Kosta Hronis vividly remembers the afternoon he and his brother, Pete, were introduced to trainer John Sadler at Santa Anita.It was a 2010 meeting that changed their lives.
The Hronis brothers, who grow grapes for a living in the Northern California town of Delano (situated between Bakersfield and Fresno), were longtime racing fans since they were kids and wanted to own a horse. Or, at least, Kosta did.
“When I told my brother we were going to buy a horse, he looked at me and said, ‘You’re crazy dude. We don’t know anything about this,’” Kosta Hronis said. “And I was like, ‘I think we can do this.’”
Step One: Find a trainer.
That part was easy. A Santa Anita usher took the Hronis brothers straight to Sadler’s box, the same man who ran one of the most successful barns in Southern California and had such heavyweights as weight-loss guru Jenny Craig and Ike and Dawn Thrash as clients.
“I was thinking, ‘He’s not going to mess around with a couple of farmers from Bakersfield who want to claim a horse. There’s just no way,’” Kosta said.
He was wrong. The three met for lunch less than a week later and struck a deal shortly thereafter.
“They said they wanted to get a race horse,” Sadler recalled. “I said, ‘OK we’ll get you a race horse, but I think the best route is to claim one.’ When you claim one you get action fairly soon and you can see how you like it. I wanted to see if they were a good fit for horse racing. We claimed a horse and it just kind of grew from there.”
Indeed.
It’s grown from their first horse, a $40,000 claim named Sleep Tight, to stakes winners the likes of Stellar Wind, Accelerate, Lady of Shamrock, Iotapa, Vagabond Shoes, Hard Aces and their newest star, Catalina Cruiser.
It’s safe to say the Hronis brothers are having the time of their lives, and Kosta says they owe it all to Sadler.
“John’s the expert, he’s the horseman,” Hronis said. “We grow grapes for a living. He’s not going to tell me how to grow grapes, and I’m not going to tell him how to race horses. We respect him. We’ve built this whole thing around John Sadler, he’s built it.
“I’ve never told him what jockey to put on a horse, never told him what race to race in, short or long, turf or dirt, or anything. We’ve left that all to him. But again, we have a great line of communication. He keeps us informed. We know what’s going on. There are no surprises. That’s been very nice for us and it’s been a great learning experience for sure. We’ve learned a lot from John.”
Sadler, in turn, says he feels blessed to have met the Hronis brothers and developed a close business relationship that has been a boon for all three. The 54-year-old Pete, kind of the silent partner, leaves it up to older brother Kosta, 59, to be the face of Hronis Racing. Meanwhile, Kosta leaves it up to Sadler to lead the entire operation.
“He kind of leaves it up to me and then I call him and tell him what we’re doing, explain why we’re doing certain things,” Sadler said. “And he gets it. He gets what we’re trying to do. It’s really pretty seamless.”
Santa Anita opens its fall meet on Friday. Sadler and the Hronis brothers will be in action again Saturday at Santa Anita when Accelerate, who swept the Southland’s three major races for older horses this year at Santa Anita and Del Mar, runs in the $300,000 Grade I Awesome Again Stakes. They hope it will be a prelude to a start in the $6 million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Churchill Downs on Nov. 3.
“I was a little suspect of him at 4 running a mile and a quarter, but as he’s matured this year at 5 he’s had no problems with the big distance,” Sadler said of Accelerate. “I think it’s just he’s one of those horses that was kind of a late foal, he got to the races late, and he’s just continued to improve. It’s kind of rare where you see that kind of improvement that he’s had from 4 to 5.”
Kosta Hronis is even more effusive in his praise of Accelerate, a son of Lookin At Lucky who’s won four of five races in 2018, including three Grade I events. That number will grow to five if he wins his final two races of the year. If he does, Kosta believes he’s right there with Justify in the Horse of the Year conversation.
“There’s no doubt that with Accelerate’s resume that he should definitely be considered,” he said. “He’s in the conversation for sure. I think (Justify) was a slam dunk in June, but I think as we look at it today, with (Accelerate’s) resume and his resume that is going to continue, we’re definitely in the conversation. I’m going to say we’re neck and neck right now. We’ll just see if Accelerate can finish it off.”
Then there’s Catalina Cruiser, a giant 4-year-old colt whose upside appears limitless. Sadler plans to run the son of Union Rags in the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile on Nov. 3 off works alone after he improved to 4-0 lifetime with a victory in the Grade II Pat O’Brien Stakes at Del Mar on Aug. 25.
“He looks like the next really nice horse,” Kosta Hronis said. “He’s just learning. He’s only run four races so he’s just going to get better.”
You can probably say the same thing about Team Sadler-Hronis. Asked if Hronis Racing, which Kosta said has about 50 horses in training, might diversify and give some of their horses to other trainers, Kosta gave a clear indication that that’s not going to happen anytime soon.
“I guess I’m going to retire when John retires. That’s the way I look at it,” he said.
Sadler, who decided a few years ago to downsize his barn and go for quality over quantity, has about 75 horses in training between Santa Anita and Los Alamitos. So a good portion of his barn is filled with horses owned by the Hronis brothers.
“At one point I had a bigger barn than I have today,” Sadler said. “Although I have a fairly large stable, I don’t have what we call one of those mega-barns like (Doug) O’Neill or (Peter) Miller or (Bob) Baffert. We’re by no means a small barn, but what we’re trying to do is have really good horses to run in really important races. That’s my focus.”
Same for Hronis Racing, which has graduated from the claiming ranks to private purchases and buying horses at the various sales around the country.
Kosta seems to get it. He knows how fortunate he and his brother are to have owned so many talented horses in nine years.
“A friend of mine who’s been in the business for about 50 years, when we got Lady of Shamrock and she was on her little streak, he told me in the paddock before a race, ‘You need to enjoy every minute of this horse’s career because they don’t come along very often. I’ve been in the business for 50 years and I’ve never had a horse like this,’” he said.
And that’s no sour grapes.