Amazon Fillies

As we get closer to the Breeders’ Cup, you can’t help but think about the stars of the past, the champions of the present, and the ones waiting in the wings for their turn. That’s the beauty of this game. We’re all chasing the same dream, the pinnacle of the sport, campaigning a champion. And Lord knows, people spend enough money at the auctions and on breeding to get one. Some spend fortunes trying to buy what others spend a lifetime hoping to find.

Having participated in yearling sales online, digitally, and in person, I can tell you there’s no shortage of opinions on where to find the next great horse. Everybody has a theory, a system, a secret, and usually a story about the one they almost bought. The bloodstock business has more experts than the federal government has bureaucrats.

But I can tell you from experience, having navigated this market with our partners at Racingwithbruno, finding quality on a limited budget is a different proposition altogether. You learn to look beyond the obvious, to question conventional wisdom, and to understand that the horse standing in front of you today might be a whole lot better tomorrow than the market gives him credit for.

For us, 2026 has been a breakout year. We have three mares, with Darby Shaw proving to be a producer with Banksy’s, and two more two-year-olds waiting in the wings for a late-season debut. That’s exciting. Not the kind of excitement that comes with a champagne bottle and a camera crew, but the kind that comes from watching a plan begin to take shape.

We’ve worked hard to expand our yearling inventory. We now have six yearlings, two bred by us, the half-brothers to Banksy’s and Sonny’s Style, and four purchased at auction. We have two Heartland foals on the ground, three more expected in 2027, and we’re looking to finalize a deal involving White Abarrio.

We’re building something. Carefully, deliberately, and without pretending we have the resources of a sovereign nation.

And I believe I understand the market I’m in. My market is fillies. Big, strong, Amazonian fillies. The kind that might not win a beauty contest in September but could be carrying a whole lot of horsepower beneath the hood by the time they turn three.

Look at the names that have defined the last two decades: Rachel Alexandra, Zenyatta, Swiss Skydiver, and Shedaresthedevil. And this year, Nitrogen fits that mold.

Rachel Alexandra was the most delicate of the four. Bred by Dolphus Morrison and later purchased by Stonestreet, she became one of the great champions of her generation. We know that story.

But Rachel was a homebred, so let’s set her aside for a moment. The other three were auction purchases, and their stories tell us something about the business we’re in.

Zenyatta was purchased at Keeneland for $60,000 by David Ingordo on behalf of the Moss family. She had a skin condition, and despite having a Grade 1-winning sister, Balance, on her page, she didn’t exactly set the auction ring on fire.

Sixty thousand dollars.

Think about that for a minute. The mare who would go on to win 19 consecutive races before suffering the lone defeat of her career in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, who would become one of the most recognizable names in American racing, sold for the kind of money that barely gets a second look in some of today’s sales rings.

Then there was Swiss Skydiver. Kenny McPeek purchased her at Keeneland for $35,000. She went on to earn more than $2 million and win the Preakness Stakes, beating Kentucky Derby winner Authentic in the process.

Thirty-five thousand dollars.

And Shedaresthedevil? Well, she had a rather checkered history in the auction ring.

She was purchased for $100,000 as a weanling. When she resurfaced as a yearling at Keeneland, she failed to meet her reserve, RNA at $20,000. Something about her wasn’t attracting buyers. Maybe it was a troubling veterinary report, maybe her size and appearance made her an awkward fit for the prevailing market, or maybe she simply didn’t look like the sort of filly someone could hustle through the two-year-old-in-training sales.

Whatever the reason, the market passed.

Norm Casse got her to the races, and she won first time out. She was sold after her debut for a modest sum. After three starts on the West Coast, she was offered as a horse of racing age at Keeneland November. Brad Cox and Flurry Racing acquired her for $280,000.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Shedaresthedevil earned approximately $2.7 million on the track and later sold as a broodmare prospect for $5 million.

Now, I’m not suggesting that every oversized filly with a questionable veterinary report is the next Zenyatta. If that were the case, we’d all be retired on a private island by now. But there is a lesson here, and it’s one I believe the market too often ignores.

These three fillies were not obvious, foolproof investments. They weren’t auction-ring certainties. Nobody was standing around guaranteeing their future greatness. Their yearling demand was modest, and in Shedaresthedevil’s case, the market effectively said, “No thanks.”

Yet all three became elite racehorses.

The common denominator? They weren’t necessarily what the market wanted at the time they were offered.

And that brings us to the problem with today’s obsession with speed, speed, and more speed.

The market wants those two-year-old-in-training prospects before they’ve even finished their yearling season. Buyers want the horse that looks like it can breeze an eighth in 9.4 or faster. They want the flashy mover, the quick one, the horse that makes everybody turn their heads when the clock stops.

There’s nothing wrong with speed. We’re in the horse-racing business, after all, not the competitive walking business. But somewhere along the line, we’ve started confusing the ability to breeze fast in March with the ability to become a champion in October, November, or the following year.

Those are two entirely different propositions.

The big, strong filly with the scope to develop into a formidable three-year-old can get pushed to the back burner because she doesn’t fit the current sales-ring fashion. She might need time. She might need to grow into herself. She might not be the sort of horse you can put on a video, watch breeze a quarter-mile, and immediately convince somebody to part with six or seven figures.

And in this market, time seems to be the one thing nobody wants to buy.

Patience has left the building. Gone. Vamoosed. Took its bags and never looked back.

Buyers want today, not tomorrow. They want a yearling that looks ready to go straight to the gate, or one that can breeze an eighth or a quarter in a time that gets the buyers reaching for their checkbooks. The market has become so focused on immediate results that the longer-term possibilities are sometimes treated as an inconvenience.

And because everybody knows everybody in the bloodstock business, the same opinions tend to circulate. One person likes a particular physical type, another follows suit, and pretty soon an entire room is looking for the same horse.

That’s how you get a market full of people chasing the same thing while potentially overlooking something valuable standing right in front of them.

I understand why Zenyatta, Swiss Skydiver, and Shedaresthedevil were overlooked. None of them would have been an obvious fit for the two-year-old-in-training mentality that dominates so much of today’s buying culture. Their appeal required somebody to look beyond the immediate picture and think about what the horse could become.

Nitrogen is the next in line, she can be overpowering at times. A true Amazon.

Nitogren was a homebred for DJ Stable.

Now, the difference between buying a horse and investing in a horse?

One requires you to recognize what’s standing in front of you. The other requires you to imagine what might be there a year or two down the road.

And that second part takes judgment, experience, and a willingness to be wrong. It also takes the courage to go against the crowd when the crowd is convinced it has everything figured out.

At Racingwithbruno, we don’t have the luxury of buying our way out of mistakes. We have to think. We have to look for value. We have to understand the market, but we also have to recognize where the market might be getting it wrong.

There is no such thing as a perfect horse. There are horses with flaws, horses that need time, horses that don’t fit the fashionable mold, and horses whose eventual value isn’t apparent to everybody standing around the sales ring.

Sometimes the most expensive horse is the one everybody wants today. Sometimes the best investment is the one nobody quite knows what to do with.

And sometimes, if you’re willing to look beyond the stopwatch, the sales price, and the opinions of the crowd, you might just find yourself holding a champion.

That’s what we’re all chasing. Not the fastest breeze video, not the biggest auction receipt, and certainly not the approval of the people who think they know everything.

We’re chasing the horse.

Because the market might tell you what a horse is worth today.

It can’t always tell you what that horse will be worth tomorrow.