Far Right Eyes Ky. Derby Glory

by Bill Finley

Everyone wants to win the Kentucky Derby, but the people who usually get there shop at Tiffany. Not Jon Jazdzewski. He goes to the Dollar Store.

What does it take to buy a Derby contender these days? Sometimes as much as $1.6 million, which is what was paid for Carpe Diem at the Ocala 2-year-old sale. American Pharoah cost $300,000. Stanford fetched $550,000. Materiality was a pricey $400,000. Sixteen of the 20 horses expected to start in the Derby were sold at auction and they cost a combined $4.33 million.

So how did Far Right sneak into this group? He was sold for $2,500 as a yearling at the Keeneland January sale. You could have purchased 640 Far Rights for what was paid for one Carpe Diem.

Far Right got there through the persistence, knowledge and hard work of a horse dentist named Jon Jazdzewski, whose side business is finding inexpensive yearlings that most have no interest in. He believes he can find individuals that are completely overlooked at the sales but can actually run and, once they establish themselves on the racetrack, he looks to sell them at a hefty profit.

And he’s pretty good at it. He once paid $10,000 for a horse he sold for $230,000, and another time he bought a horse for $1,500 and sold it for $150,000. He’s done this despite sometimes buying no more than one horse a year.

“I try to stay at that lowest level,” Jazdzewski said. “I know the really good ones are out. We go to all the sales and wait for those types of horses to come along.”

When up for sale as a yearling, Far Right was immediately cast into the bargain bin because of his then unheralded sire, Notional. He made $733,240, won three graded stakes and finished second in the 2007 Florida Derby. But before Far Right came along Notional had never had a horse win a graded stakes race or made in excess of $250,000.

“Usually when you see the one you like they make your heart beat,” Jazdzewski said. “He was the total package. He was balanced, had a ton of definition, already looked like an athlete as a baby. He was nice, really nice. There were a lot of good horsemen at that sale. The only thing that kept them away from this horse was the fact he was by Notional.”

So Jazdzewski took him home for $2,500 and laid out his typical game plan. He would try to get the horse to show something on the racetrack right from the start, preferably in the spring 2-year-old races at Keeneland, and then sell him for a handsome profit.

As a yearling and while getting ready for his debut, Far Right was trained in Florida by Tony Costanzo, who then sent him to trainer William Helmbrecht. Far Right finished second in his first start, a 2-year-old race at Keeneland, but the offers weren’t exactly pouring in. He came back and finished second again, this time at Churchill. Still, no one seemed to want him.

“Two people vetted him out to buy after his second race,” Jazdzewski said. “He was totally clean. But both backed out.”

The interest in Far Right didn’t start to heat up until the horses that beat him in each of his maiden races went on to win stakes. That added legitimacy to his record, and convinced owner Harry Rosenblum to meet Jazdzewski’s price. Jazdzewski wouldn’t say how much Rosenblum paid for the horse, but it was likely in the $150,000 to $200,000 range. Rosenblum later sold a share to owner Robert LaPenta.

Far Right has gone on to earn $625,766 and win the Smarty Jones and the Southwest Stakes and finish second behind Kentucky Derby favorite American Pharoah in the Arkansas Derby. But Jazdzewski doesn’t regret for a minute that he sold him.

“I get asked that a lot,” Jazdzewski said when asked if he wished he had held on to the horse.

“The thing is, at each level, every time he had another success on the track, we would have been offered more money. It can be a never-ending thing. But we never would have gone all the way to the Derby without having sold him … We’ve been in this long enough to know one bad step and he’s worth $1,500, not $200,000.

“The connections that have him now, they’ve done a great job. He’s gotten there because of the choices they made and the things they did. They did things right, especially with the point system. They got this horse to the Derby, not me.”

Having made a nice profit on Far Right, Jazdzewski said he has no intention of changing his game plan and buying more expensive horses. He still regrets the day he spent $15,000 on a yearling, the most he’s ever spent for a horse, and it turned out the filly “couldn’t outrun me; she looked like an eggbeater coming down the stretch.”

This year he will attend the Derby for the first time ever, going as a guest of Rosenblum. He’ll root for Far Right as if he still owned him.

“Money is money,” he said. “It comes and goes. It matters but it doesn’t. Being right about a horse is more fun than the money part of it. You want to be able to say I picked the right horse and he did make it.”
In this case, all the way to the Kentucky Derby.

For more stories by Bill Finley and others on horse racing, visit http://espn.go.com/horse-racing/