Let Mage Skip the Preakness, One Owner of Kentucky Derby Winner Says

With one question on everyone’s mind regarding the winner of this year’s Kentucky Derby, Mage, one of the colt’s owners, Sam Herzberg, says what’s most important is putting the horse first and winning second. That means the Florida real estate businessman with a passion for the ponies wouldn’t enter Mage in the Preakness, but would try instead to win at the Belmont Stakes.“You know, if it were me and I was training the horse, I wouldn’t run him,” Mr. Herzberg tells the Sun even while basking in the glory of Saturday’s dream Derby victory. The second leg of the Triple Crown, at Pimlico in Maryland, is coming up fast, and all concerned want to know if Mage will now try for a shot at history. The Brooklyn-born Mr. Herzberg fell in love with the track at a young age. “I used to cut school to go to Aqueduct, to Belmont,” he says. He and his teenage cohorts would leave their car a mile away to save money on parking. “My friends made me jump over the fence” to get to the track, he says. Decades later, he turned his childhood passion into a business, Sterling Racing. Last year, “my friend Ramiro Restrepo called one day and said, ‘I think I have the best magic 2-year-old in the country,’” Mr. Herzberg says. The 2-year-old in question was impeccably bred, sired by legend Big Brown with an equally impressive mother, Puca, and showed a great workout. Mr. Herzberg bought a 25 percent stake in Mage, who went for $290,000. Beside Mr. Restrepo, the owners are trainer Gustavo Delgado Sr. and his son and assistant trainer, Gustavo Jr. The fourth owner is Commonwealth, an enterprise that sells micro shares in race horses to investors for as little as $50. The Restrepos and Delagados are from Venezuela, where Mr. Delgado is a legend, having won racing’s top prizes. Mage’s jockey, Javier Castellano, is also Venezuelan. “They run it like a family,” Mr. Herzberg says. Mr. Delgado has won top races in Colombia and his native Venezuela. “When life became unbearable in Venezuela, with the Chavez regime, they moved to Miami,” Mr. Herzberg says “Delagado’s dream was always to win the Derby.”Back in 1973, the businessman went to Belmont to witness Secretariat capture the Triple Crown, winning the Stakes by 40 lengths. Fifty years later, at Churchill Downs, Mage was placed at stable 42, “the same stable and the same stall as Secretariat. It’s amazing how things come together,” he says.So, will Mage now try for racing’s top prize? To do that, he’d first need to vie for the Black Eyed Susans at Pimlico on May 20. “It’s a lot to ask,” Mr. Herzberg says. “Two weeks for him to come back, and in another track. To me, I’d skip the Preakness and run the Belmont” on June 10. “It makes more sense to wait five weeks. That’s what I would do, but I’m not the trainer.”Mage’s trainer, Mr. Delgado Sr., is yet to make the decision, but if “everything is up to what we can see now, it’s a high percentage that we will try to go to the Preakness,” Mr. Gustavo Jr. told reporters on Sunday. Despite his concern for the horse, Mr. Herzberg well understands the incentive to win the Triple Crown. “After winning the Derby, the horse has a value of up to $20 to $25 million for breeding rights,” he says. “If he won the Triple Crown, that’d triple. It’d be up to $75 million, so of course there’s an economic incentive and also historic incentive.” Yet, he adds, “my feeling is you have to do the best thing for Mage, but I’ll leave that up to the trainer. He’s with him every day and he’s got to make the decisions.” Mr. Herzberg trusts Mr. Delgado to do the right thing by the horse, a confidence he does not necessarily extend to some other players in the sport. “You have certain trainers that just want to win. They don’t care about the health of the horse. These people have to be filtered out and be punished.”Four horses died at Churchill Downs in the week leading up to the Derby there, raising the ire of animal rights activists and other detractors of the sport of kings. Several were scratched just before the race, including the favorite, Forte. “You got to remember it’s a high-risk sport,” Mr. Herzberg says. “These horses weigh a thousand pounds. Their ankles are three-four inches.”Yet, he notes, a few decades ago, when an NFL player got a concussion, “they would give him a little smelling salts and throw him back on the field.” Now, there are a lot of restrictions in football and other sports. Similarly, he hopes for tighter enforcement in racing, including national rules on horse doping. Currently each state’s racing authority decides those rules for itself. Meanwhile, after making a youthful fantasy come true with the Derby win, Mr. Herzberg hopes that the sport he loves will once again capture the hearts of young people at the age he was when he’d climb the fence at Aqueduct.

Let Mage Skip the Preakness, One Owner of Kentucky Derby Winner Says

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