Heider Growing European Presence

[Wandering Eyes]

Scott Heider has been successfully racing horses in America for the better part of 30 years, but his stable is likely to gain a decidedly European look down the road, with the Omaha-based real estate developer having purchased a handful of blueblooded fillies from productive Coolmore families in partnership with Craig Bernick.

“We have two 2-year-old fillies right now down in Ocala that are not too far away from going to the track,” said Heider, fresh off a purple patch in the U.S. that included stakes wins last week for his fillies Mia Mischief (Into Mischief) and Lady Alexandra (More Than Ready). “One is a War Front filly out of Ruby Tuesday (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}), her name is Flying the Colors and Ruby Tuesday is a full-sister to Betterbetterbetter (Ire) and a half-sister to Yesterday (Ire) (Sadler’s Wells) and Quarter Moon (Ire) (Sadler’s Wells), the Jude family.”

“She’s a wonderful filly, and we have another 2-year-old War Front filly, again with the War Front/Galileo cross, Property of a Lady. She’s a War Front filly out of the [GI] Queen Elizabeth-winning Together (Ire). We also have a War Front yearling filly out of A Star Is Born (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) and we’re very excited about her. She’s a full-sister to Fleet Review and A Star Is Born is a full-sister to Rip Van Winkle (Ire).”

Notice a pattern? It’s not a coincidence. Heider and Bernick are backing their belief in the War Front/Galileo cross.

“We’ve made a pretty significant investment in the War Front fillies,” Heider said. “We feel like, depending on the breeding, depending on our mood, these are fillies that can race in Europe or America. We’re not committed to being in North America with any of these fillies or Europe, we can go back and forth, but as John Sikura has educated me over the years, pedigrees like these are really an international currency.”

Heider has worked with John Sikura of Hill ‘n’ Dale since his early days in the game, and he credits Sikura with encouraging him to invest in European families and facilitating the transactions.

“We started talking a couple years ago about where we were at and for the most part we raced in the U.S., so we had a heavy slant toward American pedigrees, which was great, but we decided to rebalance,” Heider explained. “Spending time with John and some others I started to really have a massive amount of respect for War Front, specifically. He, to me, is really a throwback stallion. He’s as close to Northern Dancer as anything you can see now. A couple years ago with John’s assistance and with Donato Lanni, we made some off-market acquisitions and started to acquire some very unique families we really believe in. Many of them are based on the War Front/Galileo cross.”

Heider and Bernick laid the foundations for the program about two years ago with the private purchase of How (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}), a full-sister to Horse of the Year Minding (Ire); Irish Group 3 winner Most Beautiful (Ire) (Canford Cliffs {Ire}) and Earring (Ire) (Dansili {GB}), another daughter of Together who was Group 2-placed for Aidan O’Brien. All three went on to race for American trainer Tom Proctor, with Most Beautiful picking up a Grade III placing and Earring an allowance win and a Grade III placing in the U.S. Heider now owns How outright, and she is in foal to Dubawi (Ire) and will be offered at the breeding stock sales in Europe this year, while Bernick has Most Beautiful and Earring.

“We really love these families and we look at them as a garden,” Heider said. “You plant these beautiful flowers in the garden and you tend them and in the case of many of these families, with Coolmore having a very large garden right adjacent to you; I don’t know anyone who tends the garden as well as Coolmore. That clearly is part of our strategy; we will do our part and be very patient and try to grow these families.”

Heider and his partners have also planted the seeds for both racing and selling in Europe; Heider has a 2-year-old filly out of Yesterday named Kissed For Luck (Ire) (Zoffany {Ire}) in training in Ireland with Michael O’Callaghan, and a 3-year-old filly with Martyn Meade in Britain named Rayita (Ire) (Raven’s Pass) in partnership with Bernick. Rayita was purchased privately by Hubie de Burgh after running third on debut at Naas last October and is expected to make her seasonal debut in about 10 days’ time.

“We raced our first filly over in Ireland last summer, Modern Love, a Dark Angel filly with Michael,” Heider said. “Michael flew over to the States last October and we spent a weekend here racing at Keeneland and got to know him better. I like Michael, he’s a very young guy, a very hard-working guy and Michael without question has his sights set very high. He did a very nice job with Modern Love for us last year and we wanted to give him an opportunity with this Zoffany filly.”

Heider and Bernick were also active as sellers last year in France, parting with a Candy Ride (Arg) colt out of their mare Louvhakova (Maria’s Mon), a half-sister to the French-trained Breeders’ Cup winner Flotilla (Mizzen Mast), for €130,000 at Arqana’s August Yearling Sale. The idea to sell in France, where much of that family is active, was brought to the table by Lexington-based Irishman Tony Lacy, who had bought Heider his first filly in Ireland in 2014, and who Heider recently brought on as a more permanent member of his team.

“We have a really great team with John Sikura and Donato Lanni, and one new addition in the last year has been Tony Lacy,” Heider said. “Tony was acquiring some Irish fillies for us over the last four or five years and we had a lot of fun doing that and I have a high degree of respect for Tony, so we engaged him about a year ago to oversee what we’re doing.”

Heider said he expects his numbers in Europe-racehorses and broodmares-to grow, but he’ll be “very intentional about it”; in any case, his broodmare band in America perpetually hovers around seven or eight mares, and he said he sees that as a nice number.

“We’ll be patient with these fillies,” he said. “My background is in the investment business, and in the investment business what you want to do is acquire very good businesses at fair prices. Once you have that in place you need to be patient and make good decisions but you need to give yourself enough time where you let that money compound; the power of compounding. We look at these equine assets, these incredible families, the same way. I’m hopeful over the next 20, 30 years we’ll be nurturing these same families.”

Heider is a shareholder in Hill ‘n’ Dale’s internationally successful turf sire Kitten’s Joy, and he said he also holds that farm’s young Group 1 winner Flintshire (GB) (Dansili {GB}) in high regard. Heider said he is optimistic about a bright future for grass racing in America.

“It feels like people in North America have woken up to turf racing,” he said. “I watch intently the people in North America start paying more and more attention to these turf races. It feels like we’re writing more turf races. It was nice to see Fasig-Tipton dip their toe in last summer with the [turf] sale and I’m sure they’ll look at that and try to figure out if it’s something they want to do again at some point. I think it’s only going to grow in this country and we’re very happy to be apart of it.”

Heider said he’d also relish a chance to add a Frankel to his portfolio.

“I would love to have the opportunity to get into some Frankel blood,” he said. “I think they’ve proven they’re effective not just in Europe.”

“That’s what excites us, frankly, the international pedigrees that work on both sides of the Atlantic, and that’s what we’re committed to with this first wave of the War Fronts we have out of Galileo mares, and we’re going to stick to our guns,” Heider said. “We’ll keep nurturing these families and looking for more opportunities.”

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