Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Early Voting’s mandate: Get Klarman a second Preakness
For a man who grew up three blocks from Pimlico Race Course, what could be better than winning the Preakness Stakes the day before your 60th birthday? Maybe winning it again on your 65th birthday?
Owner Seth Klarman has the chance to do just that when he and his four-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer Chad Brown send out Early Voting in Saturday’s 147th Preakness Stakes.
In chasing a Preakness victory with Early Voting, Klarman and Brown are utilizing the same script they wrote for Cloud Computing in 2017. Cloud Computing, with just three starts under his belt, including a third-place finish in Aqueduct’s Wood Memorial, had enough qualifying points to make it into the Kentucky Derby field. But the decision was made to keep the inexperienced colt out of the 20-horse melee that can be the Kentucky Derby. In a 10-horse Preakness field, Cloud Computing reeled in Classic Empire, who had finished fourth in the Derby, to win by a head.
Early Voting also has made just three starts. His Derby résumé was a little stronger than Cloud Computing’s in that Early Voting won the Grade 3 Withers Stakes and was beaten just a neck by Mo Donegal in the Wood Memorial. Still, neither Brown nor Klarman thought Early Voting was prepared for a 20-horse Derby field.
That the Kentucky Derby was won by 80-1 Rich Strike didn’t make Klarman regret not running in the world’s most famous horse race. The fact the pace was so hot and Early Voting is a front-running type only served to validate the decision to stay in the barn.
“There was a lot of speed in the Derby,” Klarman said. “It was a giant field. I thought that probably we’d be at some disadvantage. As it turned out, we would have been at even more of a disadvantage with the crazy pace, so we would have almost certainly gotten destroyed in the Derby with Early Voting.
“Cloud, I did not regret it for one second after we skipped it, and I think that judgment was proven right based on how things turned out.”
Klarman called the 2017 Preakness victory, “at the time the highlight of my Thoroughbred ownership career,” which began in the late 1980s. There have been many highlights since for Klarman, including campaigning the 2019 Horse of the Year Bricks and Mortar, a rare grass horse to capture that award. That year, Klarman and his racing partner William Lawrence won the Eclipse Award for leading owner, though they parted ways at year’s end.
Klarman races under the moniker Klaravich Stables, a combination of his last name and that of one-time racing partner Jess Ravich. He has been the leading owner by wins and purse money won on the New York Racing Association circuit each of the last three years.
Klarman said that when he first got into horse ownership, he concentrated on finding horses who could potentially win the classics. Teamed with Brown since 2008, Klarman said some of that philosophy has changed.
“The way we think about it is more like a roster of athletes,” Klarman said. “Chad talks about it as a team, and with a team you have people playing different positions. We’ll have distance horses, we’ll have sprinters, we’ll have colts, we’ll have fillies, we’ll have turf, we’ll have dirt. I think that means you have a chance to run on the big Saturdays and you have a chance to win all kinds of big races.”
In addition to Bricks and Mortar’s 6-for-6 campaign in 2019, which included five Grade 1 victories, Klarman has won Grade 1 stakes with dirt fillies Search Results and Separation op owe rs; turf fillies Newspaper of record and Competition of ideas; and turf males Domestic Spending and Digital Age.
While Domestic Spending attempts a comeback this summer from a tendon injury that knocked him out of last November’s Breeders’ Cup, Klarman has 3-year-olds Unanimous Consent, a colt, and Consumer Spending, a filly, who both could be significant players in their respective turf divisions this summer.
While Cloud Computing is Klarman’s only classic winner, he has owned three-time Grade 1 winner Practical Joke, Grade 1 winner Complexity, and fourtime Grade 1 stakes-placed Reinvestment Risk. Cloud Computing, Practical Joke, and Complexity are all standing at stud in Kentucky. Bricks and Mortar was sold to Japanese interests and stands in Japan.
Klarman has enjoyed success with horses who were reasonably priced. Cloud Computing and Early Voting each cost $200,000 at auction. Practical Joke was a $240,000 purchase, while Complexity cost $375,000.
“We’re pretty disinclined to pay really high prices because every horse is a gamble,” Klarman said. “We don’t think paying millions of dollars for a horse is a winning strategy. Some people have done well with that but it doesn’t suit us. We’re staying in price range and we’re disciplined, and if the market moves away from us in some sense we’ll usually just let that happen. That’s what I do in my day job. That’s what we do when we’re acquiring horses.”
Klarman’s day job is president and CEO of Baupost Group, one of the world’s largest hedge fund managing groups.
Brown takes pride in the success Klarman has had, but especially with his dirt colts considering they represent about a quarter of the horses he buys for Klarman.
“Sometimes you’re bidding against people that are only buying dirt colts, so you become at a disadvantage, per sé, when you go to head-to-head bidding on horses because it’s only a part of what we’re doing,” Brown said. “Then again the great thing about this sport is it’s never been proven the more you spend per horse the better you do.”
Added Klarman: “You can’t speed up your luck in this game. People have spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to win the Derby and you either win it or you don’t.”
While Klarman said the Derby is still high on the list of races he’d like to win, he also has held the Preakness in high regard ever since he used to attend Pimlico as far as back junior high school while growing up in nearby Mount Washington.
“You’d show up with a whole bunch of other people, bum programs and Racing Forms from old guys who were leaving, then you’d get to watch the last two races for free,” Klarman said. “That was as fun as anything I was doing as a kid. I actually appreciate that my mother thought that was okay because there would probably be some kids whose mothers wouldn’t think that was okay.”
Klarman said that a second Preakness victory “would be absolutely unbelievable.” As a handicapper, Klarman likes the idea of having a fresh horse to run against Kentucky Derby second- and fourth-place finishers Epicenter and Simplification as well as Kentucky Oaks winner Secret Oath, all of whom are coming back on short rest.
“It’s very tough for Epicenter and Simplification and Secret Oath to all come back in two weeks,” Klarman said. “We think some aspects set up for us. We may or may not be the speed, which would probably be an advantage at Pimlico; it always has been. But no matter what, I think we have a solid shot and we’re super excited to see what happens.”