Randy Patterson

Randy Patterson was one week old when his mom first took him to Anthony Downs not far from their home in Anthony, Kansas, in 1953. “I never missed a meet from 1953 to 2009,” Patterson said proudly. The track, which opened in 1904, held an annual five or six-day meet alternating Thoroughbred/harness races with greyhound racing on a small track inside the bullring for horses. “They’d start the card with a horse race, then a dog race,” Patterson said. Despite the support of Patterson, a successful cattleman, and other sponsors, the track closed in 2009. It was demolished three years later to create space for a housing development.

Patterson didn’t buy his first horse until a chance meeting in 1985 in a parking lot with a fellow he had done cattle business. “He said, ‘Me and a lawyer are going to claim a horse at Ak-Sar-Ben. Do you want in?’” Patterson said, “Yes,” and the horse they claimed for $11,500, quickly made $20,000. “I thought, ‘Where’s this game been all my life?’” Patterson laughed. “Since then, it’s had its ups and downs.”

Claiming Moonshine Mullin, a six-year-old gelding, for $40,000 last November has taken Patterson to heights he never imagined. Moonshine Mullin had considerable back class. He’d finished second in the 2011 Grade 2 Jim Dandy Stakes and sixth in the Grade 1 Travers to Stay Thirsty, who won Randy Morse, one of the three trainers Patterson uses for his ten-horse stable, urged Patterson to claim Moonshine Mullin for $25,000 earlier in a race at Remington Park. Patterson declined, and the horse was claimed by Maggi Moss. Then on November 30th claim Moonshine Mullin, this time for $40,000.

Despite having a great reason to say no – he would close a deal to purchase a 40-acre farm southwest of Hot Springs, Arkansas, the very next day – Patterson said yes. After Moonshine Mullin finished fourth and third in his first two starts for his new connections, Morse, who had studied all of Moonshine Mullin’s previous 25 races, decided to tell his jockey, Cliff Berry, to race Moonshine Mullin on the lead. The horse hasn’t lost since. His fourth straight victory was in the Grade 2 Alysheba Stakes. 

He followed that with his win in the Grade 1 Stephen Foster. They were Patterson’s first Grade 2 and first Grade 1 victories. “Coming down the stretch, I was just like, ‘This is not supposed to happen with a claiming horse,’” Patterson said after the Stephen Foster.,Morse called Patterson again, asking him to

By purchasing his new farm, which he has named Cedar Run, Patterson took a leap of faith with his only child, his 28-year-old daughter Sara. “She’d say, ‘Why don’t you buy a horse farm and let me run it?’” Patterson said. At the time, she was working as the head of operations for a landfill. “She got a job offer in California, but she didn’t want to go there,” Patterson continued. “I didn’t want her to go.”

So he purchased the farm, which will be operated by Sara with the help of Randy Morse’s brother Robbie. “It was the day after the claim,” Patterson said.

Looks like a good decision, doesn’t it?

Anita Cauley

It’s only fitting that Anita Cauley, who routinely gives so much to others, has been given so much by her foundation mare, Ornate, the dam of On Fire Baby and two other stakes winners. Fortunately, Cauley held on to Ornate after she failed to reach a reserve bid, “a wonderful turn of events,” she said.

A native of Indiana who moved to Lexington, Kentucky, Cauley is a member of the First Lady of Kentucky Jane Beshear’s “Pink Stable,” a committee of women in the racing industry that assists Beshear’s Horses and Hope Organization, which works to increase breast cancer awareness, education, and treatment referral in the Kentucky racing industry.

 Cauley, who grew up outside Indianapolis, loved horses but didn’t learn to ride until she was 22, 

taking a class with school-aged children. “I was completely embarrassed by that, but was told I needed to learn how to ride properly,” she said in a 2012 story by Evan Hammonds in The Blood-Horse. “I got through that and eventually showed Arabians.”Cauley and her late husband, Barry Ebert, who owned an investment counseling firm, got into racing more than 25 years ago.

Searching for a trainer, they met and were impressed with Gary “Red Dog” Hartlage’s demeanor and family-oriented operation, noting that most of Hartlage’s family lived within a mile of each other in the Louisville neighborhood of Shively. “That was the atmosphere I wanted,” Cauley said. “This is such a tough business that it makes it that much more enjoyable when all these other people get it and they know how hard it is.”

Hartlage is still thankful for meeting Cauley. “I’m still training horses because of her,” he said. “If you want to rate somebody on a scale of 1 to 10, she’s a 10. She’s got total faith in me, and I have total faith in her.”

Success can do that for you. Cauley and Ebert purchased Ornate for $80,000 as a yearling in 1998, and Ornate won the 2002 Pleasant Temper Stakes at Kentucky Downs. They entered Ornate, who 

was in foal to E Dubai, in the 2003 Keeneland November sale at Keeneland, then decided to keep the mare when she failed to meet her reserve.Ornate produced 2007 Grade 2 Fantasy Stakes winner High Heels, who finished third in the Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks and earned nearly half a million dollars, and French Kiss, who won the 2009 Pippin Stakes and was third in the Grade 3 Azeri Stakes.

Cauley takes her involvement in racing seriously. “I really look at the spreadsheets and stallion numbers,” she said. “I look at stallions that have good race records at four and five, a horse that was out 

there and was sound and racing at that age.”On Fire Baby may be Cauley’s best horse. The gray mare won the Grade 3 Honeybee as a three-year-old, the Grade 1 Apple Blossom at four, and now, after running second in the Apple Blossom to Close Hatches, the Grade 1 La Troienne this year at five. She has already earned more than $1.08 million from six victories, two seconds, and one third in just 16 starts.

Willis Horton

Willis Horton, who at the age of 73 is five years younger than his Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas, is a native of Marshall, Arkansas, who developed D.R. Horton Custom Homes, which became the nation’s largest builder of single-family homes. Horton retired when the company went public in 1992. That allowed him to pursue his passion: horses. He’d had them growing up, and he became the managing partner of Horton Stable, which included his brother Leon, his son Cam, and his nephew Terry. Among their best horses were Kentucky Oaks winner Lemons Forever, and Partner’s Hero.

Horton fell in love with Will Take Charge, a colt in the 2011 Keeneland September Yearling Sale. “I liked his pedigree, his size, and his conformation is terrific,” Horton said. “I’ve been in this business for about 50 years, and not on a big scale. I did it on a small scale. But this was the best-looking horse I’ve even seen in a sale.”

Another bidder was also impressed, but then stopped bidding. Why? It was Lukas. “I looked out and saw Willis bidding and I thought, ‘Whoa, I better back off here,’” Lukas said. “We’ve been friends forever.”

“It’s the most wonderful feeling to be able to get somebody put up the money, stay by you, believe in you, to give them that moment,” Lukas said. “Three strides before the wire, the only thing I thought of was him (Willis) and his wife.”

Asked what it meant to win the Travers, Horton said, “Well, it’s hard to describe, you know? I’m so happy.”

Janis Whitham

Janis Whitham, now 81, is a fourth generation descendant of pioneers in Kansas, where she still lives. She and her husband Frank, who died in a 1993 plane crash, originally owned Quarter Horses before trying and succeeding with Thoroughbreds, none more successful than Bayakoa. Trained by Hall of Famer Ron McAnally, the two-time Eclipse Champion Older Mare (1989 and 1990) who won 21 of 39 starts with nine seconds and earnings of more than $2.8 million. In 1991, they won another Eclipse Award with Grass Champion Tight Spot.

Now, thanks to Bayakoa, Whitham has another star, Fort Larned, a son of E Dubai whose dam Arlucea, is a daughter of Bayakoa.  

Morton Fink

If only 83-year-old Morton Fink had decided to downsize his stable decades earlier. After some four decades in racing, in which he had considerable success with his long-time partner Roy Gottlieb, Fink decided to sell all of his broodmares except the one he named for his granddaughter, Lisa Danielle. He’d bought her for $29,000 as a yearling, and she won just one race, her maiden.

Fink, who inherited a chain of movie theaters from his father and then sold them to a national chain, was way too savvy not to know that breeding her could be a losing proposition, but he did so anyway.

He bred her to Successful Appeal, and was rewarded with Successful Dan. All he’s done is win four graded stakes; set a track record at Churchill Downs, and earn more than $700,000.

For many owners, he would be the horse of a lifetime. For Fink, he would become the second horse people mention when they talk about his stable.

Fink spent a $1,0000 stud fee to bred Lisa Danielle to Wiseman’s Ferry, who had won the Grade III Lone Star Derby. That resulted in Wise Dan, the reigning Horse of the Year who won three Eclipse Awards in 2012 and is undefeated this year.

Fink, a life-long resident of Chicago, was introduced to racing by his mother when she took him to the track. After graduating from Roosevelt University with a degree in business administration, he and a group of friends claimed a horse for $4,000, who did not win a race. A few years later, Fink went partners with Gottlieb, and they called the stable Carelaine Farm, a combination of their wives’ names. Carelaine Farms bred and raced a million dollar mare, Annoconnor, named to honor a deceased employee, and bred Producer, a Group 1 winner in Europe whom was sold in foal to Northern Dancer for $5.25 million in 1983. A decade later, the farm disbanded.

It turns out, Fink was just getting warmed up.  

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.

King of Prussia Stable

It didn’t take Ed Stanco, the managing partner of King of Prussia Stable, long to get hooked on racing. Growing up in Schenectady, New York, he was a half hour from Saratoga Race Course and Saratoga Harness. “I think I was about eight when my uncle used to take me to the trotters and sometimes the flats,” he said. “I just absolutely loved it from the very beginning.”

Not just the racing, but also trying to figure out who is going to win races. “I was always very good in math,” he said.” I said, `This is for me.’ The dream was if I could start a horse at Saratoga.”

Now 63, he followed through on both his passions. He used his math skills to become an actuary on the way to becoming CEO of Toa Reinsurance Company of America.

And he not only started and won a race at Saratoga with New York-bred star Capeside Lady, he won a Grade I stakes with Princess Sylmar, King of Prussia’s first home-bred.

Stanco started King of Prussia in 2002 with modest goals. “We take a very prudent approach,” he said. “It’s basically one or two horses at a time.”

King of Prussia invested in fillies, “for their residual value,” Stanco said, and in New York-breds and Pennsylvania-breds because of inflated purses from casino revenue. Through Mike Cascio, one of trainer Todd Pletcher’s earliest clients, King of Prussia secured Pletcher as its trainer. And through his brother, who owned a couple of horses with Ronnie and Betsy Houghton’s Sylmar Farm in Christiana, Pa., King of Prussia had a home for their broodmares and foals.

A filly King of Prussia owned, Storm Dixie, became its first broodmare and her daughter, Princess of Sylmar, became its first home-bred.

Her victory in the Kentucky Oaks allows Stanco to look forward to the Coaching Club American Oaks and the Alabama, a pair of Grade I stakes at Saratoga. Stanco summed up his experience in racing: “It’s been a very cool thing.”