Heider Stable Firing on all Cylinders

The Heider family's three-decade involvement in racing, which dates back to the $14,000 purchase of the future multiple graded stakes winner Answer Do as a yearling back in 1987, has expanded to a global enterprise which encompasses every facet of the industry.

“We buy at auction, we race, we breed, we sell,” explained Scott Heider. “We do a little bit of everything. We race in North America and we race in Europe.”

Heider, a real estate developer based in Omaha, Nebraska, takes full responsibility for the family's foray into the sport of kings.

“I'm a University of Southern California graduate and when I was at USC, I was attending the races at Santa Anita, Hollywood and Del Mar,” he explained. “I fell in love with the sport out there and as soon as I graduated, I convinced my father that we should try to get into the business. It took me a little while, but he reluctantly agreed.”

Charles Heider, an investment banker and confidant of legendary financier Warren Buffett, and his son had instant success and the sport became a bonding point for the two men.

“As the racing gods sometimes make these things happen, the first horse we bought at auction, at Fasig-Tipton, was a horse named Answer Do, who we ran from age two through six and he won over $750,000 and was the California champion sprinter. So we thought, 'Well, this has got to be the best game in the world.' That was more than 20 years ago, but it certainly got us off on the right foot. And it actually turned out to be something that we loved doing together, father and son, and our interest just grew from there.”

Four years ago, the Heiders partnered with Craig Bernick of Glen Hill Farm to purchase a filly by Medaglia d'Oro for $310,000 out of the 2012 Keeneland September Yearling Sale. The gray, named Savings Account, went on to become a stakes-winning earner of $418,475. She was third in the 2015 GI Zenyatta S. and second in the 2013 GIII Miesque S.

While the partnership between Bernick and the Heider family has flourished and now includes both racing and breeding prospects across the globe, their association with Savings Account will end when the 6-year-old mare goes through the sales ring as hip 121 during Monday's first session of the Keeneland January Horses of All Ages Sale.

Heider admits the decision to sell the hard-knocking mare was an emotional one.

“She was the first horse that my father and I partnered with Craig on and I actually named her after my father,” Heider said. “My father passed away last year, so this was a tough decision.”

Savings Account is a daughter of stakes-winning Wild Hoots (Unbridled's Song), a full-sister to GI Wood Memorial S. winner Buddha. Heider thinks she'll find an appreciative audience at Keeneland.

“She is really nicely bred and she stands about 16.3 [hands],” Heider said of Savings Account. “She is really a beautiful mare and she is so honest. I don't think, in the 20-plus years that we've been in the business, that we've had a horse who has more frequent-flyer miles than she does. She has gone back and forth across the country I don't know how many times, but she has won at something like seven different racetracks. She is very honest and a big beautiful mare. It was a tough decision to sell her because she is exactly the kind of mare that you'd like to keep and give a chance. But honestly, what it comes down to is, you can't keep them all. I've got an emotional tie to this one that's a little different than some of the others because I named her after my father, but we have made the decision to sell her.”

Saving Account does have a hurdle to clear before she can keep her date with the Keeneland sales ring. Although she has been stabled at Glen Hill Farm in Ocala for the last three weeks, she had been stabled at Fair Grounds, which is under quartantine after an EHV-1 outbreak. Currently Kentucky is not allowing horses who have been at Fair Grounds to ship into the state, but Heider is hoping the mare will still make it to auction.

“We're doing everything we can to make it happen. We certainly want her in the sale next week,” Heider said Wednesday.

One filly that the Heider family will be keeping, at least for another year, is recent Fair Grounds allowance winner Hip Hop N Jazz (Speightstown), who had been entered in the January sale as hip 362.

A Heider homebred, Hip Hop N Jazz opened her career with a pair of East Coast wins in the spring of 2015 before a promising third-place effort in the GIII Delaware Oaks. But the filly was sidelined over a year after that race.

“When she came out of the Delaware Oaks, she was a little off behind, but we couldn't find anything wrong,” Heider explained. “We gave her the nuclear scan and X-rays and everything and we just could not figure it out, so she got a six-month vacation at Glen Hill. We brought her back and she was getting ready to be entered this past summer and she had that little hitch in her rear end again and again we couldn't pinpoint what it was. So we gave her 30 days of light training and thought we'd give her one more shot. But at the same time, we decided to send her to Hill 'n' Dale and, as an insurance policy, get her bred so we didn't miss the season. So we bred her to The Factor and once that was done we sent her to Fair Hill, which is where all our horses are with Tom [Proctor] in the spring, summer and fall. She went back into light training and we all kind of crossed our fingers and, I don't know what it was about the breeding season, but she has been completely sound ever since. She did not get in foal, which was initially a disappointment, but then as the summer went on and she started to train like she had when she was three, we thought we might get lucky.”

Returned to the races in September, Hip Hop N Jazz reeled off three straight runner-up efforts before a confident 2 3/4-length allowance victory over the Fair Grounds turf Dec. 26.

“She's come back really good,” Heider revealed. “She's going to be nominated to stakes at Sam Houston and Fair Grounds, but we'll probably send her to Sam Houston towards the end of the month. The January sale was an insurance policy, but the goal with her now is to race her this year and then make a decision what to do with her after that.”

While the family stable started out primarily buying racing prospects at auction, it has become increasingly more involved in breeding and, in partnership with Bernick and John Sikura's Hill 'n' Dale Farm, are developing a first-class broodmare band.

“When we got into the sport, we bought all our horses at auction and raced them and I had a great deal of fun doing that,” Heider said. “Probably after about 10 years, I became really intrigued about bloodlines and wanted to learn more about them and I did. We decided to dabble in the breeding end and, not too much differently than the first horse we bought at auction, the first mare we bought was a Storm Bird mare, her name was Storm Teal. She was a Coolmore mare that we bought at Keeneland and she was very good to us and she ended up having some nice stakes winners and we sold some very nice yearlings out of her. So we thought, 'This is kind of fun.'”

Heider continued, “We manage our numbers and never have more than half a dozen mares at any one time. We try to be pretty selective.”

The Heider broodmare band includes Lacadena (Fasliyev), purchased for $1.3 million at the 2015 Keeneland November sale and currently in foal to leading sire Tapit. In August, Sikura, Bernick and Heider purchased Grade I winner Taris (Flatter) and the filly will be bred to Curlin this spring.

The trio also purchased a group of well-bred Coolmore fillies over the summer, with How (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}), a full-sister to champion and five-time Group 1 winner Minding (Ire); GSW Most Beautiful (GB) (Canford Cliffs {Ire}); and GSP Earring (Ire) (Dansili {GB}), a daughter of GISW Together (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) all joining trainer Tom Proctor's barn. Earring came up a nose short when second in the GIII Long Island H. for her new connections last November and Most Beautiful was third in the GIII Senator Ken Maddy S. on the Breeders' Cup undercard.

Heider is keen to have a presence in Ireland, both for racing and breeding.

“They just produce a really good horse in our opinion,” Heider said of the Irish breeding industry. “We of course love the U.S.-breds, that is where we mostly race and breed. But there is something about the Irish horse. They breed a good animal, a really good racehorse. We're very aware of that and we feel like it's important to have some kind of presence over there, so we're doing a little bit more of that now.”

Among recent European acquisitions is the 3-year-old Take a Deep Breath (GB) (Bated Breath {GB}). Trained in Ireland by Michael O'Callaghan, the now 3-year-old was second for Bernick and Heider in last year's G3 Silver Flash S. and is currently in training at Tampa Bay Downs. On behalf of Bernick and Heider, O'Callaghan will also be training a 2-year-old Dark Angel filly and a yearling daughter of Zoffany (Ire) out of Group 1 winner Yesterday (Ire) (Sadler's Wells).

On the European breeding front, the partnership will be sending multiple stakes-placed Bobbi Grace (Ire) (Big Bad Bob {Ire}) to be bred in Ireland. The 5-year-old is a half-sister to the promising Escobar (Ire) (Famous Name {GB}).

“We're going to send her back to Ireland to be bred to Exceed and Excel (Aus),” Heider said of Bobbi Grace. “Escobar got quite a bit of print as a juvenile. He's a stakes winner and will be pointed to some of the Classics over there. So we are sending her back and we'll make some decisions on her depending on what Escobar does this summer in Europe.”

With some well-bred yearling fillies still waiting in the wings, the future looks bright for the Heider family's broodmare band.

“Craig and I have some really exciting yearling fillies,” Heider said. “We have a War Front filly out of a mare named Ruby Tuesday (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) [a half-sister to Quarter Moon (Ire) and Yesterday (Ire) and a full to Betterbetterbetter {Ire}], who is from a really prolific family. We'll race her and hopefully have a lot of fun with her and the goal would be to have her in the broodmare band.”

In that same racing-with-an-eye-towards-breeding program will be a War Front yearling half-sister to Uncle Mo and a Tapizar filly who is a half to champion Songbird. Both War Front yearlings were high-priced RNAs as weanlings at last year's Keeneland November sale; the daughter of Ruby Tuesday for $975,000 and the filly out of Playa Maya at $1.25 million.

Heider is quick to recognize his family's racing success as a team effort and gives plenty of credit to Sikura, Bernick and bloodstock agent Donato Lanni, as well as longtime trainer Tom Proctor.

“We've been very fortunate since we've been in the business and we've had some nice luck breeding and racing horses,” Heider said. “I think at the end of the day, it comes down to the people working with you and for you. This is year 15 that we've been with Donato Lanni and I couldn't be more proud of what he's accomplished. And we were boarding our mares and our horses at Hill 'n' Dale really from the start when John bought the farm and we couldn't be any more proud of John and what he's accomplished.”

Of Bernick, Heider said, “I've been friends with Craig for five or six years and we've been partnering on horses now for three years. I would say, Craig is probably one of the sharpest people I know on the ownership side of the game.”

The Heider family, which currently has about 12 horses in training in the U.S., has had horses with Proctor for the past decade.

“I sought Tom out,” Heider revealed. “I was closely watching his record and I had a really good feeling–when a trainer has three or four 6-year-olds in his barn and they are all still racing, you have to think he is doing it right. I contacted Tom, at the time he was in Chicago, and my father and I hit it off right away with him. I would say Tom has been absolutely integral to everything that we have done in the last decade.”

Heider and Bernick invested in a barn at Fair Hill a couple of years ago and that has facilitated the partnership's increased presence in Europe.

“The decision to buy a barn at Fair Hill two years ago has proven to be an incredibly good decision,” Heider said. “It probably also fuels our fire to look for horses in Ireland and Europe and participate and breed with some European stock, because Fair Hill is the closest thing to a yard as you'll find. And that has really set the program. We have an awful lot of turf horses and Tom trains turf, dirt, everything, but the Fair Hill barn fits into the program so well.”

The Heider family's breeding and racing operation does a little bit of everything, but Scott Heider is enjoying the ride.

“We love the sport and love what we're doing,” Heider said. “We wouldn't change anything about it, we love it all.”