B. Wayne Hughes, owner of Spendthrift Farm, dies at 87

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – B. Wayne Hughes, the American billionaire whose Spendthrift Farm embraced a number of breeding innovations, died Wednesday at Spendthrift “with his loving family at his side,” according to the farm. Hughes was 87.

Hughes, who founded Public Storage, the largest self-storage company in the United States, was a lifelong horse lover, racing his first Thoroughbred in 1972 and spending countless mornings at Clocker’s Corner at Santa Anita and the Del Mar track kitchen. In 2004, two years after retiring as CEO of Public Storage, he acquired the 700-acre Spendthrift Farm in Central Kentucky, moved from his longtime home in California to the property, and proceeded to build the farm into one of the largest, most influential stallion stations in the world.

Hughes had his first and only Kentucky Derby winner in 2020 with Authentic, a son of the Spendthrift stallion Into Mischief who was co-owned by several partners, including Myracehorse.com, a ground-breaking micro-partnership group. Authentic went on to win the 2020 Breeders’ Cup Classic and was named Horse of the Year and champion 3-year-old male.

But Hughes’s most beloved horse was Beholder. Bought as a yearling for $180,000 in 2011, Beholder won 18 of 26 starts and $6.16 million in purses over a five-year racing career, was named a champion four times, and won three Breeders' Cup races, the Juvenile Fillies in 2012 and the Distaff in 2013 and 2016.

“I’ve had a few good horses in the past, but she is the first horse that makes me feel lucky to be the owner,” Hughes said after Beholder beat colts in the 2015 Grade 1 Pacific Classic. “I’ve never had that feeling before. I think it’s called pride.”

Beholder was retired to Spendthrift Farm, where she resides.

Born Bradley Wayne Hughes in Otebo, Okla., Hughes moved to California at a young age and spent time as a boy at the tracks on the Southern California circuit with his father. Prior to moving to Kentucky in 2004, Hughes was a regular on the backstretches of the Southern California tracks, and he had lifelong friendships with many horsemen.

In 1972, just after founding Public Storage, he offered trainer Warren Stute some ground-floor shares in the company.

“Who would want to put their stuff in storage?” Stute replied.

The incredible success of Public Storage – which currently has nearly 3,000 locations worldwide – would fund Hughes’s involvement in racing, along with his many philanthropic endeavors.

A graduate of the University of Southern California, Hughes was a heavy supporter of its athletic teams and was reported to have been the source of a $400 million anonymous donation to the school. He founded the Parker Hughes Cancer Center in Minnesota in 1998, after a son died of leukemia at the age of 8.

Due to the medical connections he made through his philanthropy, Hughes often extended helping hands to horsemen with health problems. One of those he helped was the late Rick Porter – who owned Songbird, the super-horse who in 2016 battled Beholder to the wire in one of the most memorable Breeders’ Cup Distaffs ever to be run.

At Spendthrift, Hughes pioneered a program, “Share the Upside,” that allowed breeders to obtain lifetime breeding rights in certain stallions. Hughes also embraced micro-partnership companies like Myracehorse.com, believing that the ability for fans to own tiny fractions of the sport’s leading stars would lead to long-term benefits for the industry.

But Spendthrift also rankled some long-time breeding farms and industry stalwarts by letting the market determine how many mares a stallion should breed. The farm’s leading stallion, Into Mischief, for example, covered 248 mares in 2020.

Citing those book sizes at Spendthrift and a number of other leading stud farms, critics began voicing concerns that the shrinking breeding industry was creeping toward a dangerous level of genetic concentration. Those concerns led The Jockey Club to approve a rule last year limiting future stallions to 140 breedings per year, over the protests of a number of large breeding farms. Spendthrift joined with several other farms to challenge the rule in a lawsuit that remains unresolved.

Into Mischief is one of the world’s most valuable and successful stallions. He stood for $225,000 in 2021, the highest fee in North America, and set a record for stallion earnings in 2020. He also is the leader in Daily Racing Form’s Beyer Sire Standings, which rates stallions by the number of benchmark Beyer Speed Figures. Hughes also stood the prominent sire Malibu Moon, who died earlier this year, at Spendthrift.

Hughes raced the winners of seven Eclipse Awards and had six Breeders’ Cup winners. In addition to Authentic and Beholder, Hughes won the Juvenile with Action This Day in 2003 and the Mile with Court Vision in 2011.

At the time of his death, Forbes estimated Hughes’s wealth at $4.1 billion. In addition to Public Storage, Hughes founded a real-estate investment trust in 2011 that now rents 53,000 single-family homes. Prior to his death, Hughes reportedly gave the vast bulk of his shares in Public Storage to his daughter and son.

In 2003, Hughes had a horse, Atswhatimtalkinabout, who was on the path to the Kentucky Derby. Approached at Clocker’s Corner prior to a prep race, Hughes began amiably chatting about his passion for racing.

“Horses for me are like health insurance,” he said. “In racing, you’re always looking forward. For an old guy, that’s good for your health. I like the people in racing, the horses, the atmosphere.”

Hughes is survived by his wife, Patricia; his son, Wayne Jr.; his daughter, Tamara Gustavson; and four grandchildren.

– additional reporting by Jay Privman