Three words: hundreds of millions.
Race horse California Chrome won the Kentucky Derby easily and the Preakness by showing the courage of a champion. He is racing’s greatest gift: proof that the little guy can, in fact, grab the brass ring and turn a humble dream into legend, celebrity, and millions of dollars.
I bred, raised, and raced Thoroughbreds for 17 years and loved every heartbreaking minute of it. The animals were the highlight. The low light? The drug cheats and frustrations that nature insists are part of the business.
For example, trainer Steve Asmussen, temporarily nominated for possible Hall of Fame induction before his nomination was withdrawn, is a well known chemist. His bad tests and exorbitant vet bills (to his owners) are no secret within the industry. When you race your horses fairly — relying on hay, oats, and water — to do the nourish your animal, it is a bitter pill to swallow when an injected horse beats you by a nose and collects 60 percent of the purse.
Every foal, whether he or she can run a lick or not, is a miracle. Nearly a year in the incubator, a zillion things can go wrong. Even upon birth there is no guarantee that what you tried to breed for is what you will get. Crooked legs, poor confirmation, illness, and temperament conspire to derail an owner’s dream.
California Chrome is a horse for the every man, living proof that the supreme being can ordain greatness upon the soul of an animal born to the the unlikeliest origins. Chrome’s dam (mother) is modest by breeding standards, the kind many horsemen would never believe is good enough to pay the bills to breed. His sire (father) is also quite pedestrian by blueblood standards. Hundreds of more highly regarded stallions stand coast-to-coast throughout America.
My partners and I never bred to such a modest mare or stallion. We spent more and got less. So has everyone else in the business. The last horse I can recall who outran his pedigree this dramatically was my favorite runner of all time — Holy Bull — who electrified the Florida circuit with his astounding turn of foot and champion’s competitive heart. Chrome’s pedigree is even more modest than Bull’s.
Conventional wisdom in the breeding business holds that bluebloods — the regal purebred families of lore — afford the best chance to breed a great race horse. Top mares sell for millions and top stallions are worth ten times more. Racing is called the sport of kings for a reason. I am fond of saying the sport can turn billionaires into millionaires and millionaires into working men.
I got out not because I wanted to but because I had to. I no longer could afford it, despite having a great team advising me on acquisitions and sales. The horse business is a tough game — a really tough game. The motto for every newbie who dreams of entering needs to be, “If you sweat it . . . don’t bet it.”
Keeping a mare in the breeding cycle costs about $15,000 a year plus the stud fee to your chosen stallion. Lucky Pulpit, Chrome’s sire, cost $2,000 to breed to (back when the mare was bred). Breeding to a top-shelf stallion will set you back $100,000 or more. For that you get a live foal guarantee; but once that baby stands and nurses — no matter how crooked or sickly — you need to cough up the cash.
Conformation and breathing are important but the most important part of any race horse is invisible — that being his or her will to win. It is the competitive fire that powers their flesh and bone.
It is harder to get a horse to the race track than it is for them to win any race at any level. Half of foals born each year never race. Half that manage to get to the starting gate and race never win — regardless how cheap you run them.
In my upcoming feature film “Tuki,” I wrote that winning requires a leprechaun in the barn. California Chrome’s owners are Perry and Denise Martin from Yuba City, California and Steve and Carolyn Coburn of Topaz Lake, Nevada. They own the Godzilla of leprechauns.
The Martins own a 70 percent share in the horse so they are Chrome’s managing owners. Originally each couple owned a 5 percent share in the dam, Love the Chase, through membership in Blinkers On Racing Stable. Blinkers On Racing Stable was a band of little guys, just as so many syndicates are that fill the undercards of small track across America.Martin had been a member since 2007 and Coburn bought his share in 2008.
When Blinkers On Racing Stable was dissolved, both the Coburns and the Martins wanted to buy Love the Chase for themselves but decided to form a partnership. They bought out the rest of the guys, causing a casual observer to remark that only a “dumb ass” would buy her.
Because of that, Coburn and Martin chose to name their racing operation DAP Racing, which stands for “Dumb Ass Partners.” A caricature of a buck-toothed jackass adorns the back of their racing silks .
Coburn, the more outgoing of the two old men, considers himself “an every man.” He grew up in central California and once worked at a job as a modern-day cowboy, herding cattle at a feedlot. He now works as a press operator for a company that makes magnetic strips for credit, debit, and gift cards. His wife Carolyn retired two months ago from a career working in payroll in the health care industry.
The Martins own and operate Martin Testing Laboratories (MTL), a division of Materials Technology Laboratories, Inc. located at a business park that used to be McClellan Air Force Base. MTL provides product assurance and reliability testing of new technologies and materials such as automobile airbags and medical equipment.
Perry Martin described the items MTL tests as “the kind where somebody dies if something goes wrong.” Originally from Chicago, Perry has an MBA, plus degrees in both applied and solid state physics. Wife Denise is MLT’s senior chemist. Perry is a smart and introverted sort. In 1999 he wrote the Electronic Failure Analysis Handbook, published by McGraw-Hill.
By every definition California Chrome proves that the little guy — the working man and woman with a dream — can defy the odds and summit the Olympus of racing greatness.
The net result for the industry will be an influx in new partnerships, new owners with a dream, new babies on the ground, and hundreds of millions infused into the breeding and racing business. The breeding industry has contracted significantly over the past seven years and California Chrome is as big a gift as the business could possibly hope for.
Soon the Martins and Coburns will be in New York, finding out whether or not their lone homebred to race can win the first Triple Crown since Affirmed did it in 1978 with my good friend Steve Cauthen aboard. Affirmed’s race against Alydar, which cemented the legends of both horse and rider, is one of the greatest in the history of the sport, well worth watching on YouTube.
I hope California Chrome finds a suitable opponent to challenge him the same way; and I hope he is able to prove he is a true champion for all of us to enjoy.