Jungle Racing LLC

Much like Groupie Doll, Mizdirection, also a back-to-back Breeders’ Cup winner of the Turf Sprint, was sold just days after her victory for $2.7 million to Al Shaqab Racing at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky November Select Mixed Sale.

Knowing that her sale was imminent, Mizdirection’s rather famous co-owner Jim Rome, who hosted the ESPN TV show “Rome Is Burning,” and now hosts a syndicated radio show which was originally called “The Jungle,” addressed the issue at the Breeders’ Cup press conference after her second consecutive victory. Rome, who races under the name of Jungle Racing LLC, said, “The Miz ride has been one of the great experiences of my life, but I wanted to see her go out a champion. I wanted her off the track. I wanted her to have a good life as a mama, and I think the time is right to sell. It’s gut-wrenching. It’s tearing me up, but from a business standpoint, and this is a business, it’s something we need to do.”

Rome, a 49-year-old native of Tarzana, California, retains 13 Thoroughbreds, including his broodmare Surfer Girl, whom he visits regularly at Three Chimneys Farm in Midway, Ky., where his retired gelding Gallatin’s Run, also lives. Rome lost Gallatin’s Run when he was claimed at Del Mar, then reclaimed him at Churchill Downs. “We claimed him to get him off the track, and give him the retirement he earned,” Rome said. “He always ran his guts out for us. He’s an awesome, awesome horse.”

Jen Roytz, marketing and communications director at Three Chimneys, said of Rome, “He’s got the most wonderful, authentic love for his horses, He comes all the way from California just to visit his broodmare, treats in hand, and the absolute first thing he does when his plane lands is rush to the farm and throw his arms around her neck. You’d think it was his first grandchild.”

This from a man who used to bash horse racing on his shows?

“I didn’t know what it was about,” he told Teresa Genaro in her post-Breeders’ Cup story in Forbes. “Everybody likes to throw it in my face.  ‘Weren’t you the guy that dogged the sport back in the day?’  I’ll say, `Guilty, yes, I did.’

“But I’d never spent time around the barns or the animal or the jockeys or the trainers; then I started to come around and I got to know the horses.  At the end of the day, the biggest reason we’re in this is we love the horses.  It didn’t matter if it was a stakes horse or a Breeders’ Cup or a claimer.  They’re all different, they all have a different story, and I think they’re fascinating animals.”

Rome and his wife Janet bought their first horse in 2007. “Janet said, `You need a hobby. All you do is work,’” Rome related. “And Billy Koch, owner of Little Red Feather Farm, had approached me once to buy into a horse and it never really interested me. And Janet said, `You need to get out of the house. Let’s do this. It will be fun. You’ll like this.’ And the worst thing that could have happened to me did happen to me.”

That “worst thing” was their first horse, Wing Forward, winning his first start. “He went from last to first at 15-1,” Rome said. “And I’ve been hooked ever since. Had that horse finished middle of the pack, I probably would have lost interest right away.”

Gary & Mary West

A 67-year-old native of California, Gary West became a racing fan after he moved to Omaha, Nebraska, when he was 19. There he met his wife, Mary, who had owned a horse while in high school. They had a common interest: horse racing at Ak-Sar-Ben (Nebraska spelled backwards), then one of the nation’s leading tracks. As fans at Ak-Sar-Ben, they dreamed of owning a horse one day. Now, they own more than one hundred, including 25 broodmares who are at Dell Ridge Farm in Lexington, Ky.

They have racehorses with trainers Bob Baffert, Chad Brown, Wayne Catalano, Tom Proctor, W. Bret Calhoun and Cody Autrey. The Wests had their best year ever in 2012, capturing 55 races and earning more than $3.2 million, ranking them 12th in North America owner earnings. They’ve already topped that by more than $1 million this year, and rank third in North America through late November.

Gary worked in hospital administration initially, then built one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world. With Mary’s help, he has founded numerous companies, beginning with WATS Telemarketing in 1978. The West Corporation they founded in 1986 is one of the largest customer relationship management companies in the world. The Wests sold it in 2006. At the time, it had 35,000 employees and did $3.5 billion in annual sales.

The Wests have started and led several enterprises in Southern California and the Midwest, including West Development and West Partners, a private equity firm, and West Family Investments, a private hedge fund in Chicago. In Carlsbad, California, they own West Steak and Seafood, Bistro West, West Inn Hotel & Suites and West Mart.

After selling The West Corporation, they began the Gary and Mary West Foundation, which focuses on lowering the cost of health care; supporting senior wellness programs; supporting youth employment training, and supporting training programs for service dogs who help seniors and veterans. In April, 2010, they opened the Gary and Mary West Senior Wellness Center in San Diego. They also began the West Health Institute for non-profits seeking to lower health care costs in San Diego and Omaha.

Of course, their success allowed the Wests to pursue their dreams in horse racing. They claimed their first horse, Joe Blow, for $13,500 in 1980, and he won 23 races for them before he was retired in Nebraska, where he lived to the age of 31. 

The Wests’ racing manager and bloodstock advisor is O.J. “Ben” Glass Jr., who trained their first graded stakes winner, Rockamundo, who took the Grade II 1993 Arkansas Derby at odds of 108-1. He became their first starter in the Kentucky Derby.

Their list of top horses include Dollar Bill, Power Broker, Book Review, Guilt Trip, Code West and Buddha, the 2002 morning-line favorite for the Kentucky Derby off his victory in the Grade I Wood Memorial. He stepped on a stone the day before the Derby, resulting in a badly-bruised foot. He was scratched from the Derby and retired.  

Loooch Racing

Ron Paolucci, a 44-year-old native of Akron, Ohio – “Home of Lebron James,” he says proudly – fell in love with racing at an early age. “I started going with my dad and my grandfather,” he said. “Thistle Downs in the afternoon; Waterford Park at night. For as long as I can remember. An hour’s drive. For a horseplayer, that’s not long.”

Make no mistake about it. Yes, he’s an owner of 55 to 60 Thoroughbreds under the name of Loooch Racing Stable, but he is one serious horseplayer. “I play them with two fists,” he said.

By doing so, he watches and bets on lots of horses at a lot of racetracks. And when he saw Ria Antonia make her debut at Woodbine, he was impressed with the two-year-old filly. “I thought it was interesting to start her in a stakes race first time out,” he said. “Seven furlongs. Then maiden special weights against the boys. Then she worked :46.1 on the Woodbine dirt training track.”

His partner, Chris Wright, was in. A 38-year-old native of East Greenbush, N.Y., he began following racing at Saratoga, just a half hour away. Wright worked on Wall Street before going into robotic sales for Mako Surgical. The Davie, Florida, company makes robots which assist doctors doing orthopedic knee and hip replacements. He met Paolucci through a mutual friend. “Ron offered me half of Ria Antonia,” he said. “He thought she would improve on dirt. It took about two weeks to close the deal.”

Once the deal was done, Paolucci hatched a plan with his partner and his trainer Jeremiah Englehart. “My plan all along was to get her out of Woodbine; get her down to New York; put her in blinkers; run in the Frizette, and then run in the Breeders’ Cup,” Paolucci said. “She’s a huge filly. She’s almost 17 hands. She’s got a big, long stride. I thought she would move up on two turns.”

The Grade 1 Frizette at Belmont Park was one-turn, and Ria Antonio finished fifth by six lengths. This did nothing to deter Paolucci from entering her in the Breeders’ Cup. “He was adamant about going to the Breeders’ Cup,” Wright said. 

Smart man. Ria Antonia closed ground resolutely in the stretch trying to catch front-running She’s a Tiger. They flashed past the finish line together. “I actually thought we got the bob,” Paolucci said. “Everyone around me said we lost. I was so ecstatic with the way she ran, it didn’t matter if she got up. I was right about her.”

But he was wrong about the finish. The photo revealed She’s a Tiger had won. But Rio Antonia’s rider, Javier Castellano, claimed four against the winner, who was ridden by Gary Stevens. After what seemed like hours, the stewards disqualified She’s a Tiger, placing Ria Antonia first. Paolucci got a text message from a friend of She’s a Tiger’s owners. “She said the owners were distraught, but they believed it was the right decision,” he said. “Gary Stevens told me the same thing the next day. Very classy.”

Fred Bradley, William Bradley

 In the span of five days, Groupie Doll won her second consecutive $1 million Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint, then was sold for $3.1 million to Mandy Pope’s Whisper Hill Farm at the Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale. She was the Bradley family’s second incredibly successful homebred, following $2.1 million earner Brass Hat. Both horses were born and raised at the Bradleys’ Indian Ridge Farm in Frankfort, Kentucky. Both horses were trained by William “Buff” Bradley.

Fred Bradley, the family’s 85-year-old patriarch, was successful in many endeavors. Born in Frankfort, he graduated from the University of Kentucky with a journalism degree in 1953, then received a law degree from the University of Kentucky six years later. That allowed him to serve as counsel for the Kentucky Racing Commission for ten years and as a judge in Franklin County. He also became a Kentucky State Senator. He was a fighter pilot during a long military career, and he founded his own trucking company, Fred’s Fast Freight, which he owned and used to transport horses right up to his death (20th May 2016).

Fred used to gallop horses that he trained at defunct Miles Park in Louisville and Mountaineer Park, then called Waterford Park, in West Virginia. That seems a long way from winning multiple graded stakes with home-breds from his own farm.

His son, Buff, helped him reach that lofty destination. Buff, whose nickname is short for “Buffalo Bill,” is nearing 3,800 career victories and $11 million in career earnings as a trainer. Now 50, Buff graduated from Kentucky State University with a business management degree, but he always knew his business would be horses. He worked as an assistant trainer for Clarence Picou before starting his own stable in 1993. His success with Brass Hat, who began his career as a $15,000 claimer, was followed by Groupie Doll’s exceptional career.

Longtime family friends Carl Hurst, a retired judge, and Brent Burns, a singer/songwriter from Alabama, have been along for the ride with Groupie Doll. Hurst has known Fred since they were five years old.

Willie Carson, Emily Asprey & Chris Wright

A shared lunch at the Tattersalls yearling sales in Newmarket, England, united legendary jockey/BBC commentator Willie Carson and Chris Wright, the co-founder and chairman of Chrysalis Records, as Thoroughbred partners. “It was a couple of years ago,” Wright said after Chriselliam won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf. “I was having a pretty nice lunch, and I think I drank a little too much wine, and I ended up buying a filly. And I persuaded Willie, who had been drinking a little bit with me, that he should take half.” He did. That filly won a race and was sold, but Chriselliam is a keeper.

Carson, born on November 16, 1942 in Stirling, Scotland, became just the fourth jockey to win 3,000 races in Great Britain, retiring with 3,828 victories as the fourth leading jockey in British history behind Sir Gordon Richards, Lestor Piggott, and Pat Eddery. Carson was awarded the British Order of the Empire for his service to racing in 1983, and he was a member of the inaugural class of 50 inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame in 2002. Besides working for the BBC, he has served as chairman of the Swindon Town Football Club and was the European racing manager for The Thoroughbred Corp.

Carson had a tough loss in the 1990 Breeders’ Cup Sprint, when the horse on the lead he was riding, Dayjur, jumped two shadows a few strides before the wire, allowing Safely Kept to beat him. “To own a Breeders’ Cup winner is much better than riding one, I can assure you,” he said after Chriselliam’s victory. “When you’re riding them, you’re in charge and there’s no pressure on you. But as an owner standing up in those box seats, it’s nuts. I understand now what owners go through.”

Wright can compare owning Thoroughbreds to owning records. He and Terry Ellis founded Chrysalis Records, a British record label, in 1969. They changed the company’s original name from the Ellis-Wright Agency to Chrysalis, a reference to the pupil stage of a butterfly as well as a combination of Wright’s first name and Ellis’s last. Chrysalis evolved into EMI, then was sold for a reported $765 million. Of hanging out with rock stars, Wright said in a 2010 interview, “I hung out with them all. I did everything. Drugs, sex, and rock ‘n’ roll.”

With Chriselliam, Carson and Wright took on 17-year-old Emily Asprey as a partner, allowing her to become the youngest owner of a Breeders’ Cup winner. She is an eighth generation descendant of William Asprey, founder of Asprey International Limited, a United Kingdom-based designer, manufacturer, and retailer of jewelry, silverware, home goods, leather goods, timepieces, books, accessories, and polo equipment. The company was founded in 1781 as Asprey & Co.

W.C. Racing

Less than a week after Goldencents won the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile, W.C. Racing’s partners Glenn Sorgenstein and Josh Kaplan, who owned 75 percent of the horse, announced that they had privately purchased the remaining ownership shares of Dave Kenney and RAP Racing’s Rick Pitino, the head coach of the University of Louisville’s defending national championship basketball team. “My plan is to continue to race him as a four-year-old,” Sorgenstein said. “Why not live the dream? Nothing beats this.”

Goldencents, whose dam is Golden Works, was named to promote Sorgenstein and Kaplan’s precious metal and rare coin auction website www.goldencents.com, which is now run by Sorgenstein’s son Landon. W.C. Racing stands for Wilshire Coin, another one of their businesses. Located in Santa Monica, California, Wilshire Coin offers cash for gold and silver, and deals in coin collections, foreign exchange, and estate jewelry.

Sorgenstein, a 57-year-old native of Bayside, New York, now living in California, fell in love with racing at the age of five. “My dad’s friend was [trainer] Lefty Nicholson,” he said. “They were best friends. He put me on a horse, Tudor Sovereign, when I was five, and I went around the backstretch at Belmont. I knew I’d be involved in horseracing one way or the other.”

When his family moved to California soon afterwards, Sorgenstein simply transferred his interest in racing to Santa Anita, where he learned how to drive a car by practicing in the track’s parking lot.

Sorgenstein held a real estate license when he chose another career at the age of 23. His first wife’s brother was a coin dealer. “As a kid, I collected everything: bottle caps, posters, stickers, coins,” he said. “I loved collecting.” So he went to work in the rare coin business for his brother-in-law. “After being in it for two weeks, I knew I could do it for the rest of my life,” he said. “I worked for him until 1985, and I went out on my own. I took Josh on in 1997. He’s 39. His grandfather would take him to the track in California. His grandfather loved horseracing.”

Sorgenstein bought his first horse, Green Eyes, in 2004. She raced once, finished out of the money, and was injured. Sorgenstein’s first top horse was Blazing Sunset, who finished second by a half-length in the 2006 Iowa Derby before suffering a fatal breakdown on the track at Del Mar in his next start. “I stayed away from horses for a year because that was really horrible,” Sorgenstein said. “Then I got back in it. With the help of Dennis O’Neill [trainer Doug’s brother], we started buying two-year-olds.”

They purchased Goldencents, who had sold for $5,500 as a yearling, for $62,000 as a two-year-old. After winning last year’s Santa Anita Derby, he became their first starter in the Kentucky Derby. Sorgenstein, Kaplan, and their friend Mark, who also owns horses in the O’Neill stable, had a special pair of pants made for jockey Kevin Krigger which included three first names with a smiley face on each one for the three people who introduced them to racing: Sorgenstein’s dad Sol, Kaplan’s grandfather Max, and Mark’s dad Art. “They all passed away the year prior,” Sorgenstein said.

Unfortunately, Goldencents finished 17th in the Kentucky Derby. But he bounced back to win the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile by year’s end. “It’s been an amazing journey,” Sorgenstein said. “He’s a dream horse. This is the one we dream about.”

Their former partner Kenney is the President and CEO of Westrux International, which sells and services diesel trucks at five locations in Southern California. The company was founded in 1988. Westrun International was named Navistar’s International 2012 Dealer of the Year. Kenney has been a co-owner of Grade 1 stakes winners Richard’s Kid and Willyconker.

To read Trainer Magazine's profile on Goldecents, click here