Rick Porter’s wild ride.
Mid-Atlantic-based owner talks about his extreme highs and lows?–?and horror accompanying loss of Kentucky Derby-G1 runner-up Eight Belles.
by Sean Clancy

Upset about Eight Belles? Disgusted? Still haunted by the scene of the filly breaking her front legs and being euthanized within minutes of her runner-up performance in the Kentucky Derby? Think you had trouble defending the racing game when CNN, PETA and every blogger latched onto the tragedy?

What if you were Rick Porter, owner of Eight Belles?

You made the audacious decision to skip the Kentucky Oaks, where you were a lock, and go for the Kentucky Derby. Opted to tackle the boys. You wear bow ties and red sport coats. You started your own Web site, choreographing your stable’s every move. You leap to the microphone and talk to the press whenever asked. You don’t hire a racing manager?–? you are your racing manager. Now the best 3-year-old filly in the sport, the one that you thought was going to win your first Eclipse Award, is dead.

You didn’t see her go down. No, you were celebrating your second straight runner-up effort in the greatest of races when your son slapped you to reality. You stumbled to the track and made the long distressing walk back to the barn. Reporters jammed tape recorders under your nose.

“ How do you feel?”
“ Do you think running against the boys was a mistake?”
“ Can you put it into words?”
You’re numb. You just want to hide. Go home. Regroup. Try to make sense of a senseless day.

Delaware native Rick Porter, 68, lived the nightmare on the first Saturday in May.
Since buying his first race horse 15 years ago, Porter had experienced the highest of highs?–?with 2006 Breeders’ Cup Distaff-G1 winner Round Pond. . . 2000 Alabama Stakes-G1 heroine Jostle. . . and the indefatigable Hard Spun, who won four graded stakes last season and finished second in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, Kentucky Derby and Haskell Handicap (all Grade 1).

He thought he had experienced the lows. But this one was the highest of highs and then the lowest of lows in a matter of minutes.

Porter’s friends call him lucky. He considers himself lucky in horse racing?–?from the selection of horses to the selections of selectors to the selection of trainers. He and his selection team, mainly Tom McGreevy, John Servis and Carol Murray, have lucked out with their choices of graded stakes winners, who also have included Grade 2 Remsen winner Rockport Harbor.

But lucky people don’t lose a filly at the top of her game in the Kentucky Derby.
Porter studied Eight Belles’s speed numbers, he studied her form, he studied the other Derby contenders, he consulted Eight Belles’s trainer Larry Jones, and thought she had a real shot to win the Kentucky Derby.

He told Jones he wanted to run in the Derby, but only if Eight Belles was training better than she had ever trained. The gray daughter of Unbridled’s Song had won five races in nine starts, including four in a row leading to the Derby. She had run at least once a month since her debut at Delaware Park last September. She justified Porter’s gamble as she handled everybody but the undefeated Big Brown. Then the bottom fell out.

“ It was horrible for Larry, horrible for [his wife] Cindy, horrible for his assistants, horrible for everybody at the barn, then horrible for us,” Porter said. “Fans all over the world were rooting for an underdog filly against the boys. It just struck a nerve. Bad things happen and you don’t know why.”

Porter and Jones tried to figure out why, sending Eight Belles for a necropsy partly to find out for themselves and partly to shut up the ambulance-chasing detractors who had contributed to the fire storm of negative press for the owner, the trainer, the sport.

The necropsy turned up nothing: no aneurysm, no bleeding and most importantly no drugs other than the permitted level of Lasix. Porter knew there were no drugs. His vet bills with Jones are miniscule; they average $100 a month. He’s never received a vet bill for an injection of a Jones horse. Luckily for the sport, which found itself in a maelstrom of criticism and bad press, Eight Belles was drug free. The results helped Porter and Jones. At least they had some credence to their argument that it was a terrible accident, a bad step or a bad stride or maybe just bad luck. Nothing more.

“ We took such a ripping over Eight Belles. Sometimes, unfortunately, things happen,” Jones said. “It was tough. It didn’t put a strain on his and my relationship, but it stressed all of us. It’s amazing how it stresses everybody on every level. Everybody’s reading all this stuff and I kept saying, it’s not true. That’s why we did the drug test. We had to prove it. If you can withstand that, we can take the good times.”

And there have been plenty of good times for Porter’s Fox Hill Farm, a place that doesn’t exist geographically.

Porter lives in Chadds Ford, Pa., and Hobe Sound, Fla. The horses are spread out among a handful of trainers, with Jones in charge of the majority of them from Porter’s brand-new barn at Fair Hill Training Center in Fair Hill, Md.

Porter bought a Fair Hill site that previously belonged to trainer Ricky Hendriks. Then he flattened the existing barn and built an immaculate barn that houses 36 of his horses, including 2008 Suburban Han­di­cap-G1 runner-up Solar Flare (Arg), stakes performer Honest Man, and a brigade of 2-year-olds.

The stable pony and Proud Spell (whom Jones sent out to win this year’s Kentucky Oaks-G1 for breeder Brereton Jones) are the only two inhabitants who don’t belong to Porter. Fox Hill Farm’s silks adorn the iron jockey out front and photographs of Fox Hill winners hang on the walls of the tackroom. This is the engine room for Porter’s assault on the sport of horse racing.

“ I had Round Pond with Michael Matz at Fair Hill, so I got to know the lay of the land and got to realize how much of a spectacular training facility it is,” Porter said. “I started thinking, ‘I wish I could train all my horses out here,’ but I needed a commitment from Larry.

“ Cindy said, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to have a place to call home, stop going from track to track and carting your furniture from one place to another?’ They gave me the commitment to stay year-round. That was the main reason. Now it looks like all the pieces of the puzzle are in place.”

Porter goes to Fair Hill often.
“ Larry will probably tell you too often, but whenever I’m home I’m out there,” Porter said. “It’s terrific. It’s nice to do whatever you want to do; it’s your barn.”
Porter knows the area well. He grew up going to the races at Delaware Park and talking horses with schoolmate Annie Jones (then Annie Lunger), whose parents, Jane and Harry Lunger, owned the famed Christiana Stable.

Porter’s family was entrenched in the world of auto­mobiles. His grandfather returned from the General Motors plant in Detroit and started a car dealership in 1926, then his father took it over in 1952 and Porter made it three generations in 1962. Porter Chevrolet and Porter Hyundai are based in Newark, Del., about 10 minutes from Fair Hill. Porter always liked the races, hitting the track with his father as a kid and starting out as a $2 bettor, but never really considering owning horses. At least until he walked into a car dealership about 15 years ago and a friend asked if he wanted to go see a horse of his run at the track. Sure, and, in his words, the rest is history. Porter met Servis and bought a couple of claimers.

“ I didn’t know what I was doing, but the more I continued on the more I realized you had to spend a little bit more money to get a better horse, so I started stepping up at the yearling sales,” Porter said. “Eventually I learned to surround myself with the right people and came up with a plan to at least give us a chance to get lucky.”

Porter has a game plan in place, but knows it’s only as good as the luck he’s dealt.
“ People ask me all the time, ‘What’s the deal with horse racing?’?” Porter said. “To be honest, I figure there are three things. One, the selection process of the horses. Two, the trainers you select. Three, luck. And you know it’s a hell of a business plan when 33 1/3 percent of it is luck. And it might be 66 percent.”

Porter quickly went from owning a couple of claimers to being the ultimate end-user at yearling sales. He developed a plan to buy 15 to 18 yearlings a year, averaging $250,000 per hammer fall.

He’s not a syndicate, he’s not a pinhooker, he’s not a breeding farm. He’s buying to race and his goal is to race at the highest level. He campaigns a few horses in partnership?–? crack 3-year-old sprinter Kodiak Kowboy competes for Vinery and Fox Hill while recent Salvator Mile-G3 third-place finisher Honest Man runs for WinStar Farm and Fox Hill.

On the breeding side, he’s hooked up with Darley on several occasions to put together star-studded horse deals.

“ It’s developed. I can’t say enough for the people selecting the horses. That’s where it all happens. Eventually I have to make the decision,” Porter said. “If you pick out one or two nice horses at the sales you’re going to have a good year. If you come up empty, you’re going to have a long year.”

Porter and Servis formed a strong and what seemed like an everlasting team. Based at Philadelphia Park, Servis developed both Jostle and Round Pond. After engineering Smarty Jones’s magical ride that encompassed victories in the Kentucky Derby and Preak­ness, Servis came up with Rockport Harbor for Porter that fall.
Rockport Harbor showed flashes of talent but ultimately couldn’t stay sound long enough to dent the Triple Crown of 2005.

In 2006, Porter came to a divide with Servis. Both took the high road and chalked it up to a relationship running its course. It had been 12 years. Porter took Round Pond and sent her to Matz, and began utilizing other trainers, including Steve Klesaris and the big cowboy from Kentucky Larry Jones.

Success followed with Round Pond upsetting the Breeders’ Cup Distaff in 2006. Round Pond fractured her knee while making her second start as a 5-year-old in Oaklawn Park’s Grade 1 Apple Blossom Handicap. Porter sold her to Darley for $5.75 million at the 2007 Fasig-Tipton November sale.

Under Jones’s tutelage, Penn­sylvania-bred Hard Spun emerged as a standout 2-year-old in 2006. From the great sire Danzig’s second-to-last crop, Hard Spun purchased by Porter for $400,000 after he failed to meet his reserve at the Keeneland September sale?–?put up an undefeated campaign in his juvenile year and then danced every dance through the Triple Crown.

Needing a Grade 1 victory to seal a stallion deal with Darley, Hard Spun shortened up to win the seven-furlong King’s Bishop at Saratoga. He was retired at the end of last season with earnings of $2,673,470 and now stands at Darley in Lexington, Ky.
Porter wanted to campaign Hard Spun at 4, but couldn’t agree to what silks the horse would wear, so he completed a glitzy package of Street Sense and Any Given Saturday acquired by Darley for the 2008 breeding season.

For Porter, Hard Spun became the north star. He single-handedly took Porter’s racing business from a loss to a profit.

“ Trust me, I was way, way in the red until Hard Spun. He’s the one that made a huge difference,” Porter said. “Round Pond, Rockport Harbor helped, but Hard Spun. . . if something hadn’t happened, I may have said this game is too tough.
“ I’ll never know because I was fortunate enough to get a couple good ones and be able to cash in and get my capital back. I’m very proud to say I’m in the black, because I was in the dark red for a long while. Good old Hard Spun.”

Porter starts every year with a budget to campaign and purchase horses. Some years he goes over it, usually on a son or daughter of Unbridled’s Song, sire of Eight Belles (who cost $375,000 at the 2006 Keeneland September Yearling sale) and Rockport Harbor (a $470,000 Keeneland September purchase in 2003). Some years he sticks to it. Rarely is he under it. At present, he has about 40 horses in training and is about to embark on replenishing his stock at the yearling sales.

It’s a simple plan. Select and purchase the best set of yearlings you can afford. Then campaign them for a fix of action and hope that one of them can balance the books.

Last year, Fox Hill Farm runners won 38 races from 162 starts, placing Porter’s entity ninth on the national owners’ list while picking up more than $3.7 million.
So far this year, the stable has won 17 races and earned more than $1.2 million, good enough to place in the top 25 in the national standings. (These statistics include horses owned solely by Fox Hill, not the ones Porter owns in partnership.)
“ What I try to do is come close to breaking even with my expenses of training horses and purse income,” Porter explained. “The real challenge is how am I going to get that money back I gave Fasig-Tipton and Keeneland.

“ I’ve also realized you have to keep a manageable stable because it can get ahead of you. It’s always a big challenge to go out and buy horses and stay within a budget and a number.”

Porter is a realist; he pays the monthly training bills of 40 horses. At Fair Hill, the going day rate is anywhere from $80 to $100 a day. In a world where expense money always goes out faster than purse money comes in, it’s the breeding world that plays savior.

“ The secret is to come up with a good horse, one that makes a stallion or a top broodmare,” Porter said. “That’s the only way you’re ever going to get the investment you made in yearlings back. If you don’t get one of those, there is no way you’re going to make enough in purses.”

He’s a realist, but he’s also the ultimate horse owner?–?playing his passion and dreaming of the next big horse to put him on the big stage. He was set to race Round Pond at 5, he wanted to compete Hard Spun at 4, he swung for the fences with Eight Belles. He likes to see his silks.

“ My fun, my passion is to go watch them run in big races. If you’ve been lucky enough to get a good horse, shelling out the insurance money is a big problem; it’s hard to cover the insurance with the purse income,” he said.

Porter continued: “I don’t mind running them even if I have to lose money, just to be able to watch them run in top Grade 1s as a 4-year-old. I’m sure Jess Jackson is losing money [by continuing to race 2007 Horse of the Year Curlin this season at age 4]. But you know what, he’s having fun.

“ It is a business, but we’re in it for the pride and really the challenge to get a horse like Round Pond, Hard Spun or a Curlin. That’s what it’s all about. When you get one. You don’t want to retire him, you want to keep going, at least I do. Sometimes you have to let your heart prevail over your pocketbook.”

Porter isn’t far off high-profile sports franchise owners like Dallas Mavericks’ Mark Cuban or New York Yankees’s George Steinbrenner. He’s invigorated by the competition, intrigued by the challenge. And he’s not against sticking his neck out and taking the heat for his gumption. Money doesn’t guarantee success in horse racing, and Porter likes that.

“ There is no secret formula,” he noted. “It’s like the golf game. If someone could figure how to make people like me a good golfer, they’d make a lot, a lot of money. If someone could figure out how to look at a yearling and say there’s a Grade 1 winner, you’d make a lot of money. My golf game stinks.”

Who’s got time for golf? There’s a car dealership with his name on it, 40 horses training, and a family that includes five grandchildren. Wife Betsy, sons Cory and Scott and daughter Tracey share the racing bug.

“ They support my passion,” Porter said. “My daughter and both my sons love to go to the races. They’re into it. That makes a big difference when you’ve got the whole family involved.”

Involved. That would be another word to describe Porter as an owner. He knows owners are meant to sit back and watch and maybe not get behind the wheel. But he’s not that kind of man. He’s going to know exactly where his horses stand and what races are coming up for them. Sure, he takes long summer stints in Rockport Harbor, Me., but he’s never too far from the training charts or the Racing Form.
Porter showed up at the Preakness stakes barn two years ago and first interviewed Jones’s assistant while Jones was away. Eventually, Porter got around to talking to Jones about transferring some horses to him. Once Jones checked with his friend Servis, he said he’d take some horses, knowing that it wouldn’t be a “call me when they’re going to run” type of relationship. Jones quickly learned that Porter is a good handicapper, knows where his horses fit and isn’t afraid to share his opinion.
“ He’s more hands-on than most owners, but he’s not set in his ways,” Jones said. “If you have a reason for what you’re doing, he’s good with that.

“ He has the same dedication as we do; he tries to get the best horses he can get and so far it’s worked good. He’s been a very pleasant surprise to work for. I didn’t start out with the first string; I got horses that were on the borderline between running and retiring.”

One of the first horses Jones had for Porter was a $10,000 claimer. The horse ran dully for $25,000 and Jones called Porter to tell him the horse wasn’t going anywhere on the race track. Porter told him to give the horse away, find him a good home, get him off the track. The horse is now in the hunter/jumper ring.
Porter is content with his trainer right now. He’s content with his advisors in Kentucky. Led by Vinery’s Tom Ludt and Darley’s Jimmy Bell and Dan Pride, the Kentucky contingent tries to advise Porter in his racing and breeding operation. Ludt has known Porter since the early days.

“ He’s been very loyal, considerate and fair,” Ludt said. “He’s definitely very passionate and involved. He uses great instinct and business judgment. As an owner he’s very fun and involved. He’s very good for the game and you have to be happy for him. We need more Rick Porters in the game.”

Porter learned in the car business: Surround yourself with the best, buy the best (cars or horses) and then hope for the best.

“ I don’t care what business it is, you try and acquire the best inventory, the best merchandise, the best players and then you’ve got to let your trainer do his thing,” Porter said. “There is one similarity that is very, very clear to me?–?success in horse racing or whatever industry stems from one thing, surrounding yourself with the right people. The people are everything.”

It was the people who got Porter through the tragedy of Eight Belles. When you’re winning, it’s easy to have an entourage. It’s when you’re struggling that you need them. Porter talked it out with his family, his friends, Jones.

“ I wasn’t sure I wanted to go on. You try and talk it out and get it off your chest, try not to keep it inside and gradually. . . you’ll never forget it, just somehow you keep going,” Porter said. “It’s tough emotionally. It wasn’t good financially of course, but I don’t think of it like that. I guess it taught me the lows are probably even lower than you thought they could be; they can bring a man to his knees. She sure brought us to our knees.”

Porter’s fabulous five?– with prospects for more
Jostle: “She was the first graded stakes winner. She was six or seven years after I got into the business. She was the first really top horse we had. I didn’t think it took too long; we started out slow. She surprised us. All of a sudden she woke up.”
Rockport Harbor: “He got hurt. Who knows how good he was? It was disappointing we could never get him right because we knew how much talent he had.”
Round Pond: “She was a late developer, another May foal like Hard Spun. John [Servis] didn’t decide until the last minute to put her on the trailer to Oaklawn and then she blossomed. She had a lot of talent.”

Hard Spun: “He came right behind Round Pond. You start saying this game is easy. Of course, you know it isn’t. I knew I was just on a roll and I started wondering, ‘How long can this roll go on?”

Eight Belles: “Disaster. She was going to be a champion filly. She took a bad step and we got a horrible break.”

The next one: “Fortunately there a couple of other horses like Solar Flare (Arg), Honest Man. Larry [Jones] is extremely excited about the 2-year-olds. Looking at them and watching them train, it sure looks like there should be a star in there.”