Alchemy in Aiken
Cary Frommer Makes Gold
By Mike Mullaney , Photography by Gary Knoll
C
ary Frommer, a 35-year Aiken resident, racehorse trainer and the current president of the Aiken Training Track, has mastered the art of pinhooking. This is a craft similar to flipping houses or playing the stock market, but instead of real estate or company shares, the commodities in trade are young horses, bought either privately or at auction, and then conditioned and sold in short order for as much as two, three, or four times their purchase price. Maybe more. It’s a real-world form of alchemy, turning Thoroughbred potential into auction gold. In March 2016, Frommer became an overnight sensation at
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Gulfstream Park’s Fasig-Tipton sale of 2-year-olds when she sold two juvenile sons of the terrific stallion Uncle Mo for $1 million and $1.3 million. Seven-figure sales always catch the eye, and adding to the storyline of those two horses was the fact that Frommer purchased both as yearlings the previous November for $90,000 and $150,000, respectively. In other words, in five months’ time she turned a $240,000 investment into a $2.3 million windfall. The next year, she and her business partner Barry Berkelhammer returned to Gulfstream and sold an Uncle Mo filly, which they had
The Aiken Horse
August-September 2018
