Thoroughbreds Race, Win Hearts in NWA

To make it in thoroughbred racing, as the consensus goes, you have to be lucky. And Lady Luck, it seems, has a shine in her eye for Dr. Warren Center, owner of Center Hills Farm in Springdale, and Mighty Acres in Pryor, Okla.

Center started out 16 years ago with a $5,000 claiming horse — a horse that can be bought shortly before a race — he thought was a waste of money.

He now oversees an operation that includes 50 brood mares, five stallions, 300 acres and the distinction of having produced Kip Deville, winner of the 2007 Breeder’s Cup mile at Monmouth Park in New Jersey. He sells as many as 40 Oklahoma, New York, Kentucky and Illinois-bred horses a year, and is a regular at the important markets at Keeneland in Lexington.

Horses sired on his farms compete regionally and nationally, and at least in Oklahoma, earn him lucrative incentives for breeding top finishers. Though a dentist by trade, thoroughbreds is where Center has staked his claim. 

“This has become my investment in life,” he said.

Thoroughbred horse racing is a $33 billion industry that has been in decline for years. According to statistics maintained by The Jockey Club, an industry advocate, there are overall and sustained decreases in the number of races, the annual crop of foals and the amount of money, or handle, wagered on races. Experts cite demographics, competition from other sports and an overall shift in wagering habits — online and casinos — as prime reasons for horse racing’s decline.

But even in a downward trend, Center continues to flourish. And the effort it takes to stay ahead keeps his mind active and sharp. Quoting Jon Starr, the legendary Fayetteville horse breeder who produced the 1975 Kentucky Derby winner, Foolish Pleasure, Center said: “It’s truly a great way to stay young mentally, because you are constantly looking forward.”

Center’s run of luck began in earnest around 1998 with his second horse, O’Fire Holler, which he bought for $3,000. The horse wound up earning $65,000, giving Center plenty of house money to play with.

“I was thinking, this is easy,” Center recalled.

But it’s not.

So early on, Center made the decision to consult with Kentucky-based equine geneticist and bloodstock agent Chad Schumer. While he continued to race, Center and his wife Linda gradually moved deeper into the breeding end of the industry. With Schumer’s guidance, Center was buying mares and stallions and turning foals for handsome profits.

Center learned that one of his mares, Gift of Dance, prior to his purchase of her had produced Round Pond, who went on to win four stakes races and the 2006 Breeder’s Cup Distaff.

When word got out Center owned the mother of a stakes winner, offers for the mare, pregnant at the time, began pouring in and topped out at $500,000 — an amount the Centers accepted. But Gift of Dance died shortly after giving birth and her foal broke its leg. The deal fell through. Such is the euphoria and heartbreak of thoroughbred horse racing, Center said.

But luck would strike again. Center, in consultation with Schumer, purchased an obscure mare in Florida by the name of Klondike Kaytie. She was bred with Center’s Kentucky stallion, Kipling. The result was Kip Deville, who lounged in a pasture in Springdale for months until he was sold for just $20,000 as a yearling. He would ultimately earn $3.3 million over his career and in 2007, when he won the Breeder’s Cup, was considered the top miler in the world.

Center, of course, still had the champion’s father, Kipling, to stand as stud.

“That put us on the map,” said Center.

 

New Track Near Tulsa

Center’s love of thoroughbreds is infectious. No one knows that better than Theresa Moore of Springdale. In the early 2000s, Center gave both of Moore’s daughters thoroughbreds as wedding gifts. Moore, a retired school teacher, soon bought out both of her daughters, and thus began a rapid and expansive rise in the racing industry.

Moore, in one partnership with her father, Claude, and in another with her husband, Joe, now owns six brood mares, 10 racing horses, four yearlings and four foals. She also built a six-furlong, multi-million dollar track and training facility in Inola, Okla., about 30 miles east of Tulsa. The Harmony Training Center can accommodate more than 100 horses.

“It’s a logical expansion,” said Moore, referring to the fact that Harmony is within a 12-hour drive of 12 major tracks. Like Center, she expects racing to improve in mid-grade Oklahoma as breeders come there for incentives and purses enhanced by casino proceeds.

And unlike Arkansas, which only has one track and only runs for 57 days, Oklahoma offers year-round racing among its three venues at Remington Park in Oklahoma City, Will Rogers Downs at Claremore, and Fair Meadows at Tulsa.

“We’re investing in the future,” Moore said.

 

Pay for Entertainment

If he was in it for the money, he probably wouldn’t be doing it. But Dr. Stephen K. Morrison, a surgeon at Northwest Arkansas Surgical Clinic in Bentonville, doesn’t really need the money. He races thoroughbreds for the thrill, the pageantry and the fact that in his family, horse racing brings everyone together.

“It’s supposed to be fun, and it’s been a ton of fun,” he said.

Morrison grew up on his dad T.A. Morrison’s farm in Aurora, Mo., where he fed horses and mucked the stalls. To this day he and his father are partners in a horse, Kentucky-bred Suee’s Here, who races at Remington and Oaklawn Park. Put on the track when she was a two-year-old filly, she is now four and on a farm outside Fort Worth recovering from a broken bone in her ankle.

Morrison hopes to race her again, and expects that she’ll be claimed, probably in the upcoming season at Oaklawn. Even so, Suee’s Here has given him great memories. She’s had two second-place, one third-place and one fourth-place finish in maiden races, and last season was ridden by Calvin Borel, the famed jockey who’s won three Kentucky Derbies and a Preakness Stakes.

“That was a big kick,” Morrison said.

Even if a horse never makes it big, the horse is still a thoroughbred, and that, Morrison says, is special in its own right.

“There’s something to the fact that these horses are bred to race and they want to win,” he said. “They know when something big is about to happen.”

When Morrison was 14 years old, his dad bought a horse that earned over $200,000. Since then, Morrison has never had an interest in a horse that has done that well. The message, he said, is clear.

“It’s great fun as long as you understand it’s like going to the casino,” he said. “There’s people who lose and there’s people who lie about it. Most people aren’t making money doing this.”

 

Family Enterprise

Oaklawn’s in his blood. He’s gone to the races there since he was a kid, and for years he had a notion that one day he’d have a thoroughbred of his own.

It took a while, but that dream came true last year when Gary Elmore of Lonoke and his stepsons, Drew and Stephen Parker of Fayetteville, formed Jackrabbit Thorougbreds LLC and bought a six-year-old stallion named Sleeve for $5,000.

They brought him over to Oaklawn from Remington for the 2013 Arkansas season, but in only his second race — a race he won — he was claimed by a buyer.

“We went from jubilant to thinking, we don’t have a horse,” said Elmore.

Jackrabbit Thoroughbreds doesn’t expect to be without one for long. Elmore says the plan is to send a trainer up to Kentucky to scout for horses there and buy one before the 2014 Oaklawn season begins Jan. 10.

Elmore, a star athlete in high school, compares the thrill of watching his horse win a race to the greatest moment in his sporting life, when he won the 1969 Class A state basketball championship with the Lonoke High School Jackrabbits.

“I’m almost addicted to horse racing now because it gave me that feeling again that I hadn’t had in 40 years,” Elmore said.

He and his stepsons are just a few of the more than 1,500 licensed thoroughbred owners in the state of Arkansas. And while Arkansas represents only a small share of the total racing industry, Oaklawn, due to its stakes schedule and the quality of its purses, is considered a top-tier venue that each year attracts the fastest horses in the world.

Indeed, when the Grade I Apple Blossom Handicap and the Grade I Arkansas Derby roll around, millionaires from around the United States are in Hot Springs.

And that’s how Elmore finally got into racing — by being part of the scene. He met a trainer at Oaklawn named Chris Richard, who convinced him to buy a thoroughbred. The timing was right. Elmore, an insurance agent, pooled his resources with his stepsons — one an attorney and the other a veterinarian — and five other investors. Jackrabbit was born.

Jackrabbit considers itself a “little guy” but doesn’t plan on staying that way. Elmore and his stepsons cite the example set by Maggi Moss, the former trial lawyer who wearied of the courtroom and went into horse racing fulltime in the late 1990s and has since earned more than $35 million in purse money.

Stephen Parker, who owns Parker Law Firm in Fayetteville, said he knows success won’t come overnight. But with adequate resources, trustworthy partners and family at the center of the enterprise, Jackrabbit has a chance.

“We’re in it for the long haul,” he said. “We’re all about bringing a horse to Oaklawn, putting it in a position to win and rolling the dice.”