New Partnership Opportunities

As a partner in Castle Village Farm, you’ll be part of an affordable, professional racing group. You’ll experience all the thrills of racing and the fun of being at the track with your co-owners and your horses, all for a fraction of what it would cost to do it on your own. It’s like owning your own sports franchise, but you don’t have to be a millionaire!

Right now, we have two partnerships available — our brand-new 2010 Saratoga Claiming Partnership and Talking Blues (a 4-year-old NY-bred). Here’s the information you need about each of these offerings:

2010 Saratoga Claiming Partnership

Our first claiming partnership this year has already been a winner. Good Law, the first horse in that partnership, had a win and a second-place finish for us in two starts before he was claimed away. He earned a healthy return for the partners. In fact, the partners have never paid a cash call, still have money in the bank to claim a new horse and pay the bills, and have already received 20% of their initial capital back in cash. Hot on the heels of that success, we’re putting together a new partnership that is looking to claim a horse during the current Saratoga meet.

Like Good Law, the horse to be claimed by our Saratoga partnership will be trained by Bruce Brown. Bruce got his start as an assistant trainer to Tim Hills and then to Bill Mott. Bruce has been doing very well since he went out on his own two years ago, with a 20%-plus win percentage in 2008 and over 16% in 2009 and 2010. Bruce always welcomes CVF partners to his barn to watch morning workouts. He is also training our New York-bred gelding Talking Blues (see below), who won by 5 1/2 lengths in his first start for Bruce on New Year’s Day, 2010.

We spend a lot of time looking for the right horse to claim We always look for a horse that shows it wants to win every time it races. We also look for a horse that has a variety of racing options available, such as “non-winner” conditions, state-bred races, starter allowance races for horses that have started for a fixed claiming price, or races to which a horse has been specifically nominated, like Flippy Diane in the Maryland Million or Carolina Fuego in the Delaware Certified Distaff. We also look for horses that might move up if we switch them to a distance or surface that they haven’t tried, or that we think can improve substantially when we move the horse to Bruce’s barn.

Saratoga is an excellent place to claim. Lots of owners and trainers drop their horses down a notch or two in order to win a race at this prestigious meet. So it’s not uncommon to see a horse that ran competitively for a $35,000 or even $50,000 claiming price at Belmont or Aqueduct show up for $25,000 at Saratoga. In addition, there are lots of horses from Kentucky and other areas, in addition to the usual complement of New York-based horses, so there’s a wide selection of possible claims to choose from.

Our new partnership will be looking for a horse in the $25,000 range, although we may go higher or lower, depending on where we find an attractive claim and how much money we can put together.

Beginning with our very first claim in 1999 — Flippy Diane, which we claimed for $20,000 and which won the Maryland Million Distaff Stakes for us in her second start in our colors — we’ve enjoyed great success with claiming horses. Some of our other claims who also went on to be stakes runners for us include Diligent Gambler, Southern Missile, Fighting Speedy, No Bad Habits and Carolina Fuego. Of course, we can’t guarantee that all our claims will be stakes horses. But we have an excellent track record.

We’re looking forward to having you join us in the winners circle!

Plaudit Partnership (Talking Blues)

The Castle Village Farm Plaudit Partnership (named for the 1898 Kentucky Derby winner) owns Talking Blues, a gray four-year-old NY-bred gelding by Silver Music out of Time to Chat, by Gallant Hour, purchased by Castle Village Farm at the July, 2007 Saratoga yearling sale. Silver Music was the winner of the Swaps Stakes in California and several other stakes races, and the sire of three stakes horses.

Talking Blues is a full brother to Time to Rap, a winner of over $168,000 on the New York circuit. After buying Talking Blues as a yearling, we sent him to Ocala, FL, so he could grow up with lots of sunshine and good nutrients, and he turned into a big, strong, handsome horse.Talking Blues got his maiden win on January 1, 2010, his 4th birthday. After that, we gave him time for some rest and recreation on the farm, but he’s now back in training with Bruce Brown and pointing to a start during the Saratoga meet.

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