It's Easy To Make $$$ As An Owner

[Cannon shell]

Originally Posted by Phantombridgejumpe

The only way I would be an owner is put down $20k or whatever to claim a horse and then tell the trainer exactly where and when I want to run him.

I doubt there is a competent trainer that would let me do that.

Also, I'd go harness first, at least I could get 35-40 starts a year. Way too much pressure if a horse starts 8-14 times a year.

When you claim one you are usually bound to that one track for awhile so are at the mercy of the racing secretary as to when and where you will run. With the amount of conditioned claiming races dominating the books there are rarely more than a handful of potential spots and many include distance and/or surface changes. For instance if you calm a 20k sprinter that is a NW3 life there is probably 1 race in the condition book for you. Now you may choose to raise or drop but there are rarely many options otherwise that are palatable.

[Phantombridgejumpe]

doesn't make it easy.

I admire the owners that do it well.

[RaceBookJoe]

I became a part-owner only because it was a childhood dream and I wanted to experience it. Never did I think I would ever make money. Unfortunately it didn't last long, but gave me a brief thrill...2011 we won our maiden race at Saratoga, finished 2nd but dq'd to 4th in the Ms Grillo @ Belmont and then got to go to see our horse run in the BC Juv Filly Turf @ Churchill. She ran great, but got a slight injury and finished 10th. While rehabbing, tendon injury started which she could never get back 100% so we had to retire her 2 months ago. Would only recommend it if its your passion and if you have disposable cash, not saying that you cant do well though.

[northerndancer]

The risk/reward curve is stepper in the Thoroughbred game as an owner compared to that of the harness game.

The harness horse will race within a limited range. If you claim one for $10,000 the horse will run between $7,500 and $12,500 but most of the time he will be a $10,000 claimer. Therefore your risk of capital is much lower when compared to the thoroughbred. The differences in claiming levels between the TBred and harness is the difference maker.

Harness will offer claiming levels of $5,000, $6,000, $7,500, $8,000, $10,000, $12,500, $15,000, $17,500 & $25,000. Find your level and you will be running at that level for months or years.

TBred you will have $5,000, $7,500, $10,000, $12,500, $16,000, $20,000, $25,000. You have all seen it when punting a horse whose last start was for $20,000 dropping in for $10,000. These types of class drops do not happen very often in the harness side of the game.

As an owner you can make money in the game (both harness and TBred). I have found it easier to turn a profit in the harness area. The best example I can offer is the harness game is comparable to the grocery store. They make the profit on low margins high volume. The TBred is a home builder. They may only put up 20 homes a year but the profit margin is much higher.

The harness game you have a short memory if your horse breaks or draws a bad post you realize oh well next start is only 7 days away.

In the TBred if you have a horse that gets scratched day off due to being sore or runs a bad race or comes off the turf you realize you have another 21-28 days before you run. Now throw in a bad effort off the 21-28 days you have just absorbed 2 opportunities of no revenue and 60 days of expenses to cover.

The best way to be an owner is to gather 4 or 5 close friends throw in $5,000 a piece and go claim a $12,500 to $16,000 horse. You will have a few months in reserve to pay the bills. Race the horse where it will be competitive and go on with it. There is no better feeling then cheering on your horse as it comes down the stretch. You feel like you are running along side of that animal.

[chadk66]

Originally Posted by Shemp Howard

Check out Fiery Forest, winner of last nights R1 at Mountaineer.

Was claimed by the previous connections back in late December for $6,250.

Owners paid over 4 months of training/vet fees in excess of $8K only to have the trainer make a mea culpa that the horse can no longer compete and should be given away for free in order to cut losses.

Competent horseman at Waterford takes him, spends a few weeks getting things straightened out and not only wins going away first out of the box but gets claimed by another competent outfit.

Purse $5,220, claim $5,000 and whatever was bet at the window. Not bad for a 30 day investment in time and feed.

Pity the previous owners. Out close to $15K out of pocket and leave $10,220 on the table. Let's hope they get a cut of whatever private deal their trainer made on the giveaway to cut their losses.

It's simply the nature of the beast

[Rex Phinney]

Originally Posted by northerndancer

The best way to be an owner is to gather 4 or 5 close friends throw in $5,000 a piece and go claim a $12,500 to $16,000 horse. You will have a few months in reserve to pay the bills. Race the horse where it will be competitive and go on with it. There is no better feeling then cheering on your horse as it comes down the stretch. You feel like you are running along side of that animal.

Best advice yet.

Partnerships that I have been a part of were a joke, basically a place for the "racing manager" to live life like he actually has any money, but get by using none of his own funds.

Trainers should be calling the shots anyways. No reason a group of friends couldn't go find a horse or recruit the help of a trainer to find them one. Once you claim/ buy the horse the racing manager becomes even more useless.

[proximity]

Originally Posted by PaceAdvantage

You should set up a picket line outside the barn you despise the most in this world...

penn national might frown on that, but possibly he could try outside the grantville post office??

[5k-claim]

Originally Posted by Shemp Howard

Check out Fiery Forest, winner of last nights R1 at Mountaineer.

Was claimed by the previous connections back in late December for $6,250.

Owners paid over 4 months of training/vet fees in excess of $8K only to have the trainer make a mea culpa that the horse can no longer compete and should be given away for free in order to cut losses.

Competent horseman at Waterford takes him, spends a few weeks getting things straightened out and not only wins going away first out of the box but gets claimed by another competent outfit.

Purse $5,220, claim $5,000 and whatever was bet at the window. Not bad for a 30 day investment in time and feed.

Pity the previous owners. Out close to $15K out of pocket and leave $10,220 on the table. Let's hope they get a cut of whatever private deal their trainer made on the giveaway to cut their losses.

What exactly is the unusual part of this story? You could switch owner names, trainer names and horse names and tell this same story all over again.

Are you claiming something specifically incompetent about this trainer, or something specifically underhanded?

When the trainer said, after four months, that the horse should be retired from racing then the owners have some options:

1. IF NOT RETIRING HORSE: Do the owners not know who their own vet is... to get his final input on their horse's racing career? Aren't they getting billed directly by the vet and know who he is and even talk to him from time to time... even if just to discuss something about their bill? Did they not want to know why the horse they claimed should be retired without ever making a start for them?

Or, if they don't want to talk to the vet and prefer to just take their trainer's word for it, that is fine. They don't have to talk to their vet. Then just move to the next option:

2. IF RETIRING HORSE:Get possession of their horse's foal papers. Use the Jockey Club's new designation "Sold as Retired from Racing" (it used to be "Sold Without Pedigree") and sell the horse for $1.00, or whatever, as a non-racing prospect.

I mean, sure, if the owners are not going to take any interest at all in the transfer of ownership of their horse after a trainer tells them that the horse should be retired, and just say "OK... we don't care, just do whatever you want to get rid of the horse, with or without the papers...it doesn't matter to us..." then several outcomes could arise.

How did the owners not have a handle on the sale, even if they designate the trainer to find a buyer?

At the end of a racing career, or in this case the supposed end of the racing career four months after the claim, there is a little bit of tidying up and paperwork to be done to make sure the horse really is retired... and stays that way. If owners do not want to bother with this extra effort, then... whatever.

And if the owners don't care if active papers are going with their horse that they just sold then they could pretty much expect to see it racing again, right?

Again, are you claiming something specifically incompetent about this trainer, or something specifically underhanded?

.

[chadk66]

the owners that do make money in this game are owners that always do what's in the horses best interest. those that do what's in their wallets best interest always seem to loose in the end. If an owner came to me and wanted me to claim a 10k horse for him and he was a first time owner my first question to him was can you afford to loose 20K this week and not have it alter your lifestyle?

[johnhannibalsmith]

Originally Posted by 5k-claim

...Again, are you claiming something specifically incompetent about this trainer,...

.

Without even looking, I can guess exactly who the trainer and connections are just based on the fact that Mr. Shemp posted. If you were to search his posts, I think it would take about twenty seconds tops to figure out what I assume to be the target here.

For those that haven't followed, Mr. Shemp routinely gives updates highlighting the lowlights of his least favorite trainer. I'm pretty sure this isn't just a random observation about something that happened, but would be yet another big shake of salt on the gash.

[Stillriledup]

Originally Posted by northerndancer

The risk/reward curve is stepper in the Thoroughbred game as an owner compared to that of the harness game.

The harness horse will race within a limited range. If you claim one for $10,000 the horse will run between $7,500 and $12,500 but most of the time he will be a $10,000 claimer. Therefore your risk of capital is much lower when compared to the thoroughbred. The differences in claiming levels between the TBred and harness is the difference maker.

Harness will offer claiming levels of $5,000, $6,000, $7,500, $8,000, $10,000, $12,500, $15,000, $17,500 & $25,000. Find your level and you will be running at that level for months or years.

TBred you will have $5,000, $7,500, $10,000, $12,500, $16,000, $20,000, $25,000. You have all seen it when punting a horse whose last start was for $20,000 dropping in for $10,000. These types of class drops do not happen very often in the harness side of the game.

As an owner you can make money in the game (both harness and TBred). I have found it easier to turn a profit in the harness area. The best example I can offer is the harness game is comparable to the grocery store. They make the profit on low margins high volume. The TBred is a home builder. They may only put up 20 homes a year but the profit margin is much higher.

The harness game you have a short memory if your horse breaks or draws a bad post you realize oh well next start is only 7 days away.

In the TBred if you have a horse that gets scratched day off due to being sore or runs a bad race or comes off the turf you realize you have another 21-28 days before you run. Now throw in a bad effort off the 21-28 days you have just absorbed 2 opportunities of no revenue and 60 days of expenses to cover.

The best way to be an owner is to gather 4 or 5 close friends throw in $5,000 a piece and go claim a $12,500 to $16,000 horse. You will have a few months in reserve to pay the bills. Race the horse where it will be competitive and go on with it. There is no better feeling then cheering on your horse as it comes down the stretch. You feel like you are running along side of that animal.

I think the "4 or 5 friends" idea is a good one, the one thing would be that the person who knows the most about the game needs to be the racing manager and the other guys have to go in as "silent" partners....the last thing you want is to lose friendships because you can't agree on how to manage the horse. One guy has to call the shots and the other guys are the investors.

It might even be better to get 4 or 5 NON friends who know NOTHING about horse racing, but have 5k...that way, you won't have the ego from the other friends who THINK they "know the game" because they picked a winner once upon a time.

[onefast99]

Originally Posted by Robert Goren

I have always thought that owning a horse is the meeting place where a fool and his money part company. Very few got rich owning horse and whole bunch got poor owning them. I dare say it easier to make money betting on them than it is owning them and we all know hard that is.

Tell the guys who bought Lavaman that! There are many success stories in this game, there are many who have failed miserably also. In the past 11 years we have had good ones and bad ones, at the end of the day you hope to break even.

[onefast99]

Originally Posted by chadk66

the owners that do make money in this game are owners that always do what's in the horses best interest. those that do what's in their wallets best interest always seem to loose in the end. If an owner came to me and wanted me to claim a 10k horse for him and he was a first time owner my first question to him was can you afford to loose 20K this week and not have it alter your lifestyle?

If they are looking to get invlolved on the cheaper side of racing(lower level claimers)all they need to do is have you pick up a horse thats hot in the claim box(easier said then done)and hope you aren't the last guy to own that horse.

[chadk66]

Originally Posted by onefast99

If they are looking to get invlolved on the cheaper side of racing(lower level claimers)all they need to do is have you pick up a horse thats hot in the claim box(easier said then done)and hope you aren't the last guy to own that horse.

The problem is claiming is a major gamble. the horse could drop dead at the head of the stretch five minutes after you drop the claim. Rare, but I've seen it happen.

[northerndancer]

Originally Posted by chadk66

The problem is claiming is a major gamble. the horse could drop dead at the head of the stretch five minutes after you drop the claim. Rare, but I've seen it happen.

A little story of how I got into this great game. My wife suggested that I take $20,000 and go claim a race horse since it was something I always wanted to do. I spent 6 months on the backside of the track (Fort Erie & Woodbine) getting to know the people and how things worked. I interviewed 10 trainers and selected a trainer. Converted my US$ into CDN$ in 1995 getting $1.35 to the $1. I decide on a trainer and we go looking for a horse. We spot one at Woodbine a hard knocking ultra competitive horse from a decent outfit.

We end up dropping a claim slip on this 3/5 shot at Woodbine. The horse was in for $16,000. I was watching the SAT back when you could get the races on C Band SAT dish for free. The horse ran a game 2nd to a long shot. Real tough stretch run bobbing heads and he lost the photo.

I am watching my monster gallop out (trainer had called before the race to tell me we won the 4 way shake on the horse) very strong. I have the biggest smile on my face. I not only became a participant in the greatest games which is horse racing but appear to have claimed a real nice horse.

I go out to dinner waiting for my phone to ring to let me know how the horse cooled out. No call. So about 9:00 pm that night I call the trainer. He sounds like he lost his best friend. I say hey I am so excited he replies.... why. I said we claimed a nice horse. He states did you see what happened on the gallop out. I say no..... what happened. He took a bad step and the jock jumped off the horse had to be vanned off.

The horse had a chipped sesamoid bone. The horse never started again. We spent 6 months trying to rehabbing him but the ankle fused on us.

It was the best lesson I could of ever been provided. It taught me how difficult of a game this is from an ownership end.

Even after the rough start 18 years later and still have a blast.

Oh yeah to add a salt to the wound.... the horse that won the race came back with a positive test. Great for the owners I claimed the horse from not for me.