Steve Brunetti's Red Oak Farm and Red Oak Stable have a long family history dating back to Steve's grandfather who, in the 1950s, owned a horse named Vertex that won 17 of 25 starts and had career earnings of $453,424. Thoroughbreds have provided a bond that has made its way through three generations and perhaps a fourth, as Brunetti's son is a senior at the University of Kentucky. Now that the operation was fortunately spared the brunt of Hurricane Ian, Brunetti can look ahead to its future.
MarketWatch: What's the current business strategy with Red Oak Farm and Stable?
Steve Brunetti: When you compete against some of the country's best owners, you really need to make a serious investment if you want to operate at those racetracks, and that's something that I've committed to and spoken to (racing manager) Rick Sacco about. Ever since my father passed away, I just want to do everything at a higher level. And that's what we're trying to do: acquire better mares, breed to the better stallions, better horses, and if it means you got to sell some here and there as yearlings, that's what we're going to do. We're going to be a little bit more commercial. We've had a lot of success with the breeding program. My family loves going to Saratoga and we loved going up north this summer, and that's where we want to participate.
MW: Is your son planning on getting into the business?
SB: He wants to get involved, I think more in the casino and apartment house. I guess he was maybe a little bit more cut from the same cloth as my father; not as big a risk taker, a little more conservative. He loves going to the races and went to the Kentucky Derby and the Breeders' Cup. But I don't know if he quite has the same interests as me. When my father bought Hialeah Park in 1977, it was when my mother got ill. And during the weekends and in the summer my father would take me to Hialeah Park every day when I was 10 years old, 11 years old. And when you go to a facility that big—200 acres—and your father's working eight hours a day, you kind of run out of things to do. You can only spend so much time looking at the aviary area that we had, and the shipwreck aquarium and the tram rides. And I used to go to the racing office because that was the area that was closed most of the time when there was no racing going on. And we had these books, the American Racing Manual, and when I was 10 or 11 years old, I used to pick it up and I would read about all the famous racetracks and all the famous horses and owners and jockeys and trainers. And that's how I got involved with it. My son has been a little bit different, just going to the races. But I kind of had a strong understanding of horse racing at a very young age, because I had nothing else to do but read these racing manuals and my father was working, so I kind of learned it from maybe a little bit different perspective than most people do.
MW: When you talked to us a few years ago, you mentioned the desire to have live racing back in Hialeah. Has there been any progress on that dream?
SB: I think that's something that's always probably in the back of our mind and the option's always open. The only thing right now is we'd have to subsidize the race fee, and I'm not really sure that's something we want to get into, plus we have to find a way to get some racing dates that Gulfstream doesn't operate, considering they run year-round. That's not something available for us right now. But, you know, things change. At one point we're a racetrack and we got closed down and next, we're a casino and we're thriving. To be honest, we make more money now than we ever did, much more. So, I guess if the opportunity did arise, we could probably keep an open mind to it. It may be better if a track like Gulfstream decided they wanted to run some of their dates in Hialeah, that might be a better option than as opposed to having two management teams and us trying to find a way to somehow make money on the racing dates.
MW: You've touched on how the operations are evolving, trying to be more of a commercial operation. Tell me how that process has developed.
SB: It came to a point where we were always breeding to Florida stallions, or at least most of the mares we had to Florida stallions. It was probably when I start breeding to Uncle Mo and I started breeding to other stallions in Florida. We had a stallion in Sweet Return who didn't pan out the way my father had hoped. And instead of keep bringing mares to him, I started going to some other Florida stallions and I got lucky with a stallion called Lightnin N Thunder. He ended up being the sire of Feel That Fire, and Feel That Fire is the dam of (multiple grade 1 winner) Mind Control . As I was able to breed a better mare, breed a better horse, I was able to breed to Kentucky stallions. And that's essentially what I've done. If we don't have a mare that's good enough to breed to Kentucky stallions, we don't keep them around anymore. And to substitute that, I had to go to the sale and buy some mares, buy some yearlings, buy some foals just to upgrade the quality of our horses because, you know, you can't breed a $10,000 mare to a stallion in Kentucky with $30,000 stud fee. You have to have some quality, and that's what we've been able to do. I use a lot of analytics—Suzanne Smallwood over at Equix Biomechanics, I've been working with her for over 20 years, and she's done a great job, but I don't think I would be in the situation where we've upgraded the horses or improved our band as much if it wasn't for her.
MW: Part of that process you're talking about at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale, you picked up three yearlings—a Constitution colt (Hip 1736), a City of Light colt (Hip 1795) as well as an Uncle Mo filly (Hip 1888)—and you didn't do it on the first few days. Are you starting to see the trend where there is a greater depth late into the sales?
SB: Yeah, definitely in the yearling sales. You know, sometimes when you go through those first few days, you have to compete against some of those really big-name owners that are there, and they're looking to buy some really high-quality horses. But unfortunately for me, I don't have the same money as a guy like Mike Repole. So I have to do things from a much lesser level. So I usually end up going there usually Day 5, Day 6. The horses that we bought were obviously quite in comparison to other horses that were sold that day. I enlisted Suzanne Smallwood and I am very comfortable with what I bought. We measured their hearts, we measured their biomechanics, we know what we expect out of them; how precocious they should be and how far they should be able to run. The information she provides has been very beneficial. She's kept me from buying a lot of horses because maybe she didn't like them. The most important thing is not what horses you buy, but it's what horses you don't buy.
Actually, I'm working on some partnerships; probably going to end up keeping 50% of those two colts that we bought and sell 50% because they're outstanding. I'm happy just making my own niche. You know, being a medium-size guy in the market. As I said before, I'm happy to contribute because I'm a horse breeder and a horse lover, and I love going to the races.
MW: Speaking of partnerships, you've had a pretty good partnership with Madaket Stables with Mind Control, who year after year, keeps performing well.
SB: We're very proud of Mind Control. Actually, he's probably the best horse I've ever bred and considering that we bred to Stay Thirsty on a $15,000 stud fee and he's earned $1.7 million. And to be honest, we had offers from Japan and a couple of farms in Kentucky to stand him as a stallion in that ballpark, even a little bit higher than that. I'm very proud of his accomplishments. He's been extremely sound. I mean, to sit there with a horse with grade 1 races at 2 and 3 and going strong and still competing in graded stakes as a 6-year-old, he's such a neat horse and I hope he gets a really great opportunity to become a successful stallion.
MW: You've also had success with Goddess of Fire. She's run in three grade 1 races this year. How do you like the way she's developed?
SB: She's really turned into a nice filly. Unfortunately for us, she's been running in these graded stakes and she's been very competitive running second and third, but couldn't quite close the deal in one of the bigger races. But she's another horse we bred on a modest stud fee. I think Mineshaft (her sire) was $15,000 or $20,000 and we received an offer on her from one of Todd's (Pletcher) owners of over a million dollars and we decided we wanted to keep her. Sometimes with these mares, I take such pride in breeding them, it's like someone offering money for your daughter.
MW: Who are some of the horses that you have coming up in the pipeline and you're excited to see whether they're a year away from hitting the track or maybe a little bit further than that?
SB: I have a weanling that's Mind Control's half sister. She's by Uncle Mo and she's probably the most outstanding foal on the farm, according to Darby Dan. I think Darby Dan told me they have 65 foals on the farm and she has to be the best out of all of them. She's big, gorgeous, and good-looking. She's probably, you know, could be a million-dollar yearling. And I'm contemplating maybe that's a horse that we have to sell to pay the bills or, you know, maybe I do a partnership. I was just up at Darby Dan Farm, and I saw our mares; our mares never looked better, our foals never looked better. It's a testament to what Darby Dan has done for us.
