The first time we saw Crimson Pine was on October 16, 2022, when one of our partners Keith Luke and I trudged into one of the pastures at Norton Farm in Falmouth, Maine.
In the preceding weeks, our trainer Mike Graffam and I had been having conversations about what our partnership's 2023 offering may be.
Our initial offering in 2022 was to purchase a 4-year-old gelding who'd be racing in overnight races on the Maine circuit. And for our 2023 offering, we were looking to expand our ambitions (and risk) by adding a yearling or a 2-year-old to our stable.
One of the yearlings on the Graffam's farm came wrapped in a riddle: He had been foaled in Windsor, Maine, but he wasn't a Maine bred eligible for the Maine Sire Stakes. His sire was the New York-based stallion So Surreal, but his breeding fees hadn't yet been paid. And he'd been at Norton Farm since he was a weanling, but the boarding fees that had accrued since he was first dropped off also hadn't been paid.
But Mike thought this yearling he and his Team Graffam crew called Benny had a good physical build to him, the colt had a strong personality, and Mike thought he had potential as a race horse.
We liked that Mike thought highly of the colt, and we liked that Mike and his team had been Benny's caretakers for a good chunk of Benny's young life.
So after weeks of checking in with Benny's quasi-breeder, his quasi-owner, and the U.S. Trotting Association, we officially struck a deal with Mike to become Benny's co-owners: We'd pay Mike $7,500 for a 50% stake in Benny (this cost was based on Mike's estimate that Benny would likely draw around $15,000 in a yearling sale), we'd split payment of the outstanding stud fee with Mike, and we'd make Mike whole for the outstanding boarding fees Norton Farm was still owed.
By Thanksgiving, we had twenty partners who each paid $900 for a 2.5% stake in the yearling colt who'd be eligible for the New York Sire Stakes. And by Christmas, we used a thorough naming contest among partners that culminated with a ranked-choice vote to christen that yearling colt as Crimson Pine. (We're a Maine-based partnership, so of course we used ranked-choice voting)
For the first time in our partnership's history, we had the opportunity to be involved in campaigning a race horse before he began his racing career.