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| Sport & Leisure |
Horse Sense
Reshma Memon Yaqub
12/01/2003
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If Barry Schwartz were to name a horse for the life he has led thus far, it would be called The Gambler. A Bronx native, the co-founder and former chairman of Calvin Klein grew up in a neighborhood where dice were always welcome, and the odds, in his case, were usually beaten.
 A 1967 gamble—$10,000 in profits from his family’s grocery store invested in childhood buddy Calvin’s scheme to
create a coat company—kicked off a multibillion-dollar fashion house. Most recently, after he and Klein sold their business earlier this year, Schwartz has placed his bet on his first passion: horse racing. As chairman of the New York Racing Association (NYRA), a circuit that includes three tracks, he is responsible for stimulating racing in New York. His most significant achievement during his three-year tenure has been to lower the percentage of each bet that is withheld as an administrative fee, convinced that lowering the takeout would increase betting overall. The numbers have proven him right, and he intends to repeat that success.
It was at one of NYRA’s tracks—Belmont, on Long Island—that then 15-year-old Schwartz, with Klein at his side, fell in love with racing. In 1978, Schwartz bought his first horse for $40,000. Since then, he has invested millions of dollars in buying and breeding about a thousand horses, largely at Stonewall Farm, a 75-acre horse property in Granite Springs, N.Y., that he has owned for 20 years and finally moved into last fall with his wife, Sheryl. Dozens of Schwartz’s horses have run major races—three in the Kentucky Derby. Today his 100 horses pull in $1 million to $2 million a year in earnings.
That’s a lot. Median earnings for racehorses in 2001 were less than $6,000, according to Thoroughbred Times. A moderately successful horse might win $50,000 to $75,000 annually in a typical three-year racing career, which includes seven races a year. About 7 percent of all Thoroughbreds reached those earnings in 2001. Of the 35,000 Thoroughbreds born annually in the United States, 55 percent will never win a race, 97 percent will never win a stakes race (those with purses averaging $100,000), and 99.98 percent will never win a Grade 1 stakes race, such as the $4 million Breeder’s Cup Classic. The winner of a race usually gets 60 percent of the purse, with the remainder divided among the next four horses.
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