The Business of Racing

[karlskorner]

So your ready to buy your first horse, read this first.

http://businessofracing.blogspot.com/

[fmhealth]

Karl, thanks for posting that fascinating article. It certainly was an eye-opener!

[karlskorner]

Back in the late 70's early 80's I was partner with 4 others, we ran quite a few horses with the leading trainer at CRC and won some races. Either 82/83 I was sitting in our box with the senior partner, reading the DRF and mentioned that our group had won over 700K for the previous year and he shot right back and stated it cost us over 800K to win 700K. I love the game, but not that much, I took out my share and learned an expensive lesson.

[Storm Cadet]

ZORN is a terrible partnership manager. :ThmbDown: IMO

[Shemp Howard]

I just left a LLC where the MP charged partners for his breakfast and lunch every day, two 6 seat boxes at the track for his personal use, phantom van rides, "retired" horses for a complete loss then sold them a few weeks later for several grand all to his pocket, and best of all claimed he was using a "name trainer" at a very fancy fee when in reality the horse was being trained by a guy that couldn't get licensed because of some past indescretions.

[Storm Cadet]

Most are not...it's a way that THEY can enjoy the Sport of Kings, at the expense of the servants (owners). Marked up sales prices, marked up trainers expenses, travel expenses, Saratoga housing for them selves, their DRF and Tgraph expenses, meals under the guise of management meetings with trainers, on and on....

[Norm]

That's a good and useful article. Anyone who doesn't take the owner's/trainer's finances into account when handicapping is making a big mistake.

[JustRalph]

Great link Karl. Thanks! :ThmbUp:

[karlskorner]

The one lesson I did learn back then was stay away from cheap horses, they eat and require as much attention as a good ALW horse, if not more so. Our bottom line was a 25k animal, unfortunately our Trainer was desperate in keeping his title as leading trainer, we would claim a 25K animal, he would run it, if it lost he dropped it immediately to 15K, of course it won, we collected a purse, but the horse was usually claimed, add the purse to the 15k and our usuall loss on the animal was 5K. Running 30/40 animals a year you would be surprised how quickly you can lose 100k in a year.