End of the Road

I reached an agreement yesterday to sell No Lip and Swift Progress. We got back what we paid for him so we ended up making a little $$ thanks to his recent win. The same cannot be said for No Lip - we only recived a fraction of what we paid for him. Disregard the entry notice for him on Wednesday - he was sold with the understanding that he would get a few months off to recuperate from a long, hard campaign this year that saw him race at 5 different tracks around the country.

Over the next few weeks, once all the Novemember expenses are paid for, I will calculate a final share price (~$4) and send out checks to all of the partners. Obviously, I wish the final price was higher, but the last couple years were challenging and at this time I thought it was best to get out with a decent amount of our original capital in tact.

I thank you all for your participation. For me, it was a realization of a goal to try my hand at this game and have some fun along the way. I just hope each of my partners enjoyed the ride enough to at least partially offset the financial loss.

It is now time for this amateur blogger to sign off one final time.

Thanks to all who came along for this journey.

-Web

Going out on top?

Swift Progress ran a very good race last night to win comfortably. SP does not have a big burst of speed – he is more of a grinder. The key with that type is to get them started early in hopes you can wear down the others and not get stopped like he did in his last race when others interfered with him in the stretch.

Before the race, I was watching online in my office with another WG partner and I mentioned to him that this very well could be our last race as a stable. It is still my plan to liquidate the stable prior to year-end and distribute the cash pro rata. That said, I would like to get a “fair” price for SP and No Lip. Hopefully, yesterday’s race will help fetch that price I am looking for. If I can’t sell them, then it will be on to a yet to be determined “Plan B”.

If this was indeed our last race, it will be nice to go out on a high note.

Baby Steps

From conversations with the trainer, I was expecting improved efforts from our 2 runners yesterday in their second races over the Hawthorne strip. Improvement was achieved albeit in small increments.

Swift Progress deserved a better fate but had to settle for being DQ’d into 4th place after being severely compromised by other runners in the stretch. There is no way to know for sure how we would have finished with a clean trip, but I think he would have been no worse than third. Under our revised expense model, the difference between 3rd and 4th means losing a little money this month on him rather than breaking even.

We were able to break even this month on No Lip after his speed lasted much longer into the stretch and he hung on for third. Signs are encouraging that after leaving Canterbury in pretty rough shape physically, he is starting to come around a little and should be more fit for his next outing.

Update

As of this morning, it does look like there will be a couple scratches and the race we were looking at next week for No Lip did not fill. Therefore, we will go ahead and put him in the staring gate and hope for the best today.

One in for sure

We have entered each horse for a race this weekend, but we will likely have just one runner. No Lip drew in as the 2nd "Also Eligible" meaning there would need to be 2 scratches before we got to run. Even then, he would be stuck on the far outside post position. Rather, we will try to find a race for him somehwere next week.

Third time was the charm for Swift Progress - after 2 overfills, we finally drew into the field on Sunday. Let's hope the month off and change of scenery does him some good.

3Q11 Summary

It was not a good quarter for the stable’s financials. We had very limited success on the track and as the Canterbury meet came to a close, the decision was made to cut the cord on a few of the horses and realize some losses. The prospects for 4Q11 don’t look much brighter as the first few days of entries at Hawthorne would suggest that the competition in Chicago will be much harder than originally thought. For example, we tried entering Swift Progress in a race that was barely filling with enough entries during their Spring meet that had 34 entries this week. Translation: we likely won’t catch any weak fields to run in and we will have to rely on drawing into the races as they come up.

The best plan right now is to run each horse at the lowest possible levels in hopes of hitting the board enough to simply offset their expenses. Ideally, they will get claimed away from us and we can proceed with winding down the stable and cashing everyone out. As of 9/30, I calculated a share value of $4.35. Approximately 85% of this valuation is represented by cash. So as I said earlier, if we can come close to breaking even on the cash flow, we should be able to liquidate at or near that share valuation prior to year-end.

The Bottom Line

The true gain/loss of a horse owned cannot be measured until their run is over. With the 3 sales over the weekend, I took a quick look at how we fared on the horses I purchased specifically to run at CBY over the summer. We profited about $3k on Ready to Thrill and lost about $4k and $3k on Afleetmovingangel and Blumin Won, respectively. Thus, our “entertainment” cost for watching them run in person was roughly $4k total.

My goal with these 3 was to simply break even. If we could have won just one more race, that goal would have been met. Alternatively, if I could have sold each of them for $1k more, we would have ended up ok. However, selling them at that price proved to be more difficult than asking Joe Mauer to play with the sniffles.

Cut Bait, Move On

After an encouraging start to the CBY season, the last few weeks have been a grind. I had made the decision earlier in the week that there were only 2 horses I wanted to still own after the meet (No Lip and Swift Progress). Selling the others proved to be more difficult than I thought. Usually you find some willing parties moving on to other circuits, but I had no such luck and I settled for the best offer I could find ($1k each). More importantly, with transport costs and other expenses looming, it was the deal that made the most fiscal sense.

The other 2 will move on to Chicago and run at the lower levels there with the thought that we could move to an all cash position by the end of the year which will provide a good opprtunity for those wanting to cash out their shares.

Thus we bid adieu to Shakopee in the hopes greener pastures lie ahead elsewhere.

Who Do you believe?

The trainer said we got a bad ride. The jockey says the horse never picked up the bit. I personally thought the race was just too long. A variety of reasons for why No Lip came up about 15 feet short on Sunday. However, that 15 feet represented the difference between 1st and 5th and a paltry $90 check. At least Blumin Won and Swift Progress picked up more meaningful checks for their second place efforts over the weekend.

Upcoming races: Angel is all set to run Friday night. On the other hand, barring a bunch of rain, we will scratch Ready to Thrill if an easier spot becomes available over the weekend. We have entered him at least a half dozen times over the last week and took this spot mainly out of frustration and the hope that rain could force the race off the turf.

Upon Further Review

While driving home last night, I realized I forgot the most recent female jockey in our employ. So rather than jeopardizing my shot at the WG HOF, I might as well give the answers to my trivia question:

1) Helen Vanek (Leather N Lace twice @ Tampa)
2) Tammy Piemerini (Chaffed Lips @ Tampa)
3) Helen King (Iron Boy @ Prairie Meadows)
4) Inez Karlsson (Art of Diplomacy @ Hawthorne)
5) Inez Karlsson (Oculuna @ Arlington)

I think that covers all of them. On that same drive, I was putting the list of HOF members together in my head and have come up with the following categories:

Horses (no particular order): Tytus, Silver Peagus, Lite Brigade, Go Go Diablo, Stumbling Block, Starlet Sky, Iron Boy, Dawn Raider, Chief Magistrate, and Leather N Lace.

These members are not necessarily the fastest or highest earners, but they all occupy a special place in the stable for various reasons.

Jockeys: Daniel Centeno and Paul Nolan

Centeno was an automatic first ballot and Nolan was added by the Veterans Committee.

Trainer: Jamie Ness (*)

Ness' plaque needs an (*) because we'll never know for sure what he was feeding the horses to make them run so well, but we cannot ignore the impressive stats he piled up.

Investor/Partner: Mark Kane

While he was not an original member and he isn't the largest investor, Mark's contributions to the stable are numerous. He embodies the spirit of what this investment is supposed to be (he even has the ink on his arm to prove it). He attends all of the races, has traveled across the country to some of these races, and he couldn't care less about his ROI. No one has given our horses more treats in the barn or sponsered more barn tours. He has outfitted a number of folks in WG gear and taken in a couple strays when their racing days were over. Mark is always the first in line outside the winners circle to purchase a beverage for those in attendance. Whenever the business/admin burden annoys me and I think about getting out, he is the one I think about when I buy another horse in hopes of landing the "big one". He plays the lottery and says when he wins, we'll go on a shopping spree.

If that resume doesn't warrant the HOF, there should be no such honor. So the next time you see Mark, give him a nod of appreciation.