More Cheese Than Doritos, Cheetos, or Fritos

Big partnerships and syndicates are spending $$ on Derby prospects, chasing each other

You know about “The Avengers,” the yearling-buying group of self-named “super heroes” — some have called them super villains — that sends Derby prospects to Bob Baffert, the biggest villain of them all at the moment, right? This group splintered off from the one that owned Triple Crown winner Justify, which was principally owned by WinStar Farm, with lesser ownership interests held by China Horse Club (CHC) and SF Bloodstock. The latter entity in turn had sold racing interests in the colt to a smaller group of partners, including Sol Kumin and Starlight, and you saw all of them in the winner’s circle at the Derby.

After everyone cashed out Justify’s breeding rights to the Coolmore partners for a massive payday, they all split up and reformed alliances. WinStar and China Horse Club, which won the G1 Cigar Mile Saturday with Americanrevolution, went one way, and SF and its partners in Justify, including Kumin (as Head of Plains in that case, instead of Madaket) and Starlight Racing went another. The SF group — the Avengers — has since significantly expanded. The ownership of Pinehurst, who won the G1 Del Mar Futurity, includes Golconda Stable, Madaket (Kumin), SF, Starlight, Stonestreet, Waves Edge Capital, Catherine Donovan, Robert Masterson, and Jay Schonefarber.

When the principals in this group owned Charlatan, the ownership was listed as SF, Starlight, Madaket, Stonestreet and Golconda, plus the duo of Fred Hertrich lll and John D. Fielding — who’d bred Pinehurst (alone or in partnership, Hertrich has actually bred six Grade 1 winners of 2021).

Hertrich and Fielding are also the breeders of Americanrevolution, and they were also original partners in Authentic, whose ownership also included SF, Madaket, Starlight, and Golconda. When this group sold Authentic to Spendthrift and MyRaceHorse before the Derby, only Madaket and Starlight stayed in to enjoy the Classic success.

Meanwhile, CHC and WinStar campaigned Life Is Good this year, and all said and done, both groups have enjoyed considerable success since splitting after Justify. They all seem to be terrifically astute at picking top yearling prospects.

If you’d been watching the results at Keeneland September, you’d know that other groups have formed to pursue the Derby in similar fashion. Notably, Mike Repole and Vinny Viola dropped a lot of cheese — a ton of Cheetos and Fritos — on prospects that will be going to Todd Pletcher, and Liz Crow and Brad Cox formed another buying group of colts, joining the crowded field chasing the Derby that also includes the Coolmore partners and various other partnerships, including West Point and Eclipse, not to mention that gigantic private firm of Godolphin, which enjoyed a career year in 2021.

Jerry Crawford’s Donegal, which won the G2 Remsen on Saturday with Pletcher, is a smaller partnership and much more modestly constructed than those named above, but Donegal is now on the Derby trail as well, and it wouldn’t be untrue to say that Donegal’s success is one for the “smaller” guys, because all the big guns are aiming their sights at the Derby with a boatload of well-bred prospects that have been expertly handpicked. And these folks are exceptional horsemen with a record of success behind them.

What does all this mean? It’s an end to the means, because it wouldn’t be surprising in the future to see these various competing interests — some, actually, with overlapping interests — with multiple entries at Louisville. Imagine (let’s just say for the moment that Baffert will have runners, ok?) Baffert, Pletcher, and Cox with multiple entries, and then throw in Asmussen and a few others and it’s all going to look like a shrunken game, right? A game for the few? Outfits like Donegal, and even smaller entities, may have a harder time getting to Louisville in the future.

That’s the way the game seems to be going, right? You just sit there, eat your Doritos, make pithy comments on Twitter, and watch the racing biz play itself, right?

MF DOOM has a take on this in “Accordian,” from the 2004 collaboration album with Madlib, “Madvillainy.” It’s prescient, even if he wasn’t speaking specifically about racing, because the sentiment is applicable.

It's like the end to the means
Fucked type of message that sends to the fiends
That's why he bring his own needles
And get more cheese than Doritos, Cheetos or Fritos
Slip like Freudian
Your first and last step to playing yourself like accordion

See and hear super villain DOOM spit his rhymes here to Madlib’s beat: