At Kenwood we pride ourselves on the truth, not industry hype. Here's some sobering numbers on what purchasing the highest priced horses at sales produces..... How tough is it to buy a good horse at a sale? Here's some interesting stats but let's begin with a personal example...Last April, Kenwood pinhooked a very nice colt by Run Happy, who is now named Happy Is A Choice (great name!). We purchased him privately post sale for $45,000, which seemed like an exceptional bargain especially given how strong the sale-market was. We sent him to Nick deMeric in Ocala to be broken and he proved to be ..read more

The article, The Week in Review: How to Buy a Derby Winner for $1,000, from TDN (Thoroughbred Daily News) May 2nd speaks for itself and is really worth reading. This year’s Kentucky Derby winner was purchased for $1,000 as a yearling and re-sold as a two-year-old at OBS (the same venue where Kenwood Racing buys most of our two year olds) for $35,000. This is why we buy horses that offer value; good physical individuals that move well with solid but not fancy pedigrees that have a shot to really pay off. We don’t mark up horses and invest our own $ in every horse we purchase right al ..read more

When evaluating horses for claiming, you generally begin by looking for a horse that can run back for you in a matter of weeks with a shot to get to the winner’s circle. That’s the value of claiming vs. purchasing a unraced yearling or two year old; a quicker - lower cost way to buy a horse that can win and make money. While many people like the idea of buying young(er) horses, it’s frequently veteran runners with proven records that make the most successful claims because once a horse has shown an ability to consistently run, remain sound and win, it’s more likely to keep doing that for you ..read more

Imagine, you buy shares in a horse that ends up winning (among other things), the $1,000,000 Haskell, the $3,000,000 Kentucky Derby and the $6,000,000 Breeder’s Cup Classic. As you celebrate your incredibly good fortune and anticipate the huge payback on your modest investment, you receive a message from the syndicate manager that your payout from these races will be…. nothing. Incredibly, that appears to be the case according to multiple sources with Authentic for the approximately 5000 people who purchased ‘micro shares’ in the horse through MyRacehorse.com. As Jay Hovdey put it after the K ..read more

For anyone who is an owner with Kenwood Racing, and/or owns horses on their own or with other syndicates, or ever has thought of owning a racehorse, the racetrack results of two full brothers Kenwood Racing bred and raised offers a value ‘teachable moment’ When Kenwood Racing's homebred Fire's Finale won the Pa. Nursery stakes on December 7th it was a special moment for our entire team. Kenwood Racing bred and raised this horse, the final foal out of our beloved multiple stakes-winning mare Exchanging Fire (thus his name), who interestingly was stabled at Parx for much of her g ..read more

We’ve had a number of previous blog posts looking at what you get when you pay top dollar for fast workout times at two year old sales. This week, our friends at Two-Year-Old Sales Preview Watch (who are doing a real service to our game by offering much needed facts instead of the usual mis-leading sales hype) profiled the results of bloodstock agent Jacob West and the well-known syndicate Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners at the two year old sales the last few years. The article is re-printed below; the numbers speak for themselves and they aren’t pretty. Now it happens we know Jacob West becaus ..read more

Kenwood Racing’s record has been nothing short of phenomenal this summer, with ten wins, eight seconds and two thirds from twenty-six starts in July and August, including four wins and five seconds from nine starts at our home base of Monmouth Park. Obviously when you are hitting at 40% win and 80% in-the-money for an extended period of time you are doing something right. Even for a successful stable these are exceptional numbers. Rather than just highlight our success, we’d like to use this as a ‘teachable moment’ in terms of how the racing game works…   Elite stables look to maintain r ..read more

Our friends at Two Year Old Sales Watch had an interesting column July 30th titled "The Two-Year Old Money Pit", which we thought was worth discussing. While a lot of sales companies and consignors may not like what they are saying, the numbers don't lie. As shown in many of our own previous Blog posts, paying top dollar and/or buying horses with the fastest work times simply doesn’t pay off the vast majority of the time. Sales companies, sellers and agents don’t want people to know the facts because their business depends to a great extent on convincing uneducated people to overpay for ..read more

Our friends at Two-Year-Old Sales Preview Watch, a great group of horsemen dedicated (as we are) to giving people the facts about thoroughbred ownership sent us the article below. Take a look and at our commentary at the end…   TWO-YEAR-OLD SALES PREVIEW WATCH "Are fast preview times predictive of racetrack success?" previewatch@yahoo.com The Blood-Horse magazine occasionally interviews buyers and sellers of the highest-priced horses sold in two-year-old auctions. Like many horsemen, we usually read the articles but lose track of the individual horses as we have plenty of our own to thin ..read more

As detailed in previous blogs - columns; what matters most is NOT the workout time, it’s HOW the horse does it.  Not that ‘slow’ works are better than “fast” works but it’s essential to both understand what workout times mean, at the sales or on the racetrack, and be clear about just how accurate (or perhaps more correctly how inaccurate) published workouts really are. First, it’s important to fully grasp that almost any horse can be pushed to work ‘fast’, but that’s not the goal of most works. They pay for fast race times, not fast work times, which is why if you want to know how y ..read more