Wente Spins Affordable Mares into Breeders' Cup Gold

Tommy Wente buys affordable broodmares. He makes no apology or secret of his tactics.

"Everybody who knows me knows that when I'm at the sale, I'm buying the cheap mares," Wente said. "I am in the gutter. I am buying these mares that I think I can make something out of."

Three of those mares—Spanish Star , Jazz Tune , and C J's Gal —cost Wente a total of $31,000 at a variety of sales in 2016-17. They each produced 2019 foals, who between weanling and yearling sales sold for a total of $116,000, a decent return but certainly not home runs.

Call it the long game, but Wente's project horses are paying off now. All three of those 2019 foals have developed into high-quality runners and were pre-entered in three different Breeders' Cup juvenile races. Wente will have two chances to reach the sport's pinnacle, as one of those 2-year-olds was withdrawn from consideration due to a minor foot issue.

Wente's St. Simon Place program produced Hidden Connection  (Connect  —C J's Gal, by Awesome Again ), entered in the NetJets Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies (G1); One Timer  (Trappe Shot —Spanish Star, by Blame  ), entered in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint (G2T); and Rattle N Roll  (Connect  —Jazz Tune, by Johannesburg ), pre-entered in the TVG Breeders' Cup Juvenile Presented by Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance (G1) but withdrawn before entries were taken.

One Timer hit more of a grand slam than a home run. He comes from the least expensive of the three mares. Wente paid only $1,500 for Spanish Star at the 2017 Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale, and the mare turned into a textbook case of what every broodmare buyer hopes for.

At the time Wente bought Spanish Star, she was an unraced 3-year-old out of the graded stakes-winning Afleet Alex   mare La Gran Bailadora . Spanish Star was La Gran Bailadora's first foal, and La Gran Bailadora had a 2-year-old colt by Artie Schiller , a yearling colt by Awesome Again, and a weanling filly by Ghostzapper  .

The Artie Schiller colt never started, and the Ghostzapper filly started twice in 2020 with a second and a third. But that Awesome Again colt, who was a $50,000 RNA at the 2017 Keeneland September Yearling Sale, was named Sir Winston , won the 2019 Belmont Stakes (G1), and ultimately earned $1,091,989.

In the meantime, Wente bred Spanish Star to Trappe Shot  in 2018. The mare produced One Timer in 2019, and Wente bred her back to Tapwrit  .

"I think the day after I bred her to Tapwrit, Sir Winston wins the Belmont," Wente said. "As soon as Sir Winston won, my phone blew up. I sold her a week later for $150,000 privately."

One Timer was still at Spanish Star's side, though just about ready to be weaned. Wente said the purchasers were not interested in One Timer, figuring a Trappe Shot wouldn't be very marketable, especially after the sire was sold to Turkey. So he weaned the colt and moved the mare along.

"He was so nice," Wente said of One Timer. "I raised him to a yearling. I think he was the highest-priced Trappe Shot to sell that year, which was only $21,000. So the guy was right—there was no money to be made on the Trappe Shot."

One Timer is now making money for Wente, however, as are Rattle N Roll and Hidden Connection, because buyers are seeing the product he turns out at the 400-acre Lexington farm he is leasing for 15 years. At the second session of the recent Fasig-Tipton Kentucky October Yearlings Sale, an Empire Maker  colt that Wente foaled and raised for his partner Calvin Crain and the late Tom Conway sold for $750,000 through Carrie and Craig Brogden's Machmer Hall Sales.

Wente gives much of the credit to Carrie Brogden, who advised him to give the Empire Maker colt time to mature. They had entered him in the Keeneland September Yearling Sale, but scratched him in favor of the later Fasig-Tipton auction.

"Let this horse be a horse," Carrie Brogden advised Wente.

That is Wente's entire game plan. He focuses on his feed program and gives his young horses plenty of turnout time.

"They need to be outside—they do not need to see a barn," he said. "You won't see my horses in a stall. They are outside. I'm prepping 16 foals right now. They come in for three hours in the morning. They eat, they get groomed, and they go right back outside for the remainder of the day."

Wente first bred horses in Indiana in the late 1990s before leasing the St. Simon property. Crain and his son Shane have partnered with him, though their primary farming business is in the sod industry.

It took 49-year-old Wente a while before he settled on horses as a career. Born and raised in Illinois, he spent time in Kansas and Florida before heading to Indiana. His stepfather, Tom Hickman, was a horse trainer in that state, and Wente fell in love with racing after Hickman provided him with his first horse.

Wente reached out to Carrie Brogden when he was still breeding horses in Indiana.

"She was my go-to person when I first started," Wente said. "If it wasn't for Carrie Brogden, I wouldn't be where I am today. She opened so many doors for me. It's been a really good relationship. The horse comes first with her—anything she does, that animal will come first. She is all about the animal."

Today, Wente owns about 18 mares outright, and he has partnered with other people on several mares, including about 16 with Scott Stevens. Wente occasionally sells some of his mares that have appreciated in price. For example, he has C J's Gal entered in The November Sale, Fasig-Tipton's marquee breeding stock sale. C J's Gal is in foal to Frosted  .

Though he says he buys "cheap mares," Wente does have a strategy.

"I'm trying to buy every mare that I can steal," he said. "I can't afford the big mares. I'm buying mares that have blank first dams, but I think they've got something going. We really dissect the mares. We like to buy mares that have really big stallion lines, by good stallions. The first dams are really young, so they're just starting out."

If that young mare produces something in the interim, like what happened with One Timer's family, that pedigree skyrockets in value. Couple that with the way Wente raises his babies, and it has led to St. Simon Place being represented as breeder by multiple good chances in the Breeders' Cup.