Preakness: Bobo enjoying the view from the other side with Simplification

BALTIMORE, Md. -- Tami Bobo has built her career around trading young horses, and she sold a Kentucky Derby starter a decade ago. Now, a colt she held on to is giving her a first taste of the Triple Crown as an owner.

Simplification, a creditable fourth in the Kentucky Derby, was the first Preakness Stakes candidate on the grounds at Pimlico last week. He is the first to carry Bobo’s silks – featuring a padlock and key, in a nod to her Secure Investments business moniker – in a Triple Crown event.

“It’s unbelievable,” Bobo said. “It’s an amazing experience. It’s unbelievable the excitement that this sport brings to people. It’s not something you can measure. It’s a feeling - it’s almost out of body - when that horse makes the turn and you’re rooting for that animal. It’s an out-of-body experience.”

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Bobo, who began her career with Quarter Horses before moving to Thoroughbreds just over a decade ago, is becoming known for having an eye for a horse others pass up in the sales ring. Her first major private purchase was Take Charge Indy, who failed to meet his reserve with an $80,000 hammer fall at the 2010 Keeneland September yearling sale. She purchased the son of A.P. Indy privately and sold shares in him to Chuck and Maribeth Sandford, who eventually bought her out. He went on to win the Grade 1 Florida Derby in 2012 and eventually retired as a millionaire.

As she did with Take Charge Indy, Bobo purchased Simplification privately after he failed to meet his reserve in the sale ring. The Florida-bred Not This Time colt was offered as a weanling by breeders France and Irwin Weiner at the 2019 Keeneland November breeding stock sale; he drew a high bid of $50,000. Bobo, who is a longtime client of de Meric sales, now owns the colt with Tristan de Meric.

“He was physically correct, a good specimen for a weanling-to-yearling pinhook,” Bobo said. “Very correct, forward-looking, looked like he’d be an early yearling, which is what we’re looking for for pinhooking. He had all the characteristics of that. And then we decided to go on with him.”

Bobo began pinhooking yearlings to 2-year-olds under her Secure Investments banner. She now operates First Finds, a weanling-to-yearling pinhooking business selling about 20 horses a year. She and husband Fernando De Jesus are based out of First Finds Farm in Ocala, Fla. But the experience with Simplification may propel Bobo off the farm and sale grounds and to the racetrack more often.

“It’s definitely catapulting us more toward racing, I think,” she said. “We’ll continue to pinhook, but certainly, the ride we’ve been on with some of these better horses, where we could have stayed in or could have went on, I think our theory going forward may be a little more to race in the future.”