Barn Tour: After Geaux Rocket Ride, Pin Oak Stud looks ahead

If you don’t know the story about the rebirth of Pin Oak Stud under Dana and Jim Bernhard, here’s a recap.

Dana Bernhard, a retired attorney, had horses her entire life, but not Thoroughbreds until her husband Jim, founder of an investment firm, bought a yearling for her in July 2021. The Candy Ride Colt was named Geaux Rocket Ride by the Louisianans, and he went on to win three of his five career starts, all this year, including the Grade 1 Haskell. He also impressed when he faced older horses in the Pacific Classic (G1) and finished second by a neck to Arabian Knight. As he was preparing for the Breeders’ Cup Classic, he fractured his right front leg. He didn’t respond to surgery and was euthanized on Nov. 1.

“It was very exciting, sort of just getting swept away by the whole process,” the Bernhards’ son Ben said. “But it is really sad.”

Dana Bernhard said Geaux Rocket Ride was special from the start. “When we purchased him as our first racehorse at the auction, he actually came down to Baton Rouge with us to our barn here (in Louisiana) for two or three months until he went to the breaker. And he was a sweetheart. Feisty, fabulous personality. So it was an honor and a pleasure to spend time with him even without him being a Grade 1 winner.”

While on the ride with Rocket, the Bernhards bought a few more yearlings and then bought Pin Oak Stud in November 2022. The esteemed racing operation in Central Kentucky was founded by Josephine Abercrombie, who died earlier that year. Her horses were dispersed, and the Bernhards bought the property, the name and the blue-and-gray striped silks. In September, they bought additional property from breeder Adena Springs, giving them more than 1,200 acres on both sides of Versailles Road outside of Lexington.

The Bernhards wasted no time in scaling up their operation. Ben was brought in as vice president. Matt Weinmann, CEO of Equine Analysis Systems, joined as an adviser and racing manager. Clifford Barry, who was farm manager for Pin Oak for more than 30 years, stayed on as an adviser, and Joss Saville, who had worked as an assistant for trainer Michael Matz, came on board as the farm trainer.

Barry is an especially important part of the operation. “That man knows every blade of grass out there,” Weinmann said. “He's one of the best at raising horses, so that's an awesome deal for us to get that kind of property with a man like him. And it allowed us just to roll on. We didn't miss a beat.”

Today, Pin Oak has nearly 100 horses, Ben Bernhard said. “And we're still growing. We bought some horses at the November sale, some broodmares. We're up to 31 broodmares now. We have like 15-ish weanlings that are all home-breds. We have around 25 yearlings, around 15 2-year-olds and a couple of 3-year-olds.”

And “the Bernhards are wonderful, wonderful owners,” said Weinmann, who connected the Bernhards with Geaux Rocket Ride as a yearling. “I think they're exactly the type of people we want to inject into this business. They care deeply about the horses. It's not just a business for them, even though they do like to run it like a business. Every horse that we buy and run is a member of the family. They go to great lengths to do everything they can to take care of the horse. You know that saying, take care of the horse and horse will take care of us? Well, they're definitely living up to that, which is great to see.”

Their experience with Geaux Rocket only strengthened that dedication..

“We're really motivated by what happened to use that as motivation to improve safety,” Ben Bernhard said. “One thing we've done since then is we now have biometric sensors on all of our horses whenever they breeze, and then if the racetrack allows it, whenever they run in a race. And we've seen some studies done on these sensors, and we think there's a huge opportunity there to improve safety in general, preventing these injuries.”

The StrideSafe sensors have proven themselves, he said.

When something unusual is detected, “we go back and we look and we do X-rays and PET scans, and it turns out there was something there. … It's not to take away from horsemanship or anything like that. It's really just to add to it. And the way I put it is, with these sensors, an X-ray is a sensor, right? And this is going to show you things you can't see. The point of the sensor is to show things that the human senses can't detect. And that's what these are doing, we hope that they can do, just to help us ensure the safety and see what's going on.”

Where will Pin Oak go from here?

“I don't think we're going to get into having 200 broodmares or anything like that, but we want to be a nice, medium-sized breeding operation that breeds really nice horses,” Weinmann said. “We want to retire stallions that we run at our stallion barn and stand a few stallions there. And compete at the highest level with all the big guys. So our goal is Grade 1 winners, stallions and compete at the top.”

Jim Bernhard said he sees Pin Oak growing to about 150 horses, “all in different stages from breeding to racing, 3-year-olds,4-year olds, 2-year olds, so about 150. We just want to be a good farm, high-quality farm, and trying to do things as correctly as we know how.”

One thing about Pin Oak, he said, is that it’s “self-contained.”

“We're kind of pretty simple now. We have our own rehab facility, we have our own track, dirt track, we have our own turf, we have a Tapeta track. So we've had some success, and we're going have some success beyond Rocket, we have several nice 2-year-olds coming along.”

Which brings us to the Barn Tour portion of this report. Ben Bernhard, who has a master's degree in space engineering, provided an update on the talent in Pin Oak’s string.

Empirestrikesfast. The 3-year-old gelding by Empire Maker, trained by Bill Mott, has been on a break since going 1-for-3 in the spring. “He broke his maiden on debut, beat a horse named Dreamlike that's done some good things since then. But he's looking good now after getting to the farm for some rest for a while.”

Phantom Speed. The 2-year-old Arrogate colt debuted Nov. 24 for Michael Stidham and was second by a nose in a six-furlong sprint at Fair Grounds. He’s entered in a 1 1/16-mile maiden special weight Saturday at Fair Grounds. “We think that distance will be better for him than the six furlongs in his maiden. But we're all super excited to see what he can do there.”

Record Time. The 2-year-old son of Not This Time is 2-for-2 for Stidham, with both starts at a mile on synthetic at Presque Isle and Turfway. “He's looked really good in both of those. He also came back, he looked great after his race, but we just brought him back to the farm for a couple couple of weeks. He's still here right now, just to get some rest, little bit of turnout before we get him back. … We'll send him back soon, any day now, get ready for his next race. Probably at Turfway again.”

Boltage. A 2-year-old son of Bold d’Oro trained by Richard Mandella, he won his second start after switching to turf, but he’s winless in two starts since, both in graded stakes on the grass. “He should be making a return soon and possibly on dirt. I think we might switch him to dirt, think he might like that better. He's been training very well the last couple of weeks, had some good breezes on the dirt.”

Parchment Party. The 2-year-old Constitution colt is 2-for-2 for Mott, with both starts coming at 1 1/16 miles this fall at Churchill Downs. “He's a June foal, so we really didn't want to push him too much. He came out of that allowance race very well, looking great. But we just wanted to bring him back to the farm, give him some rest and get ready for his 3-year-old campaign. He just shipped back to Bill Mott about a week ago and had his first breeze this past weekend as well,” going three furlongs in 37.8 seconds at Payson Park.

Pass the Hat. The 2-year-old son of Collected broke his maiden on his second start at Turfway Park in July for trainer Tom Amoss but hasn’t started since. “Pass the Hat is super promising. We like the way he raced when he broke his maiden there at Ellis, but he's been at the farm, getting some rest as well. And hopefully he'll be back, probably second half of the year, for his 3-year-old year. He's coming along nicely.”

Bayou Justice. The 3-year-old Justify colt, trained by Stidham, is just getting going. “He is really coming along slowly. He was sort of battling some injuries and stuff for the longest time. He actually just had his first breeze this past weekend at Turfway (breezing three furlongs in 36.2 seconds). We're optimistic about his return.”