Hovdey: Another bumper crop for Hronis Racing

It’s no secret that the racing game was not quite ready for what the West Coast unleashed upon the Kentucky Derby last year. Maybe it was the down-market bloodlines of the victorious California Chrome. Maybe it was Runyonesque trainer Art Sherman, a walking history book. Maybe it was owners Steve Coburn and Perry Martin and their competing moustaches, who just as easily could have been partners in a hardware franchise. Whatever spell they cast definitely freaked people out.

As a result, in deference to the Derby’s delicate sensibilities, California has taken it back a notch this time around. Instead of the Derby, the target is the 141st running of the Kentucky Oaks on Friday. The filly in question is Stellar Wind, a Mid-Atlantic transplant who came of age with a bang at Santa Anita this winter. Her trainer, John Sadler, comes from old Pasadena money, while her owners are a family of buttoned-down farmers from California’s Central Valley who prefer to let their horses – and their grapes and oranges – do the talking.

Stellar Wind, a travel-size daughter of Curlin, earned the right to be the Oaks morning-line favorite with runaway wins in the Santa Anita Oaks and Santa Ysabel Stakes in her first two starts for Hronis Racing. That would have been good enough for Kosta Hronis, 56, and the family’s go-to interview, whose expectations did not include a trip to Churchill Downs.

“We have been so fortunate and so spoiled so very early,” Hronis said, including in the “we” his brother Pete under the official stable banner. “We didn’t start buying horses until 2010. In 2012, Lady Shamrock drops into our lap and dominates the filly turf division out here. Then in 2014, we have a $50,000 claiming horse, Iotapa, who wins the Vanity by 10 lengths and finishes third in the Breeders’ Cup. After that, we thought, ‘This can’t go on. We’ll regroup and catch our breath.’ Then Stellar Wind comes along.”

It’s not supposed to be so simple, but the Hronis racing fortunes make it look that way. After Lady of Shamrock was retired, she was sold to Alain and Gerard Wertheimer for $2 million as a broodmare. Iotapa, a daughter of Afleet Alex, went for $2.8 million to a Chinese group last fall. Now, Stellar Wind’s value is poised to go through the nearest roof as well.

Such outsized success from relatively few Thoroughbred investments stands in stark contrast to the hard, competitive business of growing food for a living. Hronis Inc., one of the nation’s largest providers of table grapes, is a second-generation family enterprise located on more than 7,000 acres in the southern end of the Central Valley, just north of Bakersfield. An easy hop east from Hronis puts you in Sequoia National Forest, while Highway 99 north will take the traveler in short order to Harris Farms, where California Chrome was bred, foaled, and raised.

“They’re on the west side of 99, and in terms of water, they’re in worse shape than us,” Hronis said, addressing the bone-dry elephant in the room. “It’s pretty rough over there.”

The California drought hangs heavily over every aspect of life out West in a state that has gone from golden to dusty brown. The Hronis operation does what it can to make vital resources stretch.

“We installed a precision irrigation system 10 years ago that lets us control our water down to the minute to maximize the minimum amount we have,” Hronis said. “We are blessed with groundwater here, plus whatever surface water we get from the districts. But it’s been challenging, to say the least.”

It’s also a bad time to go bouncing around the country on the coattails of a fast filly. Hronis was to arrive in Kentucky on Thursday night and then head back to California right after the race. He’ll be joined for the Oaks by his wife, Stephanie, and daughters Hailey and Nia, while his son, Demetri, and brother Pete man the home front.

“Grapes are going through their bloom stage,” Hronis said. “It’s a critical time. There are certain procedures that need to happen on a timely basis. I know the vineyards so well that after I’ve seen them at 8 o’clock in the morning, I know what they’re supposed to look like at 4 that afternoon.”

Hronis was at Churchill Downs on Derby Day last year to watch two of his horses, including Iotapa, run on the undercard. They both lost.

“Iotapa hated the track,” Hronis said. “She didn’t like the flight back there. She didn’t like the barn she was in, or the paddock experience, or all the people. It couldn’t have gone worse. So, you just never know when you go away like that.”

Stellar Wind, on the other hand, already has transferred good form from one coast to the other, and in demeanor, she seems to display the kind of class it takes to be competitive against all comers. If nothing else, she is physically reminiscent of those two powerful, little chestnuts from the West’s recent past, Azeri and Megahertz.

“I have to remind myself it will be all about the kind of trip she gets, so I try not to get too excited,” Hronis said. “Just to be running in a race like the Kentucky Oaks is unbelievable enough, especially for someone whose family outings were to Santa Anita Park. I was only about 10, but at night after I finished my homework, I’d handicap the card and then go through the results the next day in the L.A. Times to see how I did.

“I fell in love with racing then,” he added, “and I have loved it ever since.”