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THE OWNING A TRIPLE CROWN WINNER, MANAGING A RACING EMPIRE AND MEETING THE QUEEN. JUSTIN ZAYAT TELLS BOB EHALT HE CAN SCARCELY BELIEVE HIS LIFE RIGHT NOW
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“WINNING THE TRIPLE CROWN IS SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T EVEN POP UP IN YOUR WILDEST DREAMS. AND WHEN IT HAPPENS, YOU THINK, WHY ME? WHY THIS HORSE?” 58
pace as he strives to maintain the stable’s standard of excellence while working in a lead role as the President and CEO of Racing and Bloodstock for Zayat Stables. “There’s pressure in my job but it doesn’t come from my father,” said Zayat, who served as the stable’s racing manager during American Pharoah’s unforgettable 2015 campaign. “My dad pushes me to my limits, but he’s always there to support me. The pressure all comes from within. I put pressure on myself because I want to win all the time.” That drive for success has been noticed by many of the knowledgeable people who work closest with him. “Justin is a young man, yet he’s learned an awful lot about the sport. He’s learning how to manage the stable and how to look at horses and how to sift through all the information he gets from the trainers. He’s certainly taken a more active role in running the stable lately,” said Hall of Famer Bill Mott, one of about 10 trainers the stable employs. “He’s been very good to deal with, and I’ve always found him to be very considerate and respectful of his elders.” For 55-year-old Ahmed Zayat, there’s been nothing but pride in watching his oldest son play a more visible leadership role.
Justin and Michelle Zayat enjoyed their first Royal Ascot runner this summer.
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n Justin Zayat’s resume it shows that he received a degree in economics from New York University in 2015 and was honoured for his leadership qualities at a youthful age when he was included in Forbes Magazine’s 2017 list of “30 under 30.” Yet his education in the intricacies of running a major thoroughbred racing stable comes from a completely different type of education which ranks at the same level as a Masters degree from Oxford. It hails from first-hand experience at the highest levels of the sport. Since his early days as a New Jersey teenager growing up in the northeast region of the United States, Justin Zayat has been at the side of his father, Ahmed Zayat, absorbing a vast amount of knowledge and experience as the family patriarch built Zayat Stables into one of horse racing’s most successful outfits. Now 26 years-old, he witnessed the amazing growth of the family stable in the last decade. What was once a family stung by the hard luck of three runner-up finishes in four runnings of the Kentucky Derby, has become best-known for owning the homebred American Pharoah, the first American Triple Crown winner in 37 years, and building a prosperous racing and breeding operation that has created an astonishing 25 stallions since entering the sport 13 years ago. When it comes to learning how to manage a major racing stable, Justin Zayat has been a straight-A student who has risen to the head of his class. “I never could have imagined everything that has happened to me,” he said. “Horse racing is my passion and I always wanted to be involved in it.” Years earlier, a young Ahmed Zayat made his fortune in the business world by building a successful beverage company in his native Egypt. Yet now, his oldest son’s attention is focused solely on horse racing and it is his youthful exuberance and love of the sport that motivates him to keep moving at a dizzying
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Profile CLOCKWISE FROM BELOW LEFT: The Zayat’s Triple Crown superstar American Pharoah wins the 2015 Kentucky Derby; a jubilant Justin Zayat after American Pharoah’s win in the 2015 Preakness Stakes; the Zayat family gather in the Royal Ascot parade ring.
“I am super-biased and every father thinks the world of his son, but Justin is truly level-headed, polite, calm, deliberate, analytic, patient and passionate. All of these are traits that are important if you want to be a successful horse owner,” said Ahmed Zayat, the Chairman and CEO of Zayat Stables. “Justin knows what the stable needs to be successful and he keeps learning and learning some more from so many of the world’s best trainers. I’m very proud of him and the work he is doing.” While he puts in long hours keeping tabs on the day-to-day operation of the stable and divisions of horses that stretch from New York to California, Justin Zayat has also been at the forefront of its push to become more active in international racing and breeding. “We want to spend significantly to enhance our band of broodmares. We want to get good European bloodlines and send them back to the United States,” Ahmed Zayat said. “We have been very fortunate in the last two years buying from sales like Goffs. We have been very happy with the quality of horses we bought.” In 2016, Justin Zayat attended the Goffs Orby Sale in September for the first time and bought four yearlings at prices ranging from a high of €475,000 to a low of €70,000. At the high end of the purchases was a son of
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LEFT: Joyous scenes following American Pharoah’s Kentucky Derby victory in 2015
“WE HAVE BEEN VERY HAPPY WITH THE QUALITY OF HORSES WE BOUGHT AT GOFFS.”
Declaration Of War out of Sleeping Giant who was named Irish Territory and turned over to Mott. Now three, Irish Territory broke his maiden on Kentucky Derby Day at Churchill Downs and most recently was fifth in the $200,000 Pennine Ridge Stakes at Belmont Park. He also bought a Zodiac filly for €360,000, a High Chapparal filly for €340,000 and a Kyllachy colt for €70,000. The following year, Justin Zayat returned to the Goffs Orby Sale and joined forces with Coolmore Stud to buy the sale-topper, a handsome €1.6 million son of the undefeated Frankel. At the time of the purchase, Justin Zayat told the Racing Post, “I’m looking for a rock star that can start our global expansion.” Now two, the Frankel colt is preparing for his racing career with Europe’s leading trainer, Aidan O’Brien. Another vivid sign of Zayat Stables’ increasing interest in European racing came on June 22nd, when Justin Zayat, resplendent in top hat and a morning suit, joined his wife, Michelle, to watch their USbased three-year-old colt Gidu finish sixth in the £500,000 Group 1 Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot. His first taste of the spectacle of racing at Royal Ascot and the unparalleled thrill of talking with the Queen in the parade ring was so uplifting that it left him with a burning desire to make many more overseas trips in the future. “It was an unbelievable experience. Meeting Queen Elizabeth is something that I will never forget for the rest of my life,” he told Thoroughbred Racing Commentary that day. “It’s completely different from American racing. There’s so much pageantry. It truly feels like the Sport of Kings here. Being at Ascot is like getting your first taste of the Kentucky Derby. It makes you want to go back for more and win
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it. If we ever have another horse capable of racing at Ascot, we’ll be here for sure. I’d love to come back.” As much as European bloodlines are largely associated with turf racing, the Zayats stress that the horses they acquired can also be useful on dirt tracks, the surface that gave the stable its greatest measure of fame. It was American Pharoah who took the Zayats on the ride of a lifetime in 2015. A homebred son of Zayat’s 2009 Kentucky Derby runner-up Pioneerof The Nile, American Pharoah earned a permanent spot among America’s greatest horses by becoming the long-awaited 12th Triple Crown champion and the first to sweep the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes since Affirmed’s hat trick in 1978. During those whirlwind five weeks, Justin Zayat graduated college and became enmeshed in a moment in time that was as colourful and celebrated as any racing had seen in the last few decades and turned the Zayats, trainer Bob Baffert and jockey Victor Espinoza into national heroes. In perhaps the best example of the way fans embraced American Pharoah, a crowd estimated at 15,000 jammed Saratoga Race Course to watch him gallop around the historic track at 8.45am the morning before he finished second to Keen Ice in the Travers Stakes, his only loss at three. Yes, that’s right. Some four hours before the day’s first race, a simple morning gallop attracted 15,000 people who watched and cheered for American Pharoah for a just few minutes before leaving the track to return home, head to work, or simply eat breakfast. Now imagine being a recent college graduate at the centre of all that excitement. Welcome to Justin Zayat’s world. “That was a crazy time for me. I was graduating college and getting engaged. It was a wild, wild period,” Justin Zayat said. “It was something I never even dreamed about it. Winning the Triple Crown is something that doesn’t even pop up in your wildest dreams. And when it happens, you think, why me? Why this horse? “We all knew that American Pharoah was a special horse. He was a champion for us at two. But after coming so close and finishing second in the Kentucky Derby three times, to get it done in the Derby and then win the whole Triple Crown was an unbelievable experience.” As much as sweet memories of 2015 and American Pharoah’s Triple Crown and season-ending win in the Breeders’ Cup Classic will never leave him, Justin Zayat said he was delighted this spring to re-live
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those glorious days through Justify’s sweep that made Baffert only the second trainer to have two Triple Crown champions in his barn. “Justify’s Belmont Stakes was an amazing race to watch and it brought back so many good memories. My heart was pounding as he came down the stretch. It was so exciting to see him do it. You have to tip your hat to him. He’s such a great horse,” said Zayat, whose younger brother, Benjamin is also an NYU student who aspires to become a member of the stable’s management team once he graduates college. “I’m only 26 and seeing Justify showed me how much I want to get back to the Triple Crown and win one of the races. I don’t want to wait forever to get there. I saw Bob do it again with Justify and it makes you want to do it again. You want to get that amazing feeling back again, but it is also makes you realise what a one in a million horse American Pharoah was for us.” In a year’s time, the Zayats will have a new bond with American Pharoah. The 2015 Horse of the Year’s first crop of offspring are now yearlings and will begin making their racing debuts at two in 2019. With the Zayats retaining a 25% share of all their stallions at various farms, a group that includes Pioneerof The Nile, Bodemeister and Paynter, it will be American Pharoah’s turn to produce the well-bred runners that can fuel any owner’s dreams of winning racing’s most famous races. “I can’t wait to see the sons and daughters of American Pharoah get to the racetrack,” Justin Zayat said. “I’m sure some will look like him and I hope we get some who run like him. It’s such a great thrill to race horses like Pioneerof The Nile, Bodemeister and American Pharoah and then get to watch their offspring run.
“For me, it was awesome to see Zayat Stables transform from a racing stable to a breeding operation. We have 25 stallions and that’s what we like to do: buy yearlings, create stars and be able to breed them. It’s our goal and hopefully we can continue doing it. When you breed horses like Pioneerof The Nile and then American Pharoah, it shows we’re moving in the right direction.” Moving forward and learning from every step of the journey. It’s a way of life for Justin Zayat, who personifies both youth and experience and illustrates how the future can indeed be now.
ABOVE: The famous racing silks of Zayat Stables. BELOW: Justin Zayat and Bob Baffert at Churchill Downs
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