There was Brian Klatsky, the Jersey Shore lifer and founding partner of BBN Racing, whose first Haskell Day was in 1991, when Preakness and Belmont winner Hansel got upset by Lost Mountain.
And for trainer Vicki Oliver, it was a triumphant return to the track where she saddled her first winner in 1998 and was a summer regular until 2010, with the Grade 1 fixture on July 19 now circled on her calendar.
“Growing up here, the Haskell is something that is beyond special, to both myself and Vicki,” said Klatsky, a Red Bank resident. “Her starting her career here and never running a Haskell horse, and my connection to the track. Not just running in one but to have a legitimate contender. It’s just something we can’t even describe. It’s really special.”
Closing the loop is Jeremy Rosen, a lifelong friend of Klatsky’s, who first introduced Oliver and Klatsky at Monmouth Park 25 years ago. Rosen’s father, Ed, a long-time Monmouth County attorney who moonlighted as a respected bloodstock analyst, is now the general manager for high-profile owner Mike Repole’s powerhouse Repole Stable.
“I do jokingly say there would be no BBN without me,” said Jeremy Rosen, who lives in Lincroft. “Factually, I introduced Vicki to Brian, and factually, BBN was created around that friendship, so I take credit for BBN. But it’s not my place to take credit for the success of BBN. “
Ed Rosen helped pick out a Haskell horse in Tale of the Cat, who finished fourth in 1997 for trainer John Forbes. Now his son, a BBN investor not involved in selecting their yearlings, has a chance to experience Monmouth Park’s biggest race.
“When you grow up at the Jersey Shore, there’s really only one race you want to win in your life, and it’s the Haskell,” Rosen said. “I’ve probably been to Monmouth Park tens of thousands of times in my life. You see the silks of the previous winners and the dream is for those silks to be etched for eternity into the Monmouth Park landscape.”
It wouldn’t be the first local success story on Haskell Day in recent years. In 2021, Al Gold, a former Ocean Township resident and long-time Monmouth Park regular, won the Haskell with Cyberknife.
Last year, long-time Monmouth Park supporter Vito Cucci’s Belmar Racing and Breeding as part of the ownership team of Dornoch, who won the Haskell after winning the Belmont Stakes.
“It’s been a dream run”
It was a Wednesday afternoon, around 1 or 2 o’clock as Jeremy Rosen, a derivatives trader, recalls it, when he got a call from Klatsky.
“We’re both in finance so a phone call during market hours generally means something important,” Rosen said. “And his first words to me were, ‘I’m going to make all of your dreams come true.’ And I said, ‘I can’t imagine what’s going to come out of your mouth next.’ “
What Klatsky pitched was a partnership involving all their best friends, where they would raise money and finally get serious about winning some big races.
“My first reaction was this was a terrible idea,” Rosen said. “We’re going to ruin our friendships and we’re not going to win any races. And that is my honest answer. But the reality is it has been dream run.”
Klatsky had stepped back from racing while his sons grew up playing basketball, with Team Rio emerging as a top AAU basketball program. His son Alex played at Florida, and Brandon is currently at Georgia, where Alex is now a graduate assistant coach.
But it was a chance meeting prior to the pandemic that reconnected him with Oliver.
“We had moved back to Kentucky because Monmouth went down to 3 days a week and we needed more races,” Oliver said. “Brian was raising is boys and kind of got out of the racing to concentrate on them and basketball, and then Phil (Oliver) and I both ran into Brian one day at Churchill Downs.”
Klatsky, a partner in Gold Coast Wealth Management, ultimately teamed with BBN founding partners Brendan O’Brien, who founded Gold Coast, and Braxton Lynch, BBN’s racing manager, to set up their first syndicate, BBN 1, in 2019.
That first offering included Concrete Rose, owned in partnership with Ashbrook Farm, with the Grade 1 winner eventually selling for $1.95 million. Then BBN 2 included Hidden Stash, a $50,000 yearling purchase that took Oliver and BBN to the Kentucky Derby in 2021.
The formula has remained the same, with around 40 individuals, all family and friends gathered by word of mouth, as partners in each year’s syndicate, with BBN purchasing between six and eight yearlings in Kentucky each year.
“Part of our mission was to bring new people into the game. Have fun with it, and do it in a financially responsible way,” Klatsky said. “Knock on wood, we have been fortunate. I do think a lot of our partners have had great experiences. And they continue to come back and bring friends with them.
“Right now we have around 23 in training, as old as six to the 2-year-olds in the mix right now.”
The results have been impressive.
BBN has topped the $1 million in earnings in each of the past three years, including $1.8 million in 2023, when Trademark won the Grade 2 Clark Stakes, and Mo Stash took the Grade 3 Transylvania Stakes.
Kilwin, a 3-year-old filly purchased for $225,000 as a yearling, has earned $812,968 on the racetrack, with BBN selling a 25% interest for $575,000 prior to last year’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Filly race, where the Rusty Arnold trainee ran fifth.
In all, BBN’s runners have earned over $7.7 million, winning 65 times from 444 starts, while hitting the board 149 times.
“It’s all word of mouth, family and friends,” Klatsky explained. “It continues to be a nice, close-knit group. For example, for Pegasus Day, we had three runners at Monmouth that day, and I would say 10 partners there. But those 10 partners accounted for 80 people, so it becomes a really great social thing. We get a lot of support. We encourage everyone to bring their kids, their friends out when our horses run.”
Haskell Day looms
Given the way basketball and racing have intertwined during his life – Klatsky played at Rumson-Fair Haven High School, and went to Saratoga Harness for the simulcast from Belmont Park the day he arrived at Skidmore College in Saratoga Spring, New York – Bracket Buster, a $125,000 yearling purchase, is a perfect name for the Haskell contender.
“Bracket Buster’s dam is named Spring Dance, and the spring dance I think of is the NCAA Tournament,” said Klatsky, with BBN, or Big Blue Nation, a nod to the basketball fanbase in Kentucky, where BBN’s runners are based.
After a six-month layoff, Bracket Buster finished second in the Grade 2 Lexington Stakes at Keeneland on April 12, before tiring three weeks later in finishing seventh in an allowance race at Churchill Downs on the Kentucky Derby undercard.
“Five minutes after the race on Derby Day (Oliver) said, ‘we probably should have waited a week for the Long Branch (Stakes),’ ” Klatsky said.
When Bracket Buster did run at Monmouth Park in Pegasus, on six weeks rest, the result was a dominating performance.
Now Bracket Buster, back at Keeneland, will be off for five weeks heading into the Haskell, with Oliver expecting to ship the colt by van two days before the race.
“They’ve done it the right way, Braxton, Brendan and Brian,” Oliver said. “They recruited people who were friends, friends of friends, to get involved. All good people, and they get together at the racetrack and have a good time. I’ve met a lot of interesting people through BBN. It’s been a great experience.”
As for the Haskell, securing BBN’s first Grade 1 winner is the goal. But the overall experience is a big part of the BBN equation, with Klatsky noting that, “between partners, friends and families, we could have a few hundred people out there easily on Haskell Day.”
Stephen Edelson is a USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey sports columnist who has been covering athletics in the state and at the Jersey Shore for over 35 years. Contact him at: @SteveEdelsonAPP; sedelson@gannettnj. com.
