Driven to win: Jess Jackson's unconventional quest to make Curlin one of the all-time greats
In a back room devoted to horse racing at Jess Jackson's 5,310-acre estate in Geyserville, the career of a great racehorse -- Jackson's great racehorse -- was unfolding on a plasma screen.
There was Curlin, the reigning Horse of the Year, at Gulfstream Park in Florida 13 months ago. His first start. His first win. Says the announcer: "Curlin makes a mockery of the field."
Jackson smiles. He's seen this race 10 times.
For the next 30 minutes, Jackson, 78, the lawyer-turned-billionaire founder of Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates and 80 percent owner of Curlin, smiles often.
He is a self-made success not given to smelling the roses. But he is enjoying this look back at 2007, a year in which he took a ride many of his peers never will.
On the screen, Curlin wows them at the Rebel Stakes. And the Arkansas Derby. By the time Curlin wins the Preakness Stakes and the Breeders' Cup, Jackson, who has witnessed seven of Curlin's 10 races in person, is seemingly back at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore.
"This is like a vacation," he said. "I've never watched these races all together."
After Curlin's most recent race is run, the screen goes blank.
And for most owners of accomplished Triple Crown Thoroughbreds, the story ends there. Keep racing? What for? The breeding shed -- and mega-millions -- await.
But Jackson, the 553rd-richest person in the world, according to Forbes magazine, can afford to take a risk. And the gamble he's taking now is turning heads in the horse-racing industry, a world he entered in 2003.
Millions be damned, Jackson is racing Curlin as a 4-year-old in an effort to send the horse, worth an estimated $40 million, into a stratosphere with the all-time greats.
"I want to establish Curlin for what I think he is," Jackson said. "He's one of the horses of the century."
Curlin's biggest chance to burnish his legacy arrives Saturday at the $6 million Dubai World Cup in the United Arab Emirates, the world's richest horse race. A victory would net $3.6 million, a pittance compared with the estimated $15 million he might generate annually in a breeding shed.
But Jackson isn't worried about his wallet.
If Curlin wins in Dubai, he would creep within about $1.2 million of passing Cigar as the all-time winningest horse. Cigar earned $9,999,815.
Focus on winning
Curlin's trainer, Steve Asmussen, admires Jackson's perspective.
Asmussen is handling 12 of the roughly 60 horses Jackson has in training. The horses are promising, but Asmussen doesn't expect any to enter a Triple Crown race this year. Jess Jackson doesn't just want to compete, Asmussen explains, he wants to win.
His focus on greatness explains his global wine company, which sprouted in 1982 from an 80-acre vineyard in Lakeport.
And it also explains why Curlin is still racing.
"I want to meet the person who would leave so much money on the table for the sport of seeing what their horse could accomplish," Asmussen said. "You know the saying, 'Put your money where your mouth is?' I'm not sure there's a better example than this."
There's a simple reason most owners don't put their money where their mouth is. There's far too much money to lose.
Breed or race?
Gary West, a veteran horse-racing writer at the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram, said the sport even encourages the early retirement of its stars, with its less lucrative payouts to older horses.
In the first four months of the racing season, 3-year-olds have 13 stakes races worth at least $500,000 each, including four $1 million races. Older horses have seven such races, with just one worth $1 million.
No wonder Curlin's main competition from 2007 -- stars such as Street Sense, Hard Spun and Any Given Saturday -- have all been retired.
Horse racing long has been dominated by commercial breeders fixated on dollar signs. And the focus away from the track has contributed to the sport's sagging appeal.
West said the situation is tantamount to NFL announcers being paid more than the players, a move that would send the league's biggest names to the booth prematurely.
In Jackson, however, he sees a maverick shaking up the staus quo.
"Jess Jackson has come along and said something is wrong here. We're focusing on the sale ring rather than the racetrack, and in doing so we're compromising greatness," said West, who has covered roughly 60 Triple Crown races since 1982. "There are many people within the sport who have the financial wherewithal to make the same decision, but they don't. Why? Are they afraid of being called bad businessmen?"
Jackson says other factors influenced him to race Curlin this year. Among them are generating fan interest, fostering international relations -- sending him to what he terms a "benevolent dictatorship" in Dubai -- and establishing the genetic traits of durability and stamina.
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