice, who lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, and Paradise Valley, Arizona; Charles Pigg of Morton, Illinois; Mike Schneider of Aiken, S.C., and Margaret Smith of New York City.

Those partners are among some 1,500 new owners Campbell and his wife Anne have brought into Thoroughbred racing over the last four decades. That’s not Campbell’s only contribution to the industry. For more than a decade, Dogwood sponsored the Dominion Award recognizing unsung heroes in the sport, and Campbell has authored three thoroughly enjoyable racing books. He was honored with an Eclipse Award of Merit in 2011 for his contributions to racing.

CresRan LLC

Carol V. Ricks and her grandson, Ran Leonard, a real estate investor who is a member of the Oklahoma Racing Commission, are having the times of their lives watching Tiz Miz Sue win stakes races.  “She sure is fun to watch,” Carol, now in her ‘80s, said. Ran put it in perspective: “For small breeders like us to have one that blossomed like this is amazing. She’s taken us to Saratoga, Churchill and all over the country.”

Carol and her late husband, Ran Ricks, Jr., helped the state of Oklahoma start pari-mutuel racing. “My husband Ran, in about 1981, said, `I think Oklahoma is going to have pari-mutuels,” Carol said. “We owned this land, 35 miles north of Oklahoma City, and he said he’d like to have a horse farm. I said, `Okay.’ We moved into our home here in 1983.’”

Remington Park, built by Edward DeBartolo Sr., opened on Sept. 1st, 1988. Such was Ricks Jr.’s involvement, that the track named its annual award for owners the Ran Ricks Jr. Memorial Award.

Initially, the Ricks invested in Oklahoma-breds. “We had to change our philosophy,” Carol said. “We started going to Kentucky.”

Steve Hobby became their trainer. “One day, my grandson and my trainer called and said they’d like me to buy a Woodman filly,” Carol said. “I said, `I couldn’t afford her.’”

It turned out she could. That filly was Sue’s Good News. “She went on to win her first five starts,” Carol said. “She was really something. When she retired, she had so much talent that we bred her.”

Tiz Miz Sue was one of her foals. Her success reminds Leonard of the time he spent with his grandfather. “I’m the oldest grandson,” he said. “I was blessed to have a relationship with my grandfather and grandmother. I went to work with him when I was 15. He made his living in oil and gas.”

The family farm is in Crescent, Okla. They took the first four letters and combined it with Leonard’s grandpa’s first name, Ran, to create CresRan LLC. Originally created to manage the family’s Thoroughbreds, it’s grown into a commercial breeding operation with investments in stallions, mares and bloodstock in Oklahoma and Kentucky.

The family keeps four to eight horses in training and three or four babies a year, selling one or two of them and keeping one or two, hoping to get another horse as talented as Tiz Miz Sue.

Jerry Hollendorfer & Kim and Jerry Lloyd

So Kim Lloyd, a former trainer who is now general manager of Barretts Equine Sales and Fairplex Park, was down in Louisiana, scouting yearlings for the next sale. “Jeff Hebert was showing me eight or nine yearlings, and he said he had this horse who had just won a maiden $20,000 at Delta Downs,” Lloyd said. “He said he was as green as can be. So they walk this horse out. I’ve never seen a horse look as well, a picture of health. I said, `This horse is awesome.’”

So Lloyd makes a phone call to a proposed partner and makes a deal to buy that horse, Sahara Sky. “This guy was supposed to send Jeff the money, and Jeff called me and said he never sent the money,” Lloyd said. “I went to the track and ran into Dan Ward, Jerry Hollendorfer’s assistant. I said, `This is a damn shame. We’re going to lose this horse.’ He went back and he told Jerry how much I loved this horse. And he bought him.”

Hollendorfer said, “I value Kim’s opinion. Kim looks at a lot of horses.”

Kim had hit a home run. “The first time he ran, he won big in the slop,” Lloyd said. “He’s really good looking. He just carries himself. He walks like a panther.”

While Lloyd trained and continues to work and live in Southern California, the one stakes race he coveted was the Met Mile, because many years earlier he had seen Forego make one of his legendary late-runs to win one of his two consecutive Met Miles. Now Sahara Sky can be added to the list of Met Mile winners.

Standing in the winner’s circle, Lloyd’s cell phone lights up. “I had never heard from the guy that was supposed to send the money and never did,” Lloyd said. “It was him. He said, `I really screwed up, didn’t I?’ I said, `You sure did.’” 

Mike Pegram, Karl Watson & Paul Weitman

How do three guys, one from Fort Knox, Kentucky; one from Kansas City, Missouri, and another from Springfield, Georgia, become partners on Thoroughbreds? By attending a birthday party in Mexico.

The party was for Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert’s brother Billy in 1999. “We really hit it off,” said Pegram, whose colt Real Quiet, had won the 1998 Kentucky Derby and Preakness before losing the lead in the final strides of the Belmont Stakes, missing the Triple Crown by a nose.

Watson and Weitman, who both own car dealerships in Tucson, Arizona, had raced their own horses, too. “I had horses with Bobby,” Weitman said. “Karl wasn’t with Bobby, but he had a horse or two. So we got a couple horses together.”

Pegram made it a threesome.

Weitman and Watson were in Chicago, watching the NCAA Basketball Tournament, and rooting for Arizona to beat Illinois when Baffert called, telling them he wanted the new trio to buy their first horse, Midnight Lute, a son of Real Quiet. All Midnight Lute did was win back-to-back Breeders’ Cup Sprints and one Eclipse Award as Champion Sprinter.

That’s one hell of way to start a partnership. Horses like Lookin At Lucky, Champion Two-Year-Old Colt in 2009 and Champion Three-Year-Old Colt of 2010, have followed. “When Looking At Lucky won the Preakness, somebody said the three of us were lucky,” Pegram said. “I was lucky to get into a partnership like this. Those guys have been the greatest partnership. Winning with them makes it so much more enjoyable.”

The trio, 61-year-old Pegram, 62-year-old Watson and 70-year-old Weitman, have expanded their partnership to include yearlings and broodmares. “I’ve had more fun with my two partners than if I was by myself,” Weitman said. “I don’t think we’ve had a cross word ever.”