Business is Business: Dave Portnoy Told Amr Zedan And Bob Baffert “You Crushed My Dreams” After They Out-Bid Him For a Grey Horse And They Barely Flinched
Let’s first get one thing straight. I enjoy horse racing and went to Saratoga once a summer every year with my Grandma and cousins. Made it to Monmouth a few times and have been lucky enough to go to the Belmont Stakes and Saratoga in the finest conditions possible thanks to Dave Portnoy. I enjoy horse racing. Dave lives and breathes horse racing. I pick by names, he devours the racing form and consumes all the info and can tell you what everything means. I’m also still learning about it but very much envy the people who grew up on racing because even in my limited experience in the sport it’s awesome. The big race days, the excitement , the swings, the tradition etc. But again, I’m a novice, look no further than Jersey Jerry’s favorite clip of all time.
“Rico Rico Rico … you are not a horse guy”
Owner … trainer … tomato … tomatoe. Hey we all make mistakes. The key is learning from them, and now I’ll never confuse Baffert’s role.
Anyway. Dave is up at Saratoga bidding on horses (rich people shit which we all envy) and had his eyes set on a Grey (English really is a stupid fucking language when you think about it - how is Grey and Gray both a correct way to spell it and there hasn’t been a decision on which one we should all use) because he loves Greys. And a bigger reason was this was the Sire was Gun Runner, the hottest sire in the business I’m told. He bid 2.8 million which is just an insane statement to make from a guy who battled bums to deliver papers in an Astrovan, had his office attacked by squirrels, and taped a guy to a wall just to name a few wild things in the early days of this company. Anyway. He wanted it BAD. Enter Amr Zedan of Zedan Racing Stables as well as Chairman of the Saudi Polo Federation, and a member of the board of directors of the Saudi Supreme Equestrian Authority, Chairman of family business the Zedan Group, and Chairman of ZedanMorgan. In 2022 his net worth was in the 1.2 billion … BILLION range. And of course Bob Baffert, world class trainer.
Clearly Dave, while very rich, wasn’t in the league of Zedan- who made it very clear he wasn’t getting outbid - and when they crashed the interview and Dave tried to pull on the heart strings by saying “you crushed my dreams” Zedan simply said “How’d I know?” No I’m sorry, no hey maybe we can cut you in for a piece. Nothing. Standing on business. Stone cold assassin type stuff- he came for a horse and he was getting that horse. Even when Dave tried to get him to show his cards with “how high were you going to go” and he replied “you don’t stop with a horse like that”. Just a villain-esque type answer. Thats the thing I think I’ve learned the most in horse racing. There’s rich people and then there’s super rich people and it’s like the big leagues and A ball with the separation. Zedan is clearly in the big leagues. Just the perfect type villain the way he carries himself here.
On the bright side, it’s always good when a guy like Baffert says “you got a good eye for horses” so as Bill Murray wisely put it in Caddyshack “so I got that going for me… which is nice.”
Shame we may never know the name of the horse which Dave said he already picked out. Annoying Meek Phil has a nice ring to it.