Besecker Dispersal Headlines Midlantic Sale

In the midst of his best year at the races to date, owner Joe Besecker has decided to disperse his breeding and racing stock, with the majority scheduled to go through the sales ring at the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic December Mixed Sale Tuesday in Timonium, Maryland. The founder, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania-based Emerald Asset Management, Besecker admitted it was a difficult decision to end his four decades in the industry.

“My head knows what to do, but my heart is breaking,” Besecker said of the decision to get out of the industry. “It's killing me. It's absolutely as painful as anything I've ever done. I really love this game. I love the animal. I love the people.”

Despite his obvious passion for the industry, Besecker said the challenges of ownership–and an industry determined not to address its problems–dictated his dispersal.

“This game, unless it changes, is going to chase more people like me out of it,” he said. “They take advantage of the passion. They are not responding to almost anything that an owner is trying to say to help things out. They take advantage of the passion of the people who are really supporting the industry and that's the owner. At some point, when you look at the time and the energy that you put into it to be a success, is it really worth it versus all of the crap you have to put up with?”

Describing some of the issues he said he's had to deal with over the years, Besecker said, “As somebody who claims or potentially wants your horse to get claimed, these tracks do not follow the rules. So if you have to claim a horse within 10 minutes of the post time, and the horse doesn't even come into the paddock until there is eight minutes to go, how is that fair? That happens everyday. And then every track has a different rule for claiming; one track will only take cash, another track will not take cash. One will only accept wires, the other one will not accept any wires. If I ran my business like the horse racing game, I wouldn't have one. And there is no change. There is nobody trying to change it. When you say to somebody, 'This isn't right,' they say, 'Yeah. we agree.' But that's as far as it goes.”

Over the last several decades, Besecker has run his racing stable like a business and the results have shown. Through Wednesday, Besecker was the second leading owner by wins and seventh-leading owner by purses in the country. His horses had made 748 starts with 189 wins and earnings of $4,683,225.

“I was out to prove that if you do what I call my three Ps, if you take the right process and you get the right people, you'll tend to get performance,” Besecker said of his operation. “When I applied that to racing as a business, that's what happened. I've been fortunate enough in my regular business to have some disposable income, but racing is not a weekend hobby. We are research analysts and money managers, so we applied some research to it and found out you have to average about $3,300 per start to be able to really make any money. I am averaging close to $6,300 and we are doing well.”

In addition to the frustrations which have plagued him in the industry, Besecker also said the death of his father over the summer had him reevaluating his racing stable.

“One of the reasons it was cool for me to really expand and do the things I did, my father never had the opportunity [to own horses], but he really did love the game and he got a tremendous kick out of following the daily results of our horses,” Besecker said. “We have horses running at least five or six days a week. That was something that was special to be able to share with him. He probably knew more about my horses than I did. During his recovery, that was really a special thing. Unfortunately, my father passed away on Aug. 4. And it was pretty crushing on many fronts.”

Besecker has also discovered a new passion as his Emerald Foundation has helped develop the North America Scholastic Esports Federation, providing educational opportunities to children through a video sporting competition platform.

“We started this about a year and a half ago and the results have been ridiculously spectacular,” Besecker said. “We have this big problem in our country of educational stagnation. I've hooked up with the Samueli Foundation and we started a thing called North America Scholastic Esports Foundation. Esports is just a tiny part of it, it's really the ecosystem around that–the lighting, the art, the music, the coding, the event planning, the blogging and the streaming, all of that. We're teaching these kids those skills wrapped around something they love.”

Besecker will offer over 100 horses through three consignments at the Midlantic sale Tuesday, but before that auction he has two more shots to add stakes victories to his resume as a racehorse owner. Juveniles Laddie Liam (Golden Lad) (hip 302)–named after Besecker's son–and Mine Not Mine (Golden Lad) (hip 310) both go postward in the Maryland Juvenile Futurity at Laurel Park Saturday.

“I like them both,” Besecker said of the duo. “There is something about Mine Not Mine that tugs at my heart a little bit, but I think I have a pretty good shot with both. We certainly think we'll be very competitive and I'll be rooting for a dead-heat. It's a little bittersweet, but there is an excitement and energy and adrenaline.”

One Besecker runner not in the Midlantic sale is a sentimental favorite for the owner, Aztec Sense (Street Sense). Claimed for $12,500 in 2017, the gelding won the GIII Fred W. Hooper S. at Gulfstream last January and almost provided Besecker with a dream trip to Dubai.

“I have wanted in the worst way to go to Dubai for the races over there,” Besecker said. “And we were there. We were invited. He won the race and two steps after the wire, he got injured. It wasn't even during the race. It was right after the race.”

Aztec Sense is now back in training with Jorge Navarro at Palm Meadows and Besecker is optimistic the 6-year-old will make an impact again at the races.

“He's on the comeback trail and he's doing extremely well,” Besecker said. “I don't know how I'd be able to sell him–business-wise, they aren't going to give me what he is worth, and number two, if he comes back–and I'm getting excited about what I'm hearing–I might break my rule a little and keep him.”

But besides that possible exception, Besecker plans on getting his racing stock to zero.

“How can I not get to zero?” he asked. “Because otherwise I'm still in it. It would be kind of like, 'Okay, I'm going to marry this girl, but keep my old girlfriend and we're just friends. I have to have a period of time where I do get to zero so that I can reflect and then take that time and effort to the other things, things that I know, with the passion and the team that I have, I can make a difference in a world that will love me back. Because in a lot of ways, the game of horse racing does not love you back. The horses do. The people do. But the game doesn't. The game really doesn't care about the owner.”