Welcome to Kentucky Horsemen Group

Welcome to Kentucky Horsemen Group!

After spending much of September at the Keeneland Yearling Sale, we came away with ownership interests in six yearlings, a lot of excitement, and about six months to find out just how good our decisions were.

And I figured, why not bring everyone along for the ride?

Kentucky Horsemen Group was built around a goal of making disciplined investments in young Thoroughbreds, developing them into more valuable assets, and ultimately generating strong returns for our investors.

We love horse racing, obviously. But I also love the business side of this sport. Finding an undervalued horse, watching that horse develop, studying the market, and figuring out the right time to sell can be just as exciting as watching one cross the finish line first.

Our strategy has two primary paths.

The first is the traditional yearling-to-two-year-old pinhook. We buy yearlings at Keeneland, develop and train them through the winter, and bring them back to market at the OBS two-year-old sales in March or April. The hope is that the combination of physical development, training, and a strong breeze significantly increases what buyers are willing to pay for them.

The second is a little different. We look for horses capable of racing early in their two-year-old season, ideally at places like Keeneland and Churchill Downs. If we can demonstrate their ability on the racetrack, especially in high-quality maiden or stakes races, we can potentially create even more value and sell them as proven racehorses.

We'll evaluate each horse individually. Sometimes the right decision will be to sell at OBS, sometimes to bring one home and race, and sometimes to take a profit earlier if the opportunity presents itself.

Longer term, my goal is to build a track record of returning capital and generating profits that gives us the flexibility to retain full or partial ownership of some of our very best prospects. Those horses could continue racing for us, and in the right circumstances even develop meaningful breeding value.

That's where this can get really exciting. We want to build a financially successful racing operation that eventually allows us to keep some exceptional horses for ourselves.

There will be plenty of fun days at the track along the way, but the buying, developing, valuing, and selling of these horses is a big part of the game we enjoy. And it's the part of the business I really want to share through this journal.

My partner Shane Barbour and I spend a lot of time studying pedigrees, sales results, racing statistics, and the physical attributes of young horses. Our third partner, Nick Jacoby, bring a long history of asset managing on a large corporate scale that he applies to our business model and strategy.

I'm probably more of the numbers and data guy, while Shane has an incredible eye for the actual horse standing in front of us. We don't always agree, which I think makes the process better.

The goal is to find value where we think other buyers may have overlooked something, then give our horses the best opportunity to develop.

Of course, with young racehorses, there are no guarantees. That's part of what makes this business both fascinating and occasionally frustrating.

I've been sending regular updates to our ownership group, and I've really enjoyed writing them.

There is so much happening in this business that most racing fans never get to see. The auctions, the pedigrees, the training, the personalities of the horses, and the decisions that ultimately determine whether a horse sells for $50,000 or $500,000.

Even when our horses aren't racing, the performances of their sires and siblings can change what they're worth.

I want to share more of those stories.

We'll have horse profiles, training updates, racing previews, pedigree analysis, and plenty of behind-the-scenes coverage as we work our way toward Ocala and the spring racing season.

Eventually, I hope to add interviews, podcasts, and video coverage as well.

For now, we have six young horses, a lot of work ahead of us, and some pretty interesting stories already developing.

Thanks for following along.

George Barrett
Kentucky Horsemen Group