MIKE GILL BATTLES TO WIN RESPECT

Over the past four years, Gill has dominated the landscape at Mid-Atlantic tracks, with growing numbers that pushed him to the top of the national owners’ list by wins and earnings in 2003. But there have been dark times along the way. . .

Winning isn’t everything—just ask owner Michael (Mike) Gill.
Gill wins more races—mostly because he runs more horses—than any other owner in the country. His record for 2003 was a staggering 425 wins from 2,235 starts, numbers that far outdistanced all of his rivals. Gill has kept a similarly frenetic pace in 2004, with 242 wins from 1,440 starts through July 9.

But Gill’s career as a Thor-ough-bred owner has also been marked by turmoil. He was barred from racing at Delaware Park in 2003, for reasons that have never been disclosed, and denied stalls last season at Monmouth Park. An incident at Gulfstream Park in early 2003, involving Gill’s runner Casual Conflict, is infamous. The horse’s leg was amputated by a veterinarian under Gill’s employ, following a fatal breakdown. Yet no wrongdoing related to this episode was ever ascribed to Gill, or to his trainer Mark Shuman.

Gill’s primary business is mortgage banking. He is the founder and CEO of The Mort-gage Specialists, Inc., which has branch offices in seven (soon to be eight) locations in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

Gill, 48, grew up as the oldest of five children in Salem, N.H., near Rockingham Park. His father was an engineer for Raytheon. Gill’s business acumen was apparent from an early age, when he established his own fish market in Salem soon after completing high school at St. Francis Seminary in Andover, Mass. He then founded and operated a business brokerage before estab-lishing The Mortgage Specialists in 1989. His fascination with racing dates to his teenaged years, when he made his first wager, a $20 perfecta at Rockingham Park, and came away with $260.

Gill and his wife of 14 years, Sarah, live in a 20,000-square foot home in Windham, N.H., with their five children (the two oldest from Gill’s previous marriage): Matthew, 17; Michael, 16; Mariah, 10; Clay, 8; and Cole, 6.

The following interview, with Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred editor Lucy Acton, took place at Gill’s home on June 22.

Question: How did you get started with horses. What year?
Answer: I went to have business cards for my brokerage firm made [in 1980]. Behind the clerk was a plaque—the type you stick on a pickup truck. It said: “J.J. Manning Thor-oughbred Horse Training.”

I called [Manning] up. He met me the next day. I told him I was thinking about buying a race horse. He said: “Well, you’ve got to go to New York.” So the next day we jumped in the truck and drove to Bel-mont, and he took me barn to barn. I get in trouble when I say don’t take new owners over the hill. I was once that guy. I thought I was pretty smart at the time.
My first horse [purchased that afternoon at Belmont] was named Par for the Course. [After a few failed attempts the trainer] ran her against the boys on the grass for $16,000. She came in second. And my God. She was a grass horse who’d never been on the grass. [Par for the Course, a Maryland-bred, went on to contest several stakes for Gill].

Then I was out of the business for a little while. Say I had four or five. Then I had my first claiming experience. The horse’s name was Hasty Hasty. On the way to Suffolk Downs, I got sick. Finally got to the track, and my trainer said, “Hey, the horse finished second. We got the horse.” I said, “Great. Where is he?” The horse is in the spit barn. “Is there anything wrong with him?” I asked. He said, “He doesn’t have a pimple.”

I’m walking down and I see this horse, and a big white eye staring at me. Is that our horse? I said, “That’s a cataract. The horse can’t see out of that eye. I thought you said he didn’t have a pimple.” The horse turned around and looked at me. The other eye was an empty eye socket.

That was my first claimer. The horse got ruled off, couldn’t run. That was also my first experience with race horse misjustice. I can’t run him, but you put me in a position to buy him. Did he lose the eye in the race? Did he go blind in the other eye during the race? No. Buyer beware. Buyer beware? It was my first experience with a trainer lying to me.

Then I ran into trouble within the [brokerage] business, and got out of the horse business, and came back really around 1985 to ’86. I had lost my interest in it, because I’d had some bad experiences, and then I came back with 2-year-olds. I thought if I’m going to buy a stakes horse, I have to buy a baby. So I went down to the Ocala Breeders’ sale and I bid on two horses all by myself.

I said if I’m going to make a mistake, I’ll make my own. Today I do the same. If you ask any of my trainers who picks out the horse to claim, they’ll tell you it’s me. I tell the trainers I don’t ever have to accuse you of anything, because it’s all my decisions. Now, I may ask them about soundness, conformation. And sometimes I go with two and three trainers or even four trainers and we’ll even have a consensus. I’m open to all their suggestions. The bottom line—I make the choice.

Any trainer that I’ve ever fired, it’s because of honesty. They know right up front—don’t lie to me. I can take it. Tell me we made a bad claim. Tell me a horse got hurt. I understand. Don’t tell me something, or tell me the wrong thing. . . I’ve been around a while, and I’m a tough guy to fool.

Q: Did you train your own horses at one point? And were you suspended for a medication violation?
A: What happened was—I fired my trainer at Rockingham Park, took the trainer’s test and ran my first horse that same day [August 19, 1995]. The horse tested positive for Clenbuterol. I was suspended for 30 days, or until the end of the meet. I ran a few horses [until the suspension took effect], but then I was so disgusted I sold all my horses and got out of the business. So that’s how things get blown all out of proportion.

( It has been reported that Gill’s suspension lasted three years. Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred contacted the New Hampshire Pari-Mutuel Commission’s director Paul Kelley, who confirmed those reports. Kelley provided a copy of the ruling, which states that a hearing was conducted at which Gill’s original suspension for the balance of the meet plus 10 days was extended by three years. Gill also was issued a $1,000 fine that he did not pay until May 1999; he was ineligible for licensing during the time the fine remained unpaid.)

Would I love to be able to say I could become a horse trainer? As much as I love the horse business, I can’t ever forget what puts food on the table. There’s a side of me that thinks I could be a pretty good horse trainer. I think if you talked to my trainers, they’d probably agree with that too. Because I have a management structure that I can put in place physically and see it. I have a passion, and anything that anybody does real well—they have a passion for. So if you put that structure and that passion together, usually good things happen. But I can’t get past it. This is what I do; I run a mortgage business. And it supports my family, and it’s something I can give my kids later in life. It’s a shame, because there’s a side of me that says, “How do you know I couldn’t be the best at doing that?”

Since I could walk, I was playing football, baseball, basketball. I think when I first felt like I was different, I was just bigger and stronger than everybody else. Six-four and a half and about 275 pounds, but I was very athletic too. It was how I first got a certain degree of my confidence. When you’re in the seminary, sports is a very big thing. It’s an outlet. We didn’t have many kids, but no one worked harder than us. No one knew the game better. We were, fundamentally, the best. We played big schools, and we would beat big schools. I scored 37 points in a Christmas tournament against a guy who was 7’1”, but it was from work, and it was from practice. It was kind of like the building blocks. If you beat me, I am going to come back better, stronger.

When I finished second for the Eclipse Award [in 2003 Gill was runner-up to Juddmonte Farms, despite leading the nation by both wins and earnings ($9,236,530)], people said how long are you going to go with this? That’s not how my mind works. I said, I’m going to do something next year, that you have no choice but to vote for me. I know what the world record is for wins. It’s 494. I’m going to break the world record. Put that number up, and it’s burnt in my brain. And sports was like that. I had the national softball throw record—163 feet. I was 14 years old.

My kids all play sports, because I’m teaching them com-peti-tion. That’s what horse racing is, it’s competition. It’s the horse against the horse. It’s the trainer against the trainer. It’s the owner, or the person who picked out the horse. . . it’s the breeder. It’s all about competition. That’s what attracted me to horse racing. It’s pure competition. If you could take the money and put it aside. . . too bad it’s such an expense to keep them.

Q: You lose money on your horses?
A: I lose money on horses. I’m trying to get closer and closer. I would have been in much better shape if I hadn’t gotten hit with all the resistance I’ve had. A lot of my problems when I started were at Delaware. People didn’t want me to claim as many horses. It was really Delaware. To the point where they would come to me and tell me not to claim horses, and tell me what horses not to claim. What always upset me was—be honest and tell everybody what it’s about. I’m good with everybody living under a set of rules. I’ll play by the rules. But the thing about claiming is, it keeps everybody honest. If they thought not having me there was a good thing, they’re mistaken. And you know who gets hurt the worst when I’m not there? The little guy. Because what they don’t understand is, you get pressure from the big guys.

Why did I sue Delaware for anti-trust? [The suit was settled early this year.] Because of the trainers who got together, with Delaware, and said we don’t want him here. I was claiming their horses. I’m not claiming the little guy’s horses. When they have a $50,000 horse and they want to take a shot in a $25,000 race, they have to worry about me. But isn’t that sportsmanship? Isn’t that fairness? You’re a gambler, you want to know that that $50,000 horse going to $25,000 has an opportunity to get claimed, because you have to factor that into your handicapping. I have to wonder if something is wrong with that horse. But if this guy and this guy and this guy agree not to claim the horse—what do you call that?

Q: There are people who say it’s not good for the business, because you dominate it so much. If four of the six horses in a race belong to you, does that make it an attractive betting proposition?
A: I’ve heard that, too. What’s my win percentage? Do you know at Delaware we’ve won seven races in 47 starts [through late July]. My win percentage when I left Delaware [at the end of 2002] was 15 percent. It’s not as dominating as you think. Gulfstream—he won all these races! What’s my win percentage? 19.

Do you know that more horses were claimed at Delaware the year I wasn’t there [2003] than the year I was there? It’s true. In 2003, one more horse was claimed than in 2002. I was winning 15 percent. So I wasn’t dominating percentagewise. I had a lot more horses, so I filled more races. Do I wish I won more races? I do. But it’s clearly not a dominating thing. What I wanted to do was set up a network in Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey, and have an operation at each race track and move horses around.

Q: How many divisions do you have right now?
A: In West Virginia we have maybe 35 or 40 horses. Kevin Joy trains maybe 10 and Tony Adamo has the rest. He’s got about 25. I’ve got Jerry Robb and Tim Hooper in Maryland. There’s probably over 100 horses there; they ship in and out. Phil Schoenthal’s got 35 stalls at Colonial. Mark [Shuman]’s got the training center [in Oxford, Pa.]. He’s got about 140 stalls there. Gammy [Gamaliel Vaz-quez]’s in Monmouth with approx--i-mately 40.
Then I’ve got maybe 30 horses in training at Charlie Brown’s farm in Maryland, and I’ve got some horses at Suffolk Downs was Carlos Figueroa.

Charlie Brown takes good care of my layups. When a horse has a chip or something, and it’s affecting him, I’ll have surgery. I must have two or three surgeries a week. [Most of the surgery is performed by Dr. Rick Doran at the Mid-Atlantic Equine Medical Center in Ringoes, N.J.] I can’t remember a week in years when I haven’t had surgery on some horse. Minor to more than minor, but almost every week. And when I do, Charlie gets them.
If you look at the people I hired. Look at every single trainer. Other than Jerry Robb, no one’s heard of a single person. Mark had three horses, but he was a good guy and I could tell. Gammy didn’t train for anybody else. Tony Adamo had just a couple horses. Phil Schoenthal was an assistant to Mark. I didn’t hire the Scott Lakes or the Tony Dutrows—and they’re fine trainers—but I hired the underdog. That’s how I like things. I like taking the underdog and going with him, because I always kind of was an underdog myself.

Q: Do you tell your trainers how to set up their stables?
A: What I say is: “This is what has to get done. Now we can talk about how to get there.” Now with Mark, I’m teaching him business structure. That’s how he can handle so many horses. When you look at my horse, they’d better look good. I tell these guys: “Think of it as a beauty contest. We’ll worry about the racing, but I want them to look like they’re in a beauty contest.” When I take a horse away from one trainer to give him to another, it’s always for the same reason—not for running bad, but for looking bad. I’ll take a picture of them, and mail it to the trainer.

Q: You talk to each of them every day?
A: Pretty much every day. I think I talk to Mark more than I do my wife.
Q: Do you choose the jockeys, or does the trainer?
A: I try to run a lot of first call riders. I give the trainers fairly direct parameters to stay within. If I develop a trust with a jockey—now, they can make mistakes. I’ll take the guy who tries over the guy who might be a more veteran rider, but if he thinks the horse feels funny, won’t let the horse run.
Q: Do your trainers get along? Are they in competition with each other?
A: All of the above. Some get along more with others. Tony and Phil came up through Mark, and Tony is very thankful to Mark for helping him, and giving him opportunity.
Q: Are people afraid to claim horses from you?
A: Really? They all do. Someone claimed a horse from me (Michael’s Pride) and won the (2003) Maryland Million Sprint. Tactical Side. Runs in money allowances. They bought him for $12,500 from me. Love Game won three in a row. They claimed him for $25,000. People line up to claim from me. Glick got claimed from me for $40,000 [in December 2003]. He’s the top turf sprinter in the world. I lose horses all the time. I lose as many horses as I claim.

Q: What do you look for when claiming a horse?
A: That’s the problem I have with race tracks. I call the race tracks on the problems.
Epogen is the worst thing in racing, and what’s the penalty? Who’s been given days for Epogen? Anybody? These guys have heard all the barking. I’ve claimed the horses, I’ve seen them melt. I told them: “You’ve got to stop this.” “Shut up, shut up. Don’t talk to the press.” Always, don’t talk to the press. So when I did, that was the end of me.
How can I buy something for 50, that’s really worth 10?

I think that there’s things being done—quietly. But they’ve got to get them done.
The thing about slot machines is—it would help save the horse owner, but if you put more money on the table, is it possible that it’s not going to get better? Here’s the irony. Don’t use it, and we all work on a level playing field. You deserve to win. You put the horse in the right spot. Deserve to win. If you’re handicapping races, isn’t that what you really want to do? I handicap races based on who uses and doesn’t use; I claim horses based on who uses and doesn’t use. And if I can’t claim from you, and I can’t beat you, I’m in trouble. And I have been in trouble at different race tracks. Because of that. And that’s the one thing about Maryland—you don’t have the same abuse. I’m not saying you don’t have it there. And I’m not going to tell you who, but it’s pretty obvious. It sticks out. And at other tracks, it’s dominating. It’s making the claiming business very difficult. There’s some horses that I claim that can’t get out of their own way. They can’t run. California? I was interviewed a number of times out there, and I told them my concerns. You’ve never seen it in the papers. Oh, I was buying bad horses. All of a sudden. I claim more horses than anybody in America. I don’t know how to claim a horse? I go to California and just lose my mind and can’t claim one?

Q: You had a division in California for how long?
A: From October to the beginning of May [2004]. Nick Canani was my trainer. Beautiful area. Everybody was fine with me. I have no problems with the people, or the race track.
California is an island and you have to race right there. Why is it that these guys, who no one ever heard of, are hitting at 35 percent? And I’m not telling you anything that a $2 bettor in California doesn’t know.

Q: How about the people who believe that you push the limits on medication?
A: This is what drives me completely insane. They turn around and say: “Well, he’s doing something.” What am I—15, 16 percent, for career? Where am I hitting at 30, 35 percent? Who’s more aggressive about putting a horse in a position to win than me? I do a lot of claimers, which is generally a higher win percentage than allowance horses, but yet I’m still 15 percent. So when they start pointing fingers, I must be the worst cheat in the world, or something’s up.

You know what bad tests we’ve had, in years? The tranq [tranquilizer] that you give a horse for blocking him, five days out. And it only lasts for 20 minutes, but it stays in the system for two weeks. I didn’t even know this drug existed until it came out.
Test my horses for anything, at any time. Test every horse in my barn. I told them at Gulfstream. If I have a bad test, I quit. Anything in the leg? I quit. Now go out there and get someone else to say the same thing. If they think I’m guilty, why not do that? It’s not about that. They just feel, they don’t like me claiming horses.

I test all my horses, after I claim them. I take blood, and send it out, and find out what happened. Who better to know who’s cheating than a guy who claims everybody’s horses and tests them all? Sometimes it’ll surprise you, either way.
They don’t know how to make me disappear. The irony is—what they’re doing is exactly the wrong thing. Don’t piss me off. Don’t tell me I can’t do it. And don’t make the playing field unfair. Because I have always been the guy who couldn’t stand the bullies. Even going to school, I was the guy who was the designated bully-beater-upper.

Q: What about the incident at Gulfstream Park with The Leg?
A: This was a case. The horse had started like 17 times [in the past year], had won like seven or eight races. This is something nobody knows. This horse was hitting. Sometimes what happens, the horse will run down, and hit his sesamoid joint. And he had a run-down. Mark Shuman will testify to this. The veterinarian came in that morning, looked at the horses, and we even turned around and went to the state veterinarian, and said: “Would you look at this horse for us? He’s been hitting his sesamoids. He’s in today, and what do you think?” She (the state veterinarian) picked the leg up, and said: “Some horses do that.” She took a picture of it. Said he looked all right.

That’s the horse who broke down that day. And do you know what he did? He hit his sesamoid. It’s more of a smash, a bang. So when we looked at that, we kind of knew—he hit himself. He wasn’t doing bad soundness-wise.

You’re going to get the inside story on this, what no one actually knows. I bet the horse. It’s not like we were trying to sell a bad horse. Now I’m at the races. I was sitting near [Sam and Carolyn Rogers, longtime Virginia horsepeople]. I was talking to them. I wasn’t on the phone. When they brought the horse back, they threw the horse in the dumpster. He was being disposed of. Dr. [Phillip] Aleong—they said he was my veterinarian—I only met him for 10 minutes. He was the guy giving Lasix and Bute, the day of the race. (My vet) was at Palm Meadows, and I couldn’t afford to hire two veterinarians. He was filling in to help us out.

What happened was they—Gulfstream—went over to cut the leg off themselves. You can print this, because it’s true. Only they found out that Phil [Aleong] had cut the leg off to find out what happened, because he was concerned the horse was hitting the sesamoid. So he wanted to know if it was that injury that hurt the horse. Gulfstream wanted to send the leg to the lab to examine it, because at this point we were claiming all their horses, and they were trying to put us in a bad spot. They were planning to cut both legs off. Made us look like we were so morbid doing it.

One, I didn’t even know it. Two, I never asked them to do it. They [Gulfstream] took both legs—the leg that Phil [Aleong] cut, and then they cut the other leg off, and went and tested it, like we were using something in the joints. That’s when I said, “If you find anything in those joints that isn’t proper, I’ll quit the business.”

That’s how I threw it back at them. I said we’re not cheating, and you’re trying to press this thing. Sure enough, they didn’t find anything, but you didn’t know about it. You know how long that testing took? Three days. You know when Gulfstream reported the results? Never. You know when it was supposed to come out? Never. I had my lawyers call up the lab and threaten to sue them unless they made that public. And that’s when they did—seven weeks later. “Oh, we didn’t find anything.” During the time, the story makes Sports Illustrated.
They knew the results of that test, and left it as a giant question mark. That’s what got me to sue them. That lawsuit is still in process.

Q: So you have spent, you say, a million dollars. . .
A: Between these lawsuits, Gulfstream and Delaware Park, easy. It wasn’t about money. I just didn’t want that over my head.
Q: You do have some innovative veterinary techniques for your horses?
A: We’ve gotten smarter on how to bring a horse back. These are all the theories I have. I have arthritis from playing sports. When they do surgery on a horse—in the past what they used to do was four weeks stall rest, four weeks walking. But if you understand arthritis, you understand that being in a stall and not moving is the worst thing in the world for arthritis. We stall rest for a week and then we start walking [with Equicizers]. Right away.
A lot of chip removals. And cannon bones. You’d be surprised at how many cannon bones have hairline fractures. You have to take real radiographs. Not x-rays, but a radiograph picture. And all of the sudden you see these stress lines. That’s the kind of injury horses break their legs with. It’s not a knee or an ankle. It’s that stress fracture, and that’s what you’ve got to watch. The (radiograph) machine costs $90,000.

Q: You have your own radiograph machine?
A: No, but we’re talking about buying one. It’s that prevalent. I tell you what, I haven’t had a horse break down this year. I had a horse kick (jockey) Rick Wilson, which has been pretty traumatic for us. My wife and I were there.

We go to extraordinary means holding horses together. Like even shins. I figured something out about that. How many horses with shins don’t come back to the races? A lot. You know why? The worst place for the horse’s blood supply is in the shins. When they have cracks [in the shins], the cracks don’t heal because there’s not enough blood supply. Every horse that’s ever had a shin with us, gets painted. Just a little coat, to create a blood supply there. Their bones are healing up, and they’re all coming back. The method is—paint them, create blood supply; drill them to create trauma; and then bring them back on an Equicizer. No weight on their back, but concussion. How many nice horses could be saved this way?

Q: How about the myectomy?
A: Here’s the theory. Maybe I shouldn’t give this out to everyone. But to explain why I do certain things. I became the throat cutter. “Every horse he got, he cut his throat.” Wait a minute—it’s not necessarily what you think. I learned about EPM [Equine Protozoal Myeloencephalitis]. EPM is a disease the attacks the whole nervous system of a horse. And how a horse reacts is like a person with a stroke. It attacks one side of them. You can see it in their eyelid, you can see it in their lip and in their coordination. More importantly, it affects their breathing. It literally paralyzes (the breathing apparatus).

Ever heard someone say, “My horse has got a paralyzed flap”? He’s got EPM. That’s what’s wrong with him. Sometimes you can regenerate it, not all the time. But you can help with it.
“My horse is bleeding. I can’t stop the bleeding.” You’ve got the throat valve that works like this. When the horse has EPM the muscles on one side wither away. The other side overcompensates, and it’s like any muscle. It gets bigger. From use. Because this muscle is so big, it flaps it real hard. When it flaps real hard, and off-balance, it sticks. And when it does stick, it creates a vacuum (in the lungs, which causes bleeding).

They call it a Mike-ectomy. I talked to the scientist who found the protozoal (agent that causes) EPM. He agreed with me. He said he didn’t take it that far, because he was really studying the effects. It creates a vacuum. When you see a jockey come off and say: “He made a noise, check to see, I think he bled.” Think about that. You think bleeding in the lung makes a noise? Of course not. What you hear is the valve catching and locking and fluttering. I don’t have horses bleed anymore. I use very little Lasix.

Q: But you do use Lasix?
A: Very little. Like 1 cc, 2 ccs. Because it dehydrates. We use the myectomy. When I know he has EPM, we open him up. With EPM, nine out of 10, it’s glaring. Like Highway Prospector. He just came in second in that Grade 2 race at Monmouth. I bought him for $40,000. He had terrible EPM. His valve used to be so bad.

That’s what I do. I study something, and then literally come up with my own hypothesis. I can tell you I’ve had enough horses. How do they calculate a hypothesis to find out if it’s really a proven theory? With volume. Who’s had more volume of horses than I have? I kept doing this and it kept working.

( EPM) is a huge situation. They brought it back to possums, and they thought they were the host animal; now you have all kinds of rodents carrying it. They’re not even sure if birds don’t carry it. It’s something that if you’re not on top of, you’re in trouble.

Q: Do you have your own veterinarians?
A: I have my own vet in the Bowie barn, and Mark’s barn. I give them a salary. Generally, they live in an area, so they don’t like commuting to the race tracks. We use Bernie Dowd at Monmouth; we use a big practice in Maryland, that I’ve used for years. I’m trying to get more cost-effective, so they’re buying all the medications from distributors, so we’re trying to save some money there. It’s so expensive in running the horses, we’ve got to find an angle to do that.

Q: How much do you spend on vet bills a year? A month?
A: Oh boy. With the surgeries, I’ll bet you, $300,000 to $400,000 a month.
In my own operation, I have to make a million a month to support it. And I was close. I was $9 million and something last year.

Q: Can you estimate the total value of your horses?
A: I’d say around $25 million in horses. Not counting the farm, trucks, assets, things like that. It started with one here and there. You know what it is, I don’t sell any horses. I can’t bring myself to sell them. For the first time, I sold a few broodmares at the Keeneland auction last fall.

Q: You were having dispersal there for a while?
A: Oh no. I wasn’t having a dispersal. I talked about it. How do I get out of it? How does a guy who has this many horses walk away from the business? It’s not something you can do like this, unless you have a dispersal.
Sarah and I sat down after the Gulfstream meet [in early 2003]. We had all the problems with the stalls; couldn’t put them anywhere. And we had all the problems with Gulfstream. My wife was basically saying, “Listen, as a family we don’t need this. Do you make money doing this?” No. “Are you having fun right now doing it?” No. She said then, “Tell me why we’re doing it.”

And what most horsepeople will tell you, it’s a hard thing to explain to something who isn’t a horseperson. I don’t know if it’s a sickness. I don’t know if it’s a culture or a way of life. It’s an addictive sport to me. I just love horse racing. It got to the point where I think it was bothering my family, too. I brought my children to Gulfstream and we went to the winner’s circle and the kids heard booing. And it bothered them. And then when that happened it bothered me. My wife and I talked and said maybe we should sell. I literally sat down with some individual that wanted to buy them all. He was a big player in Magna (corporate owner of Gulfstream). He made me sign a confidentiality agreement. I always thought that was ironic. The same people who almost put me out of business want to buy my horses. And if I’m cheating, why buy my horses? But I didn’t get to what I have without being tough, and I won’t tell you they didn’t rock me. But I was far from being down. If I leave this business, I want to do it on my terms, not somebody else’s terms. If they were trying to get me out of the business, believe me they went the wrong way in doing it.

Horsemen don’t understand—together, they are the power. They are the show. They spend the money. They lose money. You know what? Everything that we’ve got today, as a society, took sacrifices on the part of somebody else. People follow courage.

Q: Tell us about your training center.
A: It’s in Oxford, Pa., near the line between Maryland and Pennsylvania, on a little over 50 acres. I will bet you it has the biggest barn in the world. You could put a football field inside this barn. It’s got a swimming pool, an Equicizer, all inside the barn. I built this. When I bought it, it was a 40-stall barn. I made three additions. It’s got 140 stalls inside. It’s got 50-foot ceilings, with fans up on the ceilings. It’s got retractable sides, for ventilation. You could gallop two horses a half or maybe three-quarters of a mile inside the barn.

I saw the problem I was going to have with stalls. I said, okay, (last year) Monmouth won’t give me stalls, Delaware won’t even let me race. And I tell you I will have an undying loyalty to Maryland. Lou Raffetto (Laurel/Pimlico chief operating officer), Georganne Hale (Laurel/Pimlico racing secretary), stuck with me when no one stuck with me. They gave me stalls, and they gave me a lot more stalls than maybe was politically correct for them. And if Maryland never gets slots, and if they have to cut their purses in half, I will fill their races. That’s business too. There’s a certain degree of loyalty. If nobody has any loyalty, and everybody chases a dollar, I wouldn’t even want to be in it.

I always anticipated Pennsyl-vania getting slots; I see then Maryland getting slots. In any business, when you start preparing is before. So I bought this training center preparing for what’s going to happen. I’m prepared to deal with whatever circumstances.

Q: You keep broodmares at the Boniface family’s Bonita Farm. How many broodmares do you have?
A: I must have close to 15. I really enjoy Maryland, because it’s not just about the gambling there. It’s about horse racing. They breed them. They’re part of the whole structure. Like Bonita Farm—to see the hills and the fences. . .

Q: You keep broodmares at other places, too?
A: No. Just there. I’m kind of, if I’m going to go one way, I’m pretty loyal that way. What I did was, I had a filly named Can’t Get Enough [by Two Punch]. That horse who won the $2 million race in Dubai [Our New Recruit] turned out to be her half-brother. So I went to the stallion, who was Alphabet Soup, so he’ll be a three-quarter brother. She was a $10,000 claimer.

Q: When did you get into breeding?
A: About four years ago. Our first homebred will race this year. Mark has her now, and she’s getting close. We haven’t named her yet. She’s by Deputed Testamony out of Big Fish. So we’re thinking Gill, and fish. I claimed Big Fish at Delaware, I think for $35,000. Next race she broke out of the gate, went 40 yards and broke her sesamoid. I said I just spent $35,000 for her. Now what am I going to do? The injury that she had—if I gave her to somebody, I’d be afraid that they’d destroy her. I had all these fillies—Radica Gal and Skibo and Findinapleasure—that I kind of like. And maybe there wasn’t that kind of appreciation to sell them, so I kept them.

Q: Do you think about getting a breeding farm of your own?
A: No. Bill does a pretty good job, and you have to be careful how diversified you get. I’ve got to watch my own sanity. Because I don’t go into something fleetingly. Like there’s not a horse that I have, that I can’t tell you what’s wrong with the horse, and where the horse is, and how the horse will do, and even where the horse should be run.

Q: Do you have anybody working for you, to help keep track of that information?
A: I just hired a gentleman who will help me put the horses in. We’ll go over the entries, and he’ll put them in. He’ll talk to the racing secretaries. His name is John Morrissey. He was the racing secretary at Suffolk Downs.

Q: Are you interested in becoming involved at a different level, maybe aiming to win the Kentucky Derby?
A: There’s an idea out there that Mike Gill just has a bunch of claimers. What if I told you that last year I bought more 2-year-olds in training than anybody in the world? When I was buying those horses I saw myself in the Kentucky Derby.

When people ask me about buying horses, I start saying this: If you think you’ve got a business plan, and it is buying a lottery ticket, thinking I’m going to be rich because I’m going to buy a lottery ticket, that’s the equivalent of saying I’m going to win the Kentucky Derby.
I’m going to go to a 2-year-old sale, and I’m going to look at these horses, and I’m going to make wise judgments on their values. I’m not going to say, “I’m buying the Kentucky Derby winner.” Believe me, that is the end game, but I’m going to make wise decisions.

I protested, and didn’t (buy at the 2-year-old sales this year). That’s because the NATC (National Association of Two-Year-Old Consignors) ran their races (restricted to sales horses) at Delaware. I had Forest Music. She could have run backwards and won that race. I thought they shouldn’t have done that. They should have supported me. So I said I’m boycotting that. If you’re in business, and another company tried to hurt you, would you do business with them? I look like this hard ass that turns around. . . The bottom line is, that’s the real world. I had 50 NATC horses that I couldn’t run.

Q: You bought that many? How many did you buy?
A: Oh, 46, 47. Close to a $6 mil-lion investment. Forest Music, Pawyne Princess, White Moun-tain Boy, Kiowa Prince, King Carlos (all stakes horses)—these were all products of the sales. So I actually did pretty good.

Q: At a seminar on race horse buying held at Timonium this spring, you talked about learning from your mistakes. Can you expand on that?
A: Absolutely. See what I did was, early on in these sales I would try to find the athlete. There were a lot of times when I took the big, good-looking horse. I bought so many horses.
Over those two years, I must have had close to 70 2-year-olds. And I kept going over them, and saying: “He didn’t make it, he didn’t make it, he didn’t make it.” Until finally I went through all the tapes. I think of the first seven who didn’t make it, there were six of the seven biggest horses I owned. I looked at this. The little horses—City Fire, Snow Eagle, all sound, kept running.

One, they set them down so early, so hard, that they almost develop problems by the time you buy them. You make them do things that maybe they don’t want to do, and they want to do a lot. It’s a real jack in the box. When I look at horses now, I’m looking for balance, an athlete, but I’m not looking for that big horse.

Q: Who is the best horse you ever had?
A: I think it might be Forest Music. As many good ones as I’ve had, and I’ve had some good ones. This filly—in the sale, she worked :20""". I’ve never seen a horse work that fast. But she chipped, in the breeze. Again, it was too early. She was extremely immature. I bought her for $325,000 [at the 2003 Fasig-Tipton Florida Two-Year-Olds in Training sale]. This filly should have sold for $1.325 million. We took the chip out. Came right off the top and there was no damage. Gave her the time and ran her kind of a lot in the year. She ran 1:08, in hand. Ran the fastest maiden special weight, male or female, in 92 years of Laurel, and the fastest Beyer number of any 2-year-old, male or female, in the country. We did all the right things getting her there, and then got stupid, turned around and said let’s go to the Breeders’ Cup (Gill’s first Breeder’s Cup starter, Forest Music showed early speed before finishing last in the 14-horse field for the Juvenile Fillies-G1 at Santa Anita). We knew she was a freak. But she was a little sick, flew across the country. She wasn’t ready yet. She came back from there, she was sound again, we ran her a couple of times. We just blew her mind.

I said “Mark, take her back, how ever long she needs to mature.” She was always sound. We brought her back in the Miss Preakness Stakes [Grade 3, which she won at Pimlico on May 14], for the first and then we ran her here at Monmouth in the Crank It Up Stakes; she won that bent in half, in 56 and 4 on the mud. She was slipping and sliding, she couldn’t even grab the track, and still almost broke the track record. No one knows how fast this filly is. She might be one of the fastest horses ever. You’ve got to know I’ve had thousands of horses, literally thousands, and they’ve broken track records multiple times. This one is going to put on a show. It’s all coming together.

Q: Could you talk about the state-bred programs and how they factor into your structure?
A: They’re part of my long-term planning. I started seeing that in time, whatever deal the (Maryland racing industry) makes with the state, they will do something for the breeding industry. So I started having Maryland-breds. And I started buying a lot of Maryland-breds. White Mountain Boy is a Maryland-bred. Move to Strike. So I started getting Maryland-breds even then, knowing I was probably a little ahead of the game. My plan was to go into auctions looking for the Maryland and Pennsylvania-breds. I have more Maryland-breds than anybody.

Q: And the Maryland Mil-lion?
A: I’ve got them in every [Maryland Million] race. I don’t win them, but I’m in them. Even my claiming is with the Maryland Million in mind.

Q: So you try to spend your money wisely?
A: I do. And I’m getting wiser. I’m much more aware of residual value. I go to these sales, and I look at all these horses. I’ve got a handful of guys that I’ve got to compete with. There’s only two or three guys who really spend money. What they do is, they want it all perfect. The problem is, 2-year-olds in February, when I buy them, two months later, five months later, most of the time you still don’t know who they’re going to be. They don’t know who they’re going to be yet. But if you have these guys chasing this one, this one and this one, and overpaying for it. . .

What are you going to do with the horse? The tax laws are, you can depreciate him in half. So if you pay $100,000, and deduct $50,000, what does a horse have to be to be worth $50,000? Not that much, really. He wins a maiden special weight, wins a one-other-than. You sell him for $35,000 or $40,000. And you got out on the horse and you didn’t take a giant risk. Rather than buy that one horse for $3 million, I’ll buy 30 horses for $3 million. How many times is that one horse you’re not paying attention to, the horse?
My idea this coming Febru-ary is maybe buying 60, 70 of them. I’m going to do it in numbers. And don’t get crazy with any one.

Q: Do you see yourself making serious money in the busi-ness five years from now?
A: Here’s the thing, I already make serious money. So I don’t need to make that. If I can break even and pay the bills, I’m happy. Break even is the most important thing. Break even means you’re not going out of business. Then you have something that can live forever.

Q: How close are you to breaking even?
A: I’d say. . . 75 percent there. For instance, if Maryland gets slot machines, and Philly gets slot machines, I think I’m there. I think it’s going to happen. I really do. I can’t see how it’s not going to happen. Like I tell people, it’s the best secret in America—I make money at Charles Town. The money I do make, I just put back into horsesanyhow. I have never taken money out of a horse account. I’ve put it in a few times, but never taken money out.
That’s why I didn’t want to focus on one race track. I wanted to put business principles together, at different race tracks. I’m smart enough to know that you can’t have 400 horses running at one race track. It’s not good for the race track, and it’s not good for me, because I can’t win enough races. The secret to making money is to find a way to make money, and duplicate it. That’s what I’m trying to do. Trying to multiply. Right now, racing is in the middle of a change.

Q: For the better?
A: For the commoner. I am a commoner. And why I don’t fit is that the average guy feels kind of funny about me, because I do have money, but I’m buying horses. So there’s a certain natural resentment. When the slot machines come into the racing industry, and claiming horses could be a profitable investment, that will bring in the American businessman. I see myself sometimes as a pioneer. If I can show you a way that we can make money, rather than trying to put me out of business—if they embraced me as an American businessman trying to make money in this business, they could turn around and have more of what I do.

I could very well get lost in the crowd in time. I pioneered this, I built a bridge. Everybody goes over the bridge, and I’m just one of the guys.
If I was going to win the Eclipse Award, what I wanted to tell people was, I think we should all stand back and appreciate the claiming horse more. Who fills your races? Who runs harder? Who tries harder? Maybe the person who owns that $25,000 claiming horse, he’s trying to pay his rent. That horse represents food on the table. This might be this person’s livelihood—the horse and the person. I think the business has to do that. They can’t turn up their nose to the claiming business. I think that’s where slot machines are going to help, too, because they’re going to make the claiming horse a viable commodity.

As time goes on, I think I’m going to be more accepted. I even think now things are getting a little better. People, as a whole, are fair. Give them time to figure it out for themselves. They get a little piece here, and a little piece here. Or they meet you, or they talk to you. People who meet me and talk to me say, “You’re not the person I thought you were.”

Q: Do you find homes for your horses when they finish racing?
A: We find homes for all of them. We’re able to give them away. A lot of breeders and people who owned horses will write me and call me and ask when the horse retires, can we have him back. We keep track of that. I have a $2,500 horse they keep calling me on, but he keeps winning. I said: “The minute he loses, we’ll give him to you.”

Q: Do you ever get tired? You seem like you have boundless energy.
A: At night, I’m just tired of thinking. I’m here, and I’m here and I’m here. I divide up my brain in so many pieces, and I do get tired. I have to ask myself—I treat my horses better than I do myself. I’ve had problems with knees, and health, sometimes. I need somebody, my wife does this, to protect me against myself, because in my mind, I’m indestructible. I don’t know how to do it differently. I want to turn around and say I have no regrets. Even the worst things in my life, would I change? Not necessarily.

Q: Do you enjoy betting on horses?
A: I rarely bet on a horse. I’ll go months without betting on a horse.
Q: And then are you a small bettor?

A. I guess it’s all relative. If I’m betting, I’ll bet thousands of dollars. As things evolve, it takes a lot to get you excited. Or sometimes it’s the littlest things that get you excited. But you have to find what they are. With me, it’s—I’m trying to break the world record, for wins and money won.

The wins might not be broken for a long time, at least while I’m here. My kids can open the Guinness Book of World Records and say that was Dad. Someday they’ll tell their children: “You know your grandfather had the world record?”