‘It’s just magical.’ South Florida owners of 2023 Kentucky Derby winner Mage ecstatic.
No doubt they were celebrating from Miami all the way to Venezuela on Saturday night after Mage won the 149th running of the Kentucky Derby.
The lightly raced 3-year-old colt, who was a 15-1 shot in the Run for the Roses, boasted plenty of South Florida connections in trainer Gustavo Delgado Sr. as well as his son’s OGMA Investments, Ramiro Restrepo, Sam Herzberg’s Sterling Racing and CMNLWTH.
“The emotions are just through the roof, obviously,” Restrepo said afterward. “The amount of friends that we all have. The ownership group is four different groups from four different backgrounds, all different age ranges, nationalities. I mean, it’s one heck of a melting pot that came together for this horse, so the amount of celebration that’s going to go on, I can’t even describe it going forward.”
Restrepo is a 44-year-old Miami native and University of Miami graduate who works for Fasig-Tipton as its South Florida market representative. His grandfather rode and trained horses in Columbia. Two of his uncles hot walked horses, including the legendary Secretariat, in New York. After Restrepo’s parents moved to Miami, Ramiro grew up going to races at Gulfstream Park in Florida.
For the past few years, Restrepo and Gustavo Delgado Jr., who assists his father in training and runs OGMA equine investments, have been purchasing between three and five horses per year.
At the 2022 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Two-Year-Olds In Training Sale at Timonimum, outside Baltimore, the duo paid $290,000 for a colt by 2018 Kentucky Derby runner-up Good Magic out of Puca by 2008 Kentucky Derby winner Big Brown. They named him Mage, a kind of magician.
“We had a budget in mind, Gustavo and myself, to start bidding,” Restrepo said. “When it got to that number and I started to hesitate, Gustavo took out his whip, cracked me two times, and said, ‘Let’s go! Don’t stop bidding.’ And we went up $290,000, which in the real world, it’s a lot of money. But in horse racing it’s just — it’s a respectable number, but it’s by no means a lot of money.
“We ended up getting the horse. Since we went over budget, we needed to put together an ownership group. I immediately called Sam Herzberg of Sterling Racing. He’s in real estate down in Miami. I have known him in over 10 years. We have some great mutual friends in common.”
Restrepo and Delgado each took 25 percent of the colt, then sold 25 percent each to investors Sterling Racing and CMNWLTH. The latter is a microshare investment company founded by Brian Doxtator and Chase Chamberlain that operates an app that allows investors to buy shares in horses. Mage had over 300 investors buy shares at $50 each for a piece of ownership in the horse.
Racing under the name Sterling Stables, Herzberg owned the colt Black Onyx who won the Spiral Stakes at Turfway in 2013 for trainer Kelly Breen, but it was scratched the day before the Kentucky Derby because of a non-displaced chip in his right ankle.
“I don’t have to tell you how depressed you get when something like that happens,” Herzberg said Saturday. “This is the Derby. Some people — I don’t care who you are — never make it to the Derby. I had a little barn.”
Then while in California last year, Herzberg got a call from Restrepo saying he had bought a colt that he believed was the best Good Magic offspring in the country. Herzberg bought in.
“And to come back here 10 years later and not only get in the Derby but win the Derby, I don’t know, I don’t know what to say,” he said. “It’s just magical.”
This story was originally published May 6, 2023 at 9:43 PM.
