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How horse racing at the Kentucky Derby is being taken over by fans
How to read a horse racing form at the Kentucky Derby Kirby Adams visits with Churchill Downs’ Kevin Kerstein to find out the basics of reading a racing form. Shared horse ownership models are making thoroughbred racing accessible to those outside of the traditionally wealthy ownership sphere. Partnerships and LLCs allow groups to pool resources, […]
How to read a horse racing form at the Kentucky Derby
Kirby Adams visits with Churchill Downs’ Kevin Kerstein to find out the basics of reading a racing form.
- Shared horse ownership models are making thoroughbred racing accessible to those outside of the traditionally wealthy ownership sphere.
- Partnerships and LLCs allow groups to pool resources, sharing the costs and potential profits of owning and racing horses.
- This trend has contributed to a new class of horse owner, from retired teachers and Ford workers to doctors and lawyers.
A retired JCPS teacher, a Ford worker, a youth sports coach, some UPS employees, and a few doctors and lawyers, along with roughly 30 others, beamed from the winner’s circle at Keeneland in early April.
Bourbon Breeze had charged late down the stretch at Keeneland on April 10 to pull off her first victory of the 2025 spring racing season.
The ragamuffin crew cheering and beaming from the winner’s circle in Lexington hadn’t just bet on the filly to win the race. They were all the racehorse’s owner, and this win meant they got a piece of the purse.
“Awesome day for Motley Crew Stables,” Mick Motley, co-founder of Motley Crew Stables and co-owner of Bourbon Breeze, said in a text message after the win.
Motley, a retired JCPS teacher, is no newcomer to the horse racing world. For nearly three decades, he’s actively owned and raced horses with a slew of friends and family in a space usually reserved for the rich and the blue bloods of the thoroughbred world.
“We’ve found a way to survive for 30 years, and nobody’s ever lost a whole lot of money, and certainly nobody’s ever made a whole lot of money, but we have experienced all the highs and lows like any other owner,” Motley told The Courier Journal.
Motley and his crew, a registered LLC, aren’t alone.
Since the 1990s, horse racing, dubbed the “Sport of Kings,” has evolved through various ownership methods that allow everyday people to more easily participate in the sport. No longer do you need to have a ton of money to own part of a thoroughbred. Instead, people can join models such as a partner LLC, like Motley Crew Stables, that allows groups of people to buy in and then share profits from a winning horse, or a partnership, a company that purchases and manages racehorses for a group of individuals who share the costs and profits of the horse.
With the growth of partnerships, a new class of horse owner has emerged over the past 15 years or so. This “alternative” method to ownership means no one individual is saddled with the thousands, or millions, of dollars it can cost to buy, train and race a thoroughbred.
“It’s really a sharing of the risk, and it’s a sharing of the upside,” said Terry Finley, CEO and president of West Point Thoroughbreds, a horse racing partnership that helps clients become thoroughbred owners.
“The world of racing, it’s such a fascinating world,” Finley added. “You’ve got kings, you’ve got CEOs, you’ve got movie stars, you’ve got athletes, you’ve got billionaires, you’ve got people who own pizza shops and bars and teachers. It just runs across the across the spectrum.”
And high-level success is not unfathomable for people who get into the horse racing world through a partnership or other shared ownership ventures.
In 2024, Motley Crew Stables won a race at Churchill Downs Racetrack during Wednesday of Kentucky Derby Week. After winning on a prominent race day, the excitement from the group of owners was palpable as they overflowed the winner’s circle, forcing Churchill Downs officials to corral them on the track for their victory photo.
In 2022, West Point Thoroughbreds’ clients were owners of Flightline, who won the Breeders’ Cup at Keeneland.
This year, Finley and team are hoping to replicate that success with Sandman, who won the Arkansas Derby on March 29 and punched his ticket for the Kentucky Derby, held this year on May 3.
“It feels like anybody can get in now … I think myself and anybody else in our group, we’re living proof that you can get into the horse racing business,” Motley said.
‘It’s a journey’
Historically, owning a racehorse would be a daunting endeavor for the roughly 500 active clients at West Point Thoroughbreds, but the partnership model has made the sport feel accessible for the people who share ownership of some 145 racehorses.
“It’s very similar to other investments and other structures outside of racing; you’re much more powerful when you get a group together and you can pool your resources,” Finley said. “That’s really at the heart of partnerships, the ability to pool your resources to increase your chances to get the one, or hopefully more than one, horse that makes it all worthwhile.”
In 1996, Motley Crew Stables started with roughly 30 co-owners and $30,000, half of which was used to claim the group’s first horse, Phony Prospect.
Motley said he likes to keep his group to no more than 40 partners at a time and always wants to keep positive cash reserves from share buy-ins and horse winnings, so members aren’t expected to have regular payments for the horse. Anytime the horse wins purse money, it rolls into the group’s operating budget.
“It’s very accessible, and once you find that out, you still get the same thrills as those guys running … on Derby Day,” Motley said.
Tim Sanders, a worker at Ford and a semi-recent addition to the crew in the last seven years, has put in no more than $4,000 since joining.
For him, like many others, horse racing is an investment, not a “get rich quick” opportunity, and something he hopes to remain part of for a long time.
“It’s not a sprint, it’s a journey,” Sanders said. “You’ve got to be in it for the long haul to be able to enjoy the fruits of the labor.”
And the “long haul” may be key for a sport that has seen gradual decline in attendance and on-site gambling from fans as new forms of sports gambling have popped up across the country.
“I just shudder to think what our sport would be without partnerships … I think our industry probably would be in tatters without partnerships,” Finley said.
Sanders and Motley’s love and passion for horse racing began on the backside of Churchill Downs Racetrack.
As teenagers, both spent time around Angel Montano Sr., one of the winningest trainers in Kentucky in the 1970s. Sanders grew up across the street from the track, and Motley would walk and groom the horses. That access introduced the men to the unbridled spirit for which Kentucky horse racing is known and created a life-long fixation.
As they got older, their love for horses, and the sport of racing, never faded. Motley would go on to co-found Motley Crew Stables in 1996 and Sanders would join another horse ownership group before making his way to Motley’s team about seven years ago.
“It changes lives,” Finley said of horse racing. “It captivates people. It gives them a whole new world to jump into and to explore.”
‘The sport of little paupers’
For some, like Gene Palka, going into horse racing wasn’t a lifelong affair.
After he retired from the U.S. Army and moved back to Kentucky with his wife, Cindy, they bought three pleasure horses within three months, then decided the next step was to go in on a racehorse.
“When we came to Kentucky, it was nice, but there was something missing,” Cindy Palka said. “And then once we did invest in that first one and you do OK, you’re like, ‘I really like this.'”
One investment of about $10,000 into a horse 15 years ago was all it took for the Palkas to be hooked. Now, they spend their retirement traveling to racetracks around the country to watch their horses, even making a showing at the Breeders’ Cup at Churchill Downs Racetrack in 2018.
“We are not kings and queens, but we can be among them, and the horses have been our pathways into these incredible venues,” Gene Palka said.
As they watched their newest horse, Ivory and Ebony, barrel down the track at Keeneland on April 7 during its rescheduled opening day, the Palkas couldn’t help but gawk at their pretty filly, who placed second in the fifth race.
“You have euphoria,” Cindy Palka said after the race.
But it’s not all joy. The Palkas have dealt with everything, from serious injuries of their horses to a win at Laurel Park in Maryland, after which they watched the same horse be handed over to a new owner who bought it just before the race started.
Through it all, the sheer pleasure of horse racing ownership and the community they’ve found along the racing circuit has kept them in the sport.
“We’ve had the highest of highs and the lowest of lows,” Gene Palka said.
The highs and lows of the sport, Sanders, with Motley Crew Stables said, hit the same whether you’re the ruler of Dubai or a Louisville born and bred blue-collar worker.
With the pinnacle of horse racing just around the corner, Motley, Finley, Sanders and the Palkas gear up to spend long days at the track, in the paddock, lingering on the backside and enjoying the world of horse racing.
“It’s not just the sport of kings; it’s the sport of little paupers like us,” Motley said.
Contact business reporter Olivia Evans at oevans@courier-journal.com or on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter at @oliviamevans_.
This story was updated to add a video.