Tropical Racing Ready for Its Moment in the Sun

Troy Levy and Chuck Simon go way back. Both from New York, they met at Yonkers Raceway in 1988, Levy training and driving Standardbreds and Simon working as the assistant racing secretary. They mostly went their separate ways soon after that, but they always maintained a mutual love for horse racing, and their winding roads have intersected in South Florida to create Tropical Racing, a burgeoning, stratified racing partnership that both men have gone all-in on.

“We were the youngest guys there, we were 20 and 21, so naturally we became friends,” Simon said of Yonkers. “I moved on after two years to work at Belmont for Wayne Lukas and after a few years, Troy quit training and got into the financial services business. About eight or nine years ago, he called me out of the blue and said he was going to be at Keeneland for the sale and maybe we could hook up. We met up and he was dying to get back into racing, but instead of Standardbreds he wanted to get into Thoroughbreds.”

Levy was once among the youngest Standardbred trainers in New York, saddling horses at Roosevelt, Yonkers, Pompano and Monticello, among others. But after Roosevelt Raceway in Levy's Long Island hometown of Westbury closed in 1988, he started looking for more security for him and his eventual family.

“I had an owner who was a senior VP of a Wall Street firm and he said, 'Why don't you become a stock broker?'” Levy recalled. “That was a time when Roosevelt was having its difficulties. Every day I left the business, I was trying to figure out a way back in. I took a hiatus, but I always knew I'd come back. When you're a family guy, a dad, with responsibilities, it's hard to go into a business like this. You just have to make sure everything is taken care of at home. I just waited, and now I'm starting to find the time.”

Simon went on to work for Allen Jerkens and took out his own training license in 1999. The Saratoga Springs native enjoyed success in Kentucky and New York, but had bounced around in recent years before putting roots down at Palm Meadows and finding an opportunity at the now near year-round racing of Gulfstream Park.

Levy and Simon, both settled in now, convened regularly to brainstorm ideas on how to bring innovation to the owning partnership game.

“We wanted to figure out, how do we get new people in this business? How do we make it better? How do we get people that don't realize it's here and it's affordable?” Levy said. “For two years, we went back and forth, coming up with ideas, rambling on with each other. Chuck didn't realize that I was writing down everything we were saying.”

The idea behind Tropical Racing is to create an accessible membership club for both stakeholders and partners without equity in the actual horses, one that provides all the benefits of horse ownership, but also includes special offers at Gulfstream and in the Hallandale Beach area.

“What we didn't want to do with this partnership is just be like everyone else,” Simon said. “Over the years, we've been taking an unofficial poll of ownerships and partnerships, asking what they liked, what they didn't like, what they would like to see, so we've tried to put together something that accents the positives, mitigates the negatives and makes it fun and affordable. We wanted to give our owners more than just a piece of paper that says they own a piece of a horse.”

Tropical partnered with several different companies, including Gulfstream, to offer its clients discounts and priority service.

“We have hotels, restaurants, etc.” Simon said. “Gulfstream gives Tropical members $5 valet, discounts to Ten Palms, the gift shop, etc. So I said to Troy, why not open up the membership club for non-owners, in order to let people who don't have the means to actually own even a share of Tropical, to be involved with a stable, kind of like they do in Europe and Japan.”

Non-owning members pay a flat fee of either $300 or $500 depending on the level of discounts and services, and pay $29 or $49 a month after that. Tropical has outings for members at Simon's barn, who can then attend the races and get a free program. For the stakeholders, Tropical offers a variety of packages, including syndicating individual horses and doing straight partnerships with outside owners.

They have an 18-horse string at the moment, including 2-year-olds, broodmares and four yearlings, two of which are new additions from the ongoing Keeneland September sale. The stable brought home Hip 2254, a filly by English Channel, for $25,000 and Hip 2498, a colt from the second crop of promising freshman sire Power Broker, for a private sum.

“Both are very, very athletic,” Levy said. “The colt is real smooth, muscular for his age, should develop nicely over the next 6-9 months and we really like the family. The filly had everything together, walked and moved very smoothly and had really strong shoulders.”

Tropical, which has a dozen partners, is looking to grow quickly, but responsibly, making sure they establish a record of success and trustworthiness at Gulfstream first.

“The idea is to expand beyond the South Florida market, but we want to concentrate on this circuit and be successful here first,” Simon said. “One thing that I insisted on was that we wouldn't syndicate any horses that we don't feel 100% confident about. When we buy from the 2-year-old sales, I take the horses and train them for a while before we put them in packages, because we want to be sure that we're putting out a good product.”

Simon noted that if Tropical purchases a horse he and Levy don't feel confident about, the two race the horse themselves, without partners, while allowing members to buy in later if the horse proves them wrong.

“We're not passive here,” Levy said. “We want to give our owners every opportunity to be profitable. We don't mark up horses like everybody else and we really take our time and do our due diligence.”

One horse that the pair appear to have done their due diligence on is Tropicality, a 2-year-old Florida-bred filly by freshman sire Passion for Gold, a son of Medaglia d'Oro who was champion juvenile colt in France in 2009. Tropicality, picked up for $17,000 after breezing a furlong in :10 1/5 at OBS April, debuts in Saturday's eighth race at Gulfstream and has been tough to keep under wraps, drilling four straight bullets at Palm Meadows, capped by a half-mile gate work in :47 1/5 (1/11) there Sept. 14.

“Chuck wanted to put her in the $100,000 stake [FTBOA Florida Sire Desert Vixen S. Aug. 5], that's how high he is on her,” Levy said. “And he won't just say he likes his horse, I have to pull things out of him. We were at the clocker stand and people know who she is, 'oh, that's Tropicality.' One trainer came over and asked who she was because her owner wanted to know if she'd be in against them. She acts and looks like a good horse. We're just crossing our fingers.”

Levy relayed a call he received from Simon after Tropicality's aforementioned Sept. 14 work, which was in company with Honor Indy (To Honor and Serve). Set to debut next Saturday, she's another juvenile filly, owned by successful handicapping tournament players Roger Cettina and Ryan Schwarkne, that Simon is high on.

“He called me the other day and said, 'Do you know what today was?'” Levy said. “'Do you remember that time the 1992 Dream Team closed the doors to the gym and played a scrimmage, and it was said to be the greatest game ever played? That's what just happened this afternoon.'”

Between the cold dirt of Yonkers to the warm sand of South Florida, Levy and Simon have made a lot of stops in the last three decades. If things go according to plan, Tropical Racing will have made every bit of the journey worthwhile.