The Gambler
The color, the pageantry and the Bourbon of the Kentucky Derby seem very far away at 6:56 a.m. on a cold January morning in Ocala, Florida. But the Run for the Roses starts in places like this.
The sun is just beginning to peek through the oaks surrounding the Stonestreet Farm Training & Rehabilitation Center. Mist still blankets the gently rolling hills near the main barn. A line of 10 young horses slowly works its way from their stalls while their riders quietly chat. Once they reach the seven-furlong track, they pick up the pace, splitting into pairs. First they walk, then jog, then they canter and finally gallop, eventually reaching speeds close to 35 miles per hour.
These are two-year-olds, just beginning their racing careers. Young horses at this age are developing their bones, muscles and tendons, building the strength that will allow them to race at high speeds for well over a mile. They’re also practicing standing in starting gates and working on safely navigating around each other on the track. They circle the oval in pairs this morning as their powerful legs work in concert, propelling them through the air and across the dirt. Their nostrils flare as their lungs devour oxygen and their hearts pump furiously.
Standing on the porch of a small building next to the rail is a woman who’s watching every move. Barbara Banke is best known as one of the most successful people in the wine industry, chairman and proprietor of Jackson Family Wines, a company that sells more than 6 million cases a year of brands such as Kendall-Jackson, La Crema and many more. But in the past 12 years, she has also become one of the most influential people in Thoroughbred horse racing.
Stonestreet Farm, which she has overseen since 2011, is one of the top names in racing. She owns approximately 117 mares and their children, more than 1,800 acres at three farms in Kentucky and this one in Florida. She owns shares in some of racing’s most successful stallions—horses like Curlin and Good Magic, champions who are now fathers to multiple champions. Stonestreet has been the leading North American Thoroughbred breeder by gross North American yearling sales 12 times in its 17 years of operation, including the past eight years.
Banke and of her team are watching the morning workout with particular interest, because this is the time of year they will decide the future of these two-year-old horses. Which colts and fillies are advanced enough to begin races in April? Could some travel to England to compete in June? Which need more time to grow into their bodies and their personalities? Which trainer should each horse be sent to? Who is on the path to being a top three-year-old next year and making a run for the Triple Crown?
Horses bred by Banke have won 125 graded stakes races worth a combined $122 million in purses, consistently among the top breeders in the country. Stonestreet Stables, the racing arm of the operation, has won the Preakness three times and Banke has won multiple times at the Breeders’ Cup. But there is one win that has eluded her. And she wants it.
“Everybody in the world knows the Kentucky Derby.” She smiles, a grin that suggests both amusement and ambition. “I’ve come in second. I’ve come in third. But I’ve never won. This could be my year.”
Banke, 70, didn’t grow up around horses. She was raised near Los Angeles, a descendant of Dutch and Sicilian immigrants and the eldest of four. Her father was an aerospace engineer. Tasked by her mother with cooking for the family, Barbara decided quickly that she wanted a career outside the home. After graduating from UCLA and Hastings Law School, she went to work as a real estate attorney. Often the only woman in her firm, she felt she needed to work three times as hard as the other lawyers. She became known as an expert in eminent domain cases, arguing before the Ninth Circuit of Appeals and even the U.S. Supreme Court. In a courtroom in 1980, she met Jess Stonestreet Jackson, a lawyer representing another client on the same side. They became friends and worked together on several cases. In 1984, they married.
Banke’s speciality was detailed legal arguments of appellate cases, while Jackson was more of a performer, able to win over a jury with a professorial demeanor. He was a big personality outside the courtroom too, brash and bold and restless. In the 1970s, he and his first wife had purchased a farm in Lake County, north of Napa. It was planted with almonds and was supposed to be an idyllic retreat. Instead, Jess tore out the trees and planted vines. Soon, he was selling grapes to wineries. When they terminated his contract because of a surplus harvest, he founded his own winery, Kendall-Jackson. The wine didn’t sell particularly well at first, but then a batch of Chardonnay from the 1982 harvest got stuck during fermentation, leaving some residual sugar in the wine. He and his winemaker blended it with some drier lots, bottled it and watched as sales took off. Americans liked a little sweet in their Chardonnay. Within years, Kendall-Jackson was one of the biggest names in California wine.
After Jackson and Banke married, she stayed in the courtroom for a few years as he increasingly focused on the winery. But they were partners in everything, and quickly she was helping out, overseeing the legal department. In 1990, she left law practice for good. Over the next decade, Jackson Family Wines expanded, buying wineries in California, then Tuscany and .
But no matter how big the company grew, Jackson remained restless. It was his nature. Banke likes to keep her fingers on the pulse of everything, but she’s good at delegating and letting winemakers and other employees take responsibility. Jackson, on the other hand, was a born micromanager. In 2003, she ordered him to get a hobby. “He was driving everyone crazy,” she re. “But he could never do anything halfway.”
Jackson had grown up going to the track with an uncle and fondly ed having seen Seabiscuit race. So he bought a racehorse. He quickly learned the money in horses lies in breeding, not racing.
Horse racing has been popular in America since its colonial days, both as a sport and—until recent years—as one of the few legalized forms of gambling. Horses typically raced for several years, making dozens of starts and often pulling in enough cash to make them profitable. But most of the purse money for races comes from bets placed at the track, and the legalization of off-track betting in 1978 and the rapid growth of the casino industry weakened tracks. Beginning in the 1980s, revenues declined. Horse breeding and training got more expensive, but purses didn’t keep pace. In 2008, U.S. Thoroughbred owners invested $4.3 billion to compete for $1.1 billion in purses, according to a Stanford University study. Horse lovers with deep pockets could make a lot more money breeding retired Thoroughbreds.
Just two years after he invested in his first horse, Jackson bought a large farm in Kentucky, named it Stonestreet and began stocking it with dozens of mares. His new hobby was raising horses.
While Banke loves animals—she has always been a dog person—she remained focused on wine. That is, until a horse stole her heart in 2007.
“That’s when we had Curlin,” she says, describing the three-year-old horse Jackson and two partners invested $3.5 million in after its first race, an impressive win. “Curlin was very exciting. You’d go to the races and think, ‘What’s he going to do today?’ ” says Banke. “He was a great, great race horse, full of personality. He’d look at the other horses as he was ing them.”
Curlin would go on to finish third in the Kentucky Derby, first in the Preakness, second in the Belmont and first in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. He won horse of the year in 2007 and 2008. The following year, Jackson bought Rachel Alexandra and entered her in the Preakness. She became the first filly in 85 years to win the race. She was the 2009 American Horse of the Year, giving Stonestreet the title for the third year in a row. “She was bratty,” laughs Banke. “She was always trying to bite me. She’s better now.”
Behind the big wins and headlines, however, Jess was sick, suffering from a rare skin cancer. He fought it for three years, ing away in 2011. There was speculation in the wine industry that Banke, their three children and Jess’ two daughters from his first marriage would sell the wine company and Stonestreet. Instead, Banke took the reins.
“Towards the end, he said, ‘You know, if you’re going to keep it, you better get more involved,’ ” she re. “So I said, ‘Okay, let’s see how it goes.’ And I liked it. Thanks to Curlin, I was addicted by that time. Yeah, so I got more involved.”
Twelve hours after the morning workouts in Ocala, Banke is having dinner with key of her Stonestreet brain trust. They’re ed by Peggy Furth, Banke’s friend and partner in the Windracer wine label. The topic at hand? What to name the horses they saw today. There’s plenty of wine on the table—Pinot Noir from Oregon’s Gran Moraine, Cabernet from Napa’s Lokoya—and the ideas are flying out.
Most Thoroughbred horses aren’t named until they’re two-year-olds and about to race. Before that, they’re identified by their parents. All names need to be ed with both the Jockey Club in America for races in the United States, and Weatherby’s in the United Kingdom if the horses travel there. In the United States, names have to be available, and are limited to no more than 18 characters, including spaces and punctuation. Owners wait to officially name the horses until they have to.
An operation like Stonestreet’s involves hundreds of decisions. Just as at Jackson Family, Banke has proven gifted at turning big ideas into a practical, profitable, growing operation. Her Kentucky farm is home to more than 100 mares, most of whom have had successful racing careers. In the spring, they are bred with stallions. Foals are born eleven months later and spend their first years with their mothers. The following summer, yearlings Stonestreet decides not to keep are sold. In the fall, the horses they keep begin training.
Yearling sales provide a prime source of revenue. The other big moneymaker is in stallions, as retired ones live at stud farms and will typically be bred to mares more than 100 times each spring. The top names bring in top dollar—Curlin has a stud fee of $250,000.
All Thoroughbred horses are the descendants of three stallions imported into England in the 17th century. One advantage to Banke owning champion stallions is that they can be bred with her own mares. She bred 14 to Curlin last year and 12 to Good Magic. Deciding which horses to pair up is one of the most complex parts of the business, a specialty for bloodstock advisors, experts in pedigree.
“We have a group that gets together in a stuffy office,” explains Banke. “They lock themselves in for about two weeks and argue about various scenarios. Then I come along and look at what they’ve come up with and say ‘no.’ Actually, I agree with most of what they decide, but sometimes we need help.”
Banke likes to joke that her and her team consult a Magic 8 Ball when they get stuck. That’s a sign of just how many decisions need to be made in this operation.
When Banke finally decides which horses should run, she is wagering on which ones will do well enough on the track to earn top dollar when they retire and begin breeding. While Banke says she would like to streamline operations, trimming the farm back to 90 mares, more mares mean more foals, and the greater the chance one will be the next Curlin.
The next morning, Banke and her team are back at the track, watching the young horses run again. Two chestnut fillies are racing each other on turf. Both are promising, but one just can’t keep up with the other. She looks like she has plenty of potential, but needs more time and training. Banke gets a text message—a trainer is sending her footage of one of her three-year-olds, Mr. Lincoln, as it gallops down a track in New Orleans. She likes what she sees. The colt looks good and fast.
There are thousands of decisions to be made between now and the Derby. Banke has seen horses she really believed in never pan out. She sold a yearling for just $17,000 that went on to have several major wins.
As for the big day itself, Banke will be there. She enjoys the pageantry and the hats. She has a few superstitious customs, mostly standing in a spot where she’s been on past race days when her horses had success. She’s not typically at the bettor’s window. “Oh, I’m a two-dollar bettor,” she says. “I’m not a big gambler.”
Except that she gambles every day at Stonestreet, wagering on which horse will be the next champion to come from her stables. And she’s doing pretty well.
Mitch Frank is a senior editor at Wine Spectator magazine.
