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 great career so it was fitting he broke his maiden and won his first stake race there.  We sold shares in this promising Pa. bred as a two year old to our co-owner group at a value price ($40,000) and he's earned over $100,000 in just his two year old year. This is a very promising colt, bred to improve as he matures, so there’s a lot to look forward to for all his owners.

The Fire’s Finale group was extremely popular but almost every one of the owners were people who did NOT purchase a share in his full brother, Start A Fire, the previous year. The likely reason for that is understandable, but the logic was faulty. Start a Fire was a dud; a promising horse who turned out to be a washout. He trained great but simply had zero ability. After a series of crawlingly slow works when asked for speed, we entered him in a spot for his debut where we thought as a good-looking Pa. bred he might look appealing at the right price (even with slow works) and get claimed. He ran up the track that day and fortunately was claimed from us for $16,000. Since then, he was off the board in every start for nearly a year for his new owners, until he finally beat a very weak field of $5,000 maidens at Penn National. Bottom line, he simply can’t run a lick.

You can absolutely, 1000% percent understand why someone who bought a share in Start A Fire would say to themselves when offered a share in his full brother “I don’t care how good-looking he is, or how well he’s trained, or how much of a value you say he is. I’ve seen this movie before, no thanks!”. The problem (and the teachable moment) is, much as that ‘seems’ logical, it’s exactly 1000% the wrong way to evaluate racehorses. There’s an old baseball saying about this some people may recall, “Mrs. Mays had 6 children but only one Willie”. In other words, despite all the BS people are sold by disreputable sales consignors, sales companies, agents and syndicates, being a full brother to a good or bad horse has little to do with any horse’s chances of racing (or breeding) success.

The track is literally littered with horses people paid a fortune for at sales who are full bothers or sisters to champions and ended up like Start A Fire. What matters most is the unique physical individual, not the fact that it's a full brother to one successful or unsuccessful horse. If you look at the produce records of most mares, they have one or two ‘hits’ (good horses), one or two ‘ok’ runners, and the rest are horses that for one reason or another struggle to make it to the winner’s circle at any level. Yes, there are of course rare examples of mares that produce multiple stakes winners, and more than a few mares that never produce a decent horse. Pedigree matters, but a lot less and in very different ways than what people think. When knowledgable, honest people attend a sale and/or evaluate a potential racehorse, the physical individual comes first. Its conformation, how it moves (in a walk and on the track in a gallop) is where you begin, not with a pedigree page. Of course even then, there are no guarantees because you just don’t know until they run which one has heart and inherent ability. Yes, if the horse has a series of brothers – sisters who were exceptionally good or exceptionally bad on the track it matters, but no truly capable horseman would buy or not buy a horse (or try to sell one) based on one successful or unsuccessful sibling.

We hope you’ll use these two full brothers with such different racetrack results as a valuable lesson as to what does, and does not, matter most when buying a potential racehorse.