December 2018 Member of the Month: Mike Caruso

Mike Caruso is the TOBA December Member of the Month.

Nov. 3 was a monumental afternoon in horse racing. On the same day that Cot Campbell, the godfather of Thoroughbred racing partnerships, passed away, several prominent partners reached the heights of the racing world. By cruising to a one-length victory in the Longines Breeders’ Cup Distaff (G1), 3-year-old filly Monomoy Girl proved her superstardom for her owners, including champion wrestler-turned-horseman Mike Caruso.

“I’m pretty sure there’s no doubt about who’s going to win the Eclipse [Award] this year as 3-year-old filly,” Caruso observed. Racing for Caruso and longtime partner Michael Dubb, as well as Sol Kumin and Stuart Grant, Monomoy Girl tallied five grade 1 victories in sparkling fashion. Caruso credits trainer Brad Cox with lining up her 2018 racing schedule a year ago, noting that “the plan worked to perfection.”

Monomoy Girl’s win in this year’s Kentucky Oaks (G1) was particularly meaningful. In 2012, “we had the favorite in Grace Hall … we came in third that year as the favorite,” Caruso recalled, so to capture the 2018 edition with Monomoy Girl was special. “To win out of the 14 position—again, it just really showed her heart and courage. She had to run about three different races in that one race.”

Monomoy Girl’s achievements recall Caruso’s own athletic accomplishments. He said, “I started wrestling in the ninth grade in New Jersey at a high school called St. Benedict’s.” How? “I was on the track team and they told me I was too slow for track,” Caruso quipped. Standing five feet tall and weighing a mere 80 pounds, Caruso took to wrestling like a Thoroughbred to a racetrack. “To make a long story short, I just took to it very well,” he said. “I was never beaten in high school and won the state and national prep school championships and then went to Lehigh University.”

In more than a century of wrestling at Lehigh, the Bethlehem, Pa.-based university has only had one three-time NCAA wrestling champion: Caruso. The talented lightweight, who entered the National Collegiate Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1991, graduated from Lehigh in 1967. The aforementioned Grace Hall, who annexed the 2011 Spinaway Stakes (G1), is named for the site of many of Caruso’s triumphs: Lehigh’s wrestling arena. Caruso then started a corporation specializing in employee benefits, which he sold several years ago, and will step down as an adviser after this year.

Racing in the name of Bethlehem Stables, Caruso first bought into a Thoroughbred in 1980.

“I raced a lot locally in Philadelphia, but just a few horses, and never really got real quality stock. … but I always liked it,” he said. Meeting Dubb changed everything. Their mutual trainer suggested the Mikes buy horses together. Caruso recalled, “He had had a few partners and Mike was the first guy that really taught and espoused that if I had half-a-dozen horses (alone) … If I had five partners, now I could have 30 horses with less risk and more potential success.”

Caruso now owns parts of top-level competitors like Fourstar Crook, whose biggest win came in the Oct. 7 Flower Bowl Stakes (G1T).

“She had just another fabulous year,” said Caruso, who co-owned the filly with Dubb, who purchased her for $110,000 at the 2014 Fasig-Tipton Mid-Atlantic Sale of 2-Year-Olds in Training, and Gary Aisquith. At the recent Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale, the group sold the millionairess for $1.5 million to Katsumi Yoshida.

For Caruso and Dubb, as well as Kumin and Aisquith, Bradley Weisbord has privately purchased talented turf fillies like German-bred A Raving Beauty. They sold the dual grade 1 winner to Haruya Yoshida for $2 million at the 2018 Keeneland November sale. The partners choose to focus on racing rather than breeding, Caruso noted: “I think the philosophy has been that a stallion, it’s hit or miss …. high risk, high reward, but with fillies, there’s great residual value.”

Now a partner in about 75 to 80 horses, Caruso joked that anyone would need a Ph.D. to read the ownership spreadsheets Dubb’s bookkeeper prepares. And with Monomoy Girl prepared to race at 4 in 2019, the sky’s the limit.

Caruso observed, “Because of the economics of the game, we lose our heroes far too early and that’s why I was so pleased—I don’t think there was one partner that even thought about selling Monomoy Girl. Every one of them wanted to race her next year, and she is a real popular horse.”