[Sightseek]

Originally Posted by Cannon Shell

I think that one of the main mistakes that horse owners make that causes them financial pain is the failure to recognize the value of a horse as an asset. Maximizing the value of your asset is a basic tenant of traditional investing as it should be in racehorse investing. In horseracing the greatest and fastest way to increase the value of your asset is through blacktype. The purses that we run for are great but you have to be so good and fortunate that it is hard to make it work on a horse by horse basis. But if you can lock in, through black type, a "guaranteed" increase in your assets value then you are ahead of the game.

I agree that in most horses cases the natural progression is the way to go. However with a filly with some pedigree who may or may not develop into a true stake horse, it is wise to take advantage of these overnight 'pseudo' stakes that are rarely more than glorified allowance races.

I trained a filly by Honor Grades for a client that really did not want to be in the business. She was going to enter the horse in the Keeneland November broodmare sale and was going to sell with no reserve. The filly was a 1/2 sister to a graded stakes winner and a listed stakes placed horse. We got an appraisal from 2 trusted sources that valued her at $50k. Now all she had done was break her maiden and actually she had similar form, though probably slower numbers, to Sumwonlovesyou. I wound up purchasing her for another client who is a commercial breeder for 45k (the lady who really did not want to be in the business had enough class to send me a nice commission). He said to me that we would race her the whole year the following year and make a decision on breeding her next year. But he asked if we could try to get some black type somewhere it would really help sell her babies. She wound up winning an nw1x that winter but she was stuck in the nw2x, kept running well but losing. I shipped her to Monmouth that summer and ran her in an overnight stake which came up really tough. She ran 6th or 7th and afterwards we decided the stakes there were too tough and we would stick to allowances for now and take a shot in a KY Downs stakes later in the fall. Well a few weeks later the Grade 3 was coming up light and the stakes coordinator called me a hundred times the few days before because he was worried about a really short race since Pletcher had a 3-5 shot that was scaring all the other contenders away. I said what the hell we will enter and scratch if it he hustled in a bunch of other horses. Well the race came up with 6 , the Pletcher 3-5 shot, a couple of horses that finished ahead of us in the overnight race and a couple of fillys trying the turf for the 1st time. But I decided to run because we were the only speed horse in a 6 horse field. When I told the owner that I thought we should run, he was skeptical but said if I thought we should then go for it. Well to make a long story short, we loped along to an easy lead and actually looked like we may steal it until you know who beats us in the last 100 yards. Well the owner didn't even believe me when I called and said we were second in a grade 3 because he hadn't even bothered to watch the race! We got a couple call after that but we weren't selling until we took a few shots at making her a stakes winner. She was stakes placed one more time after that and won one more allowance race before he retired her. He was offered $400k for her and turned it down, which I thought was crazy but thats what kind of increase in value that one black type placing can make in a mares worth.

I noticed the other day that you were the agent for Divine Park...$20K certainly came up a steal for his buyers. Good eye!