Q&A: Resolute’s John Stewart on horses, sales ... & Repole

John Stewart went from the assembly line to the executive suite at Toyota. That was before he went into business for himself and became a venture-capital success.

All the while, the native of Jamestown, Ky., has been a horseplayer. Two years ago he rolled up his sleeves and spent millions of dollars betting on himself to be a horse owner.

The black and blue colors of his Resolute Racing have shown up since in winner’s circles around the world with Excellent Truth winning at the Grade 1 level in the U.S. and Believing and Woodshauna delivering Group 1 triumphs in the Middle East and France.

Stewart, 56, quickly established a high profile on social media, and it has brought him fans who appreciate his contributions to aftercare. He also has his critics, including outspoken owner Mike Repole.

In a Zoom interview from Lexington, Ky., for this week’s episode of Horse Racing Nation’s Ron Flatter Racing Pod, Stewart talked about these topics and his vision for Resolute Racing. In this edited transcript, the conversation starts with his star broodmare Puca, the dam of recent classic winners Mage and Dornoch.

Photo: Resolute Racing

I’ll start with the star you bought. She has been such a wonderful broodmare, especially when you consider Triple Crown success with Mage and Dornoch and with Baeza knocking on the door. Of course I’m talking about Puca. Is she your proudest acquisition so far in the short time you have been an owner?

I think she’s definitely been my most lucrative. She’s already produced for us a full brother and a full sister. We sold a leg of Preaky (a 2024 colt by Good Magic) at a $4.5 million valuation, which if you went through the sale ring, it’d be the probably the sale topper. I don’t know that anybody will top that this year. She’s done a really good job for us. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than it is to be good, because she wasn’t on our radar. We weren’t actually looking to buy her when we bought her. She’s been a good one. We’ve had some good ones as well. We bought Didia and then won the Grade 1 (New York in 2024) with her. So I think that was a nice acquisition. We bought Excellent Truth and then won the Grade 1 (Diana on July 12) with her. We bought Woodshauna and then won the (France Group) 1 with him. And then we bought Believing and won the (Group 1 Al Quoz Sprint) with her with Coolmore. I’m an investor, and so I do a lot of data analysis. Of course, buying horses that have already run is a lot less risky, and so I think we’ve done well with that as well. But yeah, definitely, Puca is up there.

When you talk about being an investor, you were a horseplayer first, right?

Yeah.

How much of a difference is there between gambling on a horse you want to come through for you, whether it’s on a win ticket or a Pick 6 or whatever, and gambling on a horse that you’re buying that will be your horse, but you’re finding success right away with so many of them? Look, if we all could throw money at the betting window and expect we’re going to get rewarded, man, this would be the greater than the greatest sport in the world.

We’ve won Grade 1s on three continents, and it’s only our second year. People told me when I got into this, don’t expect to win graded-stakes races out of the gate. We’ve been fortunate to do that. I think being a horseplayer is a big part of our success, and I think a lot of horseplayers could replicate our success. As horseplayers we always hate the favorites going off at 1-5. Like, what’s the point? When we know that there’s a horse at a price, we like that. We study the form, and you understand that. When you’re buying horses that already have run, it’s a lot like that. You can use that data analysis that you use as a handicapper, but you’re just using it to select the horses that you want to buy. I don’t buy any horse that we don’t know the Thoro-Graph, the Ragozin, the Timeform, all the data on the horse. Is it getting better? What does the pattern look like? What are their bounces? Are they successful with their current trainer? Do we think a trainer could upgrade them? When we’re going through that data, I’m looking at the horses, and we make a lot of offers and don’t get to buy the horses. I buy four horses privately for every one horse I buy at public auctions. We do a lot of acquisitions that people don’t know about until the horse starts running in our silks or ends up having foals for us on the farm. I think a lot of horseplayers would have the same degree of success.

In addition to the Sheets and the figs and things like that, who is your bloodstock guru?

Well, me and Chelsea (Stone) and Gavin (O’Connor) on the farm. We rate everything, and we kind of triangulate. Gavin’s old school, and so he does it the traditional way that bloodstock agents do and is very focused on conformation. I personally don’t think conformation is important. I have done a lot of analysis and find no statistical correlation to conformation in a young horse and how it ends up running on the track, and so it’s one of the factors that I have relied less on. I rely more on the pedigree data for when we’re buying unraced horses and then some data about the horse like spleen size and lung capacity and heart capacity and just different things that we look at. Gavin is our general manager, but Chelsea is the COO, and she runs the day to day for Resolute. I own a private-equity firm, and 99% of my time is focused on that. Chelsea is the real brains behind the operation at Resolute. Everything that we do from the matings of the horses. I don’t buy a horse unless Chelsea agrees on it. She’s the brains behind everything.

Chelsea Stone, by the way.

Yeah. Soon to be Stewart. We’re getting married Sept. 6.

I was just going to ask is a date set and all this?

We set the date in September. We’re getting married on the farm. We did it around Keeneland sale timing so that some of our friends in the industry could come.

Photo: MiddleGround Capital - edited

Let’s say you’re on a first date, not necessarily with Chelsea, but let’s say a business date with a suitor who’s come to try to figure out what John Stewart is all about. You could go back and talk about the time you were on the assembly line at Toyota and you became an executive and then you start your investment firm. What’s the synopsis for that résumé when you sit across the table and the salad hasn’t arrived yet?

What you see is what you get. I started my career as an hourly worker and had success working in industry and then moved into the finance industry 18 years ago and arguably have had success with that. I started my own private-equity firm and now manage over $4 billion of assets and own over 200 factories around the world. I haven’t done that alone. I have partners. My partner Scot (Duncan) has been along the ride with me from Toyota and what I’ve done at MiddleGround Capital. I’m the kind of person that if I shake your hand, it’s a deal, no matter if I made a bad deal for me or not. I will honor my word to my own detriment, because the one lesson that I learned in life from my parents was that the one thing you have in life is your word. That’s your reputation. Even when I was doing schoolwork, when you put your name on the paper, now that’s associated with you. I just try to make sure that everything that’s associated with me is a reflection and a representation of what I want people to think of me. That’s how I approach everything. It sounds simple, but there’s a lot of people in this world that just aren’t that way. We had someone that offered to buy a third of Verifire. We were only selling a quarter and gave us a good price. Then they sent us a fake fed reference number.

I saw you wrote something about that.

There’s a lot of charlatans in the horse industry other than the stallion, and people have warned me about that. I work in the private-equity world, and trust me, there’s 10 charlatans for every one in horse racing. When you’re buying a company for $300 million, you think people won’t lie and cheat and steal and try to get more money out of you just like they will in horse racing. But that’s me in a nutshell. I am what you see, and some people don’t like it. I’m polarizing, but I don’t try to be that way. I’m not out there like some people in the industry trying to fix all the problems in the industry. I’m not trying to tell everybody what the problems are in the industry. I see problems in the industry. I’m trying to address them in my own way, but I’m not trying to tell others what to do. I am who I am.

Photo: Gulfstream Park & Eclipse Sportswire - edited composite

You are very active on social media. To the extent that you want to know what Resolute Racing is doing, you actually post a schedule. When you go into the week, we know Drop the Hammer is going to be in the Grade 3 Pucker Up on Sunday at Ellis Park. Excellent Truth is going to go to the E. P. Taylor (G1, Aug. 16) at Woodbine. We know that from your posts. But when you’re on social media, you get a thick skin. What’s the best or maybe the most valuable compliment you’ve received in the last couple years, and what’s the most misunderstood thing about you?

I think the most valuable compliment is our work in aftercare. When I got in the industry, I was appalled that it was a problem. I would have never thought that that was a problem in the horse industry that, after these horses race, that they could end up in kill pens being sent like to Mexico for slaughter. I never would have thought that. I talked to people in the industry at first who told me it was all a scam. Then I hired private investigators and investigated it, and it’s not a scam. It’s a real problem. I was appalled by that, so we do our part, and hopefully it inspires others. We get a lot of gratitude from people for that, and the most gratifying thing for me is the horses that we’ve saved here on the farm and seeing how they change coming in knowing that their life is over, and then figuring out that we’re not here to hurt them, and then they’re back to their normal selves and leading a productive life. They have roles here on the farm. We have rescues that are the paddock mates for our horses. That’s the thing that makes me the most proud.

The most misunderstood thing is I don’t have a beef with Mike Repole. He has a beef with me. He’s had a beef with me since I started in the industry for no reason whatsoever. I’m from Kentucky. Like I said, I’m a kind of guy that you know you can take me at my word, and that’s what I try to operate at. He’s a little different of a character, but I don’t have a beef with him. I don’t even think about him. I block him on social media so that I don’t even have to hear him, and that’s what I love about social media. You can block the people that are rude and disrespectful. I’m OK with people criticizing. That’s fine. But when people are rude especially to other people, I just block them.

You must know a fair amount of people who like both of you.

I don’t know a lot of people that like both of us. I don’t know that to be true. I think a lot of people in the industry tolerate him, because they need his money. A lot of the horse farms, they won’t say what they think, like his partners and horses. You can ask his partners and horses what they think about him, and he’s had a lot of partnerships dissolve. Ask my partners and horses what they think about us, I think we’re probably some of the best partners out there. I know there are people that like him, but I think we just run in different circles. I think there’s a lot of people that pretend to like him. The sales guys will pretend to like him, because they want him to come to the sale. The farms that breed horses will pretend to like him, because they want him to buy horses. The stallion farms will pretend to like him, because they want to buy his horses. But I don’t know that there’s a lot of people in Lexington, Ky., that like him.

Photo: France-Galop

In terms of the successes you’ve had, you talked about Woodshauna this summer. He wins the Prix Jean Prat (G1). As we speak, he’s up for 50% consignment on the Goff’s online sale, right?

Yes.

So what’s the thinking there? Are you just looking for partners?

For colts for me it’s all about monetizing. That’s how I monetize. They make a profit in the business, right? I’m not selling the well-bred fillies. You’ll see me sell some fillies, but they don’t fit into my breeding program. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with them. It’s that they don’t fit with my program. I’m building a program around certain families, and if you pay attention to what we’re buying, you’ll see that, because we’ve looked at genetics, and we think this is the right direction to go in, so that’s what we’re doing, right, wrong or indifferent. That’s the other thing about me. When I make my mind up, I just do something. I don’t talk about doing it. I just do it. The colts are an opportunity to monetize. With Verifire we still are working through some offers with people on him, and we’ll either get a deal done or not. If we run in the Allen Jerkens (G1, Aug. 23 at Saratoga), there’ll be a lot of people who want to line up for a deal. Woodshauna, the same way. I bought him, Francis (Graffard) was his trainer, and I was actually in discussion to buy him before he went in the sale. But then I decided to let him go through the sale and let the market kind of determine the price, which was good, because I bought him cheaper than I was negotiating with before to buy him. I knew that he had Grade 1 potential, because Francis thought he did. I trust the trainers that I work with. I trust them. If they bring me horses, that’s the no. 1 way to get business with me is to bring me horses. So I bought him. We won the (Group) 1, and that was probably one of the proudest moments on the track, because we beat Godolphin, Coolmore and Juddmonte, their top sprint horses. That’s what you want in this sport. Bob Baffert texted me after I texted that we were going to be in the Allen Jerkens. He told me, ‘I’m coming loaded.’ I told him I didn’t want it any other way. You want to beat Bob Baffert with his best horse when he comes. He was kidding with me, because he was an underbidder on Verifire, too, at OBS. We’ve done that on a couple of horses. We don’t have any training with him yet, but I have a lot of respect for what he’s accomplished in the industry and (the late) Wayne Lukas as well. But yeah, the colts are about monetization.

We started with Puca. Let me ask you about future plans for Puca. Do you have anybody lined up yet?

Puca’s going to be in night of the stars (at the Fasig-Tipton sale).

So that’s in November.

Because she foaled late this year, we were going to send her to Frankel. That’s what I would do if I kept her. He’s the best stallion in the world, and I think that there’s turf in the pedigree. She’s already proven on dirt what she can do. To take her to the next level, showing her (turf potential), I understand that, but there’s a commercial part of this business as well. She’s 13, so she’s empty. The broodmare of the year, we’re taking her to night of the stars, and we’ll see what happens. We’ll have a reserve set.

I was just going to ask you that. Do you know what that number is, and would you reveal it?

I think it’s going to take north of $5 million to buy her. We paid $2.8 million for her. I don’t want to put horses with unrealistic expectations even though some people think that. You know, the guy that (says) his toys are always worth more than everybody else’s toys. I’m an investor at the end of the day. I may think she’s worth $20 million, right? That’s not like a market asset. We’re going to take her to market. That’s what our thoughts are around her reserve, so she will sell at that. We are sellers. We’re doing this to sell. I think it’s good for the industry. My daughter (Sarah) is going to kill me. Look, I’m proud to have her on the farm. I’m proud to have been a steward of her, and maybe we still will be. You never know. She may go to $10 million, and I may buy her back, because I like her. I do think she has a lot of commercial interest, and she’s already given us a filly and done her work there, and I think we can use those proceeds. There’s some mares that I’m currently going after to try to keep them out of the sale, because that’s what I try to do with the top horses. I try to buy them while they’re running. I’m going to be pretty active at that sale. I have 51 mares. That’s how many we bred this last year, and I want to get to about 80. I want to be breeding about 80, so I need about 100 mares when you account for empty seasons and stuff. I’m still in the acquisition phase, because this is a breed-to-race program. It’s not a commercial program, but you have to monetize when you have commercial opportunity. You have to. To people who don’t understand that, I own companies, and I have companies that do really well. I think I would love to own (MiddleGround Capital) forever, but my investors are pension funds and endowments, and these people expect liquidity, and so I have to sell those companies, even the ones I love. There’s some that I’m very passionate about, their products and the teams that we’ve assembled and what we’ve done. But you’ve got to monetize, and you have to monetize the assets where you can make a profit in business to make up for the errors that you make. My first round of yearlings that we bought, out of, I don’t know, 13 colts, I got five of them that had to be gelded, so they’re not going to be stallions. At the end of the day, it’s got to be run like a business, and so it’s a business decision to put (Puca) in night of the stars.

Now I know what that X post was about a few weeks ago.

I try to stir people up on X a little bit. I want to make this sport exciting. That’s what I want it to be. I would love for me and Repole to be able to have smack talk but have respect for one another. I would love that. Like me and M.V. Magnier at Coolmore. You know what? When I win a Grade 1 or I win a race, he’s the first person to text me with congratulations. But when I beat him over in the Jean Prat, it was funny. I didn’t get a text from him right away. His brother Tom texted me, but then I reached out to him, because it was it was a close race, and it’s a stallion-making race. For (third-place) The Lion in Winter, that was an important race to win. But he congratulated me. That’s what I want. I want to go up against the best like Coolmore. I admire about them for what they’ve done in the sport. I admire Godolphin for what they’ve accomplished and achieved, but I want to beat all of them.

We certainly look forward to what’s going to happen with Puca on Nov. 3 in the Fasig-Tipton ring.

And I’ve got a deal in the works right now that will blow everybody’s mind if I’m able to get it done. Nobody would think that this horse is for sale. I think it’s good for the industry. I like trying to create headlines. I’m not trying to do it to attract attention for myself. I’m trying to do it to have a positive light on the industry. If you look at 99% of my posts, I try to just positively represent the industry. I think we need more of that. There’s a lot of positive things about the industry, and I know there’s problems, but talking about the positive is not ignoring the problems. People respond to positive better. There’s enough negativity in our lives already. For a lot of us, horse racing is our release. It’s what we enjoy. It’s our passion. I just wish that as an industry, we would come together a little bit more and celebrate the good things and try to amp up the competition a little bit and lay off all the negativity, especially on social media.

Photo: Resolute Racing / X