What can be the one phrase that describes Thoroughbred racing? It’s a sport with a storied historical past that stretches again centuries, that includes majestic creatures and legend-provoking tales, and one that enables individuals from all walks of life to unite in a single loud roar that echoes all through sacred grandstands as a backdrop to the thundering of hooves.
For Jayson Werth, that one phrase is: iconic.
“The game is iconic,” mentioned the retired Main League Baseball All-Star outfielder. “You’ve received iconic individuals, the horses are essentially the most iconic — they’re like mythological creatures. You’ve received the jockeys, the trainers, the individuals, the tracks. In every single place you look — Keeneland, Churchill, Saratoga, Del Mar, Gulfstream — they’re iconic locations.”
That’s the reason Werth decided that Icon Racing can be the right identify for his new racing enterprise, a conventional syndicate that’s uniting his mates, household, and colleagues — a few of which can be icons themselves — in a sport that Werth has fallen in love with.
“It’s a conventional partnership, conventional syndicate, however with iconic individuals and iconic animals in an iconic sport attempting to create lasting reminiscences and iconic experiences,” Werth mentioned.
As Two Eight Racing, Werth has skilled a few of the greatest highs in racing this season as a part-owner of Belmont Stakes and NYRA Bets Haskell Stakes winner Dornoch. These moments of “actual and uncooked feelings” have been properly documented by America’s Finest Racing, and Werth’s colleagues have observed and contacted the previous MLB all-star about getting concerned.
“If Dornoch didn’t have the success he had, no one would actually care. We’re using the coattails of Dornoch on this entire factor,” Werth mentioned.
The barrier of entry that plagues the game in attracting new house owners is a mission Werth decided as an essential subsequent step in his racing profession. In spite of everything, he didn’t comply with horse racing till he realized that just a few golf buddies owned racehorses. He took an curiosity and, because of house owners like Wealthy Averill serving to introduce him to the game’s intricacies, has fallen in love with racing.
“No matter what you’ve executed in your life — whether or not you’re a businessman, athlete, movie star, or no matter — everyone seems to be confronted with the identical problem of entry into the game,” Werth mentioned. “The thought [for Icon] was to assist that alongside.”
Now, Werth hopes to be that useful hand for his new companions concerned with Icon as the brand new syndicate is tough at work choosing up horses on the Keeneland September yearling sale.
“You bought to place your self in the perfect place you may, and I feel that begins proper right here at Keeneland,” Werth mentioned.
Icon has teamed with Legion Bloodstock on the sale. Legion’s Travis Durr, Kristian Villante, and Kyle Zorn met Werth on the Kentucky Derby Offered by Woodford Reserve path this yr as they campaigned Honor Marie for Ribble Farms, Michael Eiserman, Earl Silver, and Kenneth and Dave Fishbein.
“I’ll be the primary to let you know, I’m not the one you need making choices in horse racing,” Werth mentioned. “I’m simply right here for the great occasions with good individuals. I’m placing some individuals in management and administration positions [of Icon Racing] that I belief and I feel that we are able to win with.
“[Legion] are younger guys, they’re hungry, they’ve had success early on. We’re giving them a chance to stretch their legs just a little bit and construct on the success that they’ve had.”
“He’s the dream consumer,” Zorn mentioned. “His pleasure is the same as what we’re attempting to do. Our ardour behind this entire factor is the racing aspect of it, and that’s Jayson’s as properly. We’re fortunate and blessed to be a part of his staff, his imaginative and prescient, and what he’s attempting to develop this into.”
By the primary 4 books of the sale, the auctioneer has dropped the hammer in favor of Icon six occasions totaling $1.41 million. Two of their purchases have been in partnership with Hoolie Racing, together with Hip 1856, a $350,000 son of Charlatan.
“He’s received [Werth] Derby dreaming,” Zorn mentioned of the colt. “He’s a specimen. He’s one of many ones that caught your eye the minute you went again there. He was one which we felt like we needed to attempt to get for his group.”
Icon additionally had an iconic purchase Sept. 17 with the session topper on the ultimate day of Guide 4, going to $375,000 for a daughter of Nyquist from the profitable household of Corridor of Famer Private Ensign.
“Kristian known as her the queen of that guide,” Zorn mentioned of the filly. “[Werth and his son, Jackson] immediately fell in love. We knew we had been going to should stretch just a little bit to get her, however Jayson and his companions actually wished her. I’m glad we did as a result of she was our gold star.”
“We’ve received a few good horses to this point,” Werth mentioned of the sale. “Whenever you get into one thing like this, you need to watch out to not overstretch your self. It’s simple to do right here, particularly if you’re chasing pedigrees. It’s a must to have an actual tight imaginative and prescient and tight margin into what you’re on the lookout for and persist with your numbers.”
Werth expressed that one of many issues he has present in partnerships and syndicates is that you simply don’t all the time know the opposite companions. With Icon, Werth is focusing on like-minded individuals with related experiences in life.
“It’s a must to actually benefit from the individuals you’re with,” Werth mentioned. “It’s as a lot concerning the individuals that you simply’re partnered with and the individuals that you simply encompass your self with as it’s the horses you get.”
That’s the reason certainly one of Werth’s focused audiences is retired athletes. As a former World Collection champion with the Philadelphia Phillies in 2008, Werth is aware of that void left within the soul of a competitor upon hanging up the cleats.
“Horse racing offers you the chance to compete once more, to get the thrills of victory and agony of defeat,” Werth mentioned. “For retired athletes, it’s robust to copy these emotions you had all through your profession.”
“All of us share the identical ideas that this is without doubt one of the issues that horse racing wants proper now,” Zorn mentioned. “His new enterprise might be a catalyst for kick-starting a model new group of individuals coming into the sport.”
Werth is just not the one athlete to search out pleasure in horse racing. Different main leaguers like Walker Buehler (who owned a bit of 2020 Kentucky Derby winner Genuine by MyRacehorse), Alex Bregman, and Edwin Diaz are all concerned in possession. Lately, the Nationwide Soccer League’s Travis Kelce purchased a share in a 3-year-old gelding named Swift Supply. Werth sees this involvement as a booming a part of racing’s future.
“It looks like the game is rising quickly. Hastily, right here all of us are doing it,” Werth mentioned. “When you get a style, it’s exhausting to not acknowledge how a lot enjoyable the game is.”
One thing racing supplies Werth that baseball by no means did is having the ability to share these preliminary moments of triumph and defeat with the individuals you care about most.
“You win along with your teammates and your coaches. That’s nice, you get to rejoice that second,” Werth mentioned. “You wave to your pals and your loved ones within the stands, however there’s a time facet that goes on that, by the point you get to see your individuals, that second has deteriorated.
“It’s nonetheless nice and it’s nonetheless cool, however you don’t get the in-the-moment feelings, you don’t get to do it with them essentially. Horse racing offers you the chance to expertise these moments along with — whether or not it’s your loved ones or mates — the individuals you select to be round.”
That shared expertise is one thing Werth hopes extra athletes will come to understand, but additionally one thing he can now expertise straight along with his son, Jackson, who has accompanied him for yearling inspections all through the week.
“I really feel like he’s surpassed my information already,” Werth mentioned. “He does have a knack for it and he’s falling in love with the game as properly. He spent a whole lot of time with me on the big-league clubhouses and he all the time adopted me round. To maneuver into the following chapter of life and have him round and be obsessed with it has been actually cool.”
