By Dan Ross
Of all the canny observations John Steinbeck makes in his novel, The Grapes of Wrath, perhaps none capture the ineffability of the human spirit more than this one: “Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, and emerges ahead of his accomplishments.” Why invest the better part of our years in something, then, if the fruits of those labors aren't used for a greater purpose-if our sweat and toil bring earthly rewards only. Just ask the Hronis brothers, Kosta and Pete.
Through racehorse ownership, they've taken their life's work as scions of a thriving family farm and carefully cultivated an ancillary existence that has brought them about as close as the sport is able to the sublime. “That's a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing,” Kosta Hronis said about his recent victory with Accelerate in the GI Breeders' Cup Classic. “There's nothing higher than that.”
The Hronis brothers don't just have the best horse in the country right now–at the end of last year, they were the leading owners nationally in terms of prize money. The path the sport has led them down since they became the newly-anointed, first-time owners of a $40,000 claimer fewer than nine years ago has been extraordinary indeed. It's no surprise, then, that when Kosta talks racing, he has about him a touch of the evangelist.
“Now, I finally have something in life that I just love. I'm sure there are guys that just love to go golfing, and love to see these new golf courses. I just love going to the racetrack and being part of that world. It's been a thrill. I couldn't be happier. I just wish I'd have found it sooner in life, I really do,” he added. “The only thing I've really done in life besides raising my kids and going to their sports events, I've worked. I work 80-hour weeks. That's normal here.”
“Here” is the family's California ranch–all decked out in the Hronis green and white–in Delano, Kern County, just a short hop north of Bakersfield, where the Joad family of Steinbeck's classic made a stop during their odyssey west away from the Okie Dust Bowl. The Hronis ranch, founded in 1945 and now 8,000 acres in total, is hemmed in on all sides by great geometric blocks of leafy citrus trees and, at this unseasonal time of year, the browning vines of the business mainstay: table grapes. Some 2,000 people are employed by an operation that has flourished these past few decades. When Kosta and Pete took over the business reins from their father in 1991, they shipped 300,000 boxes of grapes a year.
“Today, this company's doing around nine-million packages a year,” he said. “We grew up hard workers, and we learned a lot from dad and mom, how things were supposed to be done. I think it was that foundation that made us the success we are today.”
Certain precepts–like hard-graft and loyalty–burrow deep through the Hronis narrative. But just as Steinbeck wondered how we can “live without our lives–how will we know it's us without our past?” family is very much at the center of gravity. Indeed, after Pete popped his head briefly around the door of a boardroom to offer a cheery welcome before disappearing back to work, Kosta opened a window onto their fraternal relationship, as tightly bound as a double-helix.
“Pete and I do everything together,” he said. “We respect each other. He's my brother. He's my best friend.” To prove his point, Kosta described the circumstances of their upbringing–mother, father, Kosta, Pete, and two sisters–in a small, three-bedroom house. When their two sisters moved away to college, Pete and Kosta were offered a bedroom each. “We said, 'No way, we're going to stay together.'”
For the longest time, the brothers' relationship with racing was an observational one, beginning when they were children and their grandparents, who lived in Pasadena, would take them to Santa Anita. “I just remember being up against the rail as close as I could get to the racetrack, and to hear that thunder as they go by you,” Kosta said, “well, I guess I was just really excited.” In the following decades, the brothers continued on as racegoers. “We actually ended up with a box on Saturday and Sunday, so we'd go down and handicap for the weekend.” It never occurred to them to become owners. “I don't know if we didn't know we could or if we thought we weren't ready. I'm not sure.”
Then, in 2010, when at the races one day, Kosta turned to his brother with an idea. “I said, 'I think we should claim a horse.' My brother said, 'No, we have no idea what we're doing. That's crazy talk.' And I'm like, 'Yeah, I think we could do this. We've been around the track a long time.'” An usher at Santa Anita overheard their plans, told them to speak to no one until he had introduced them to one trainer in particular. When they met John Sadler, he approached them with the circumspection of someone who has heard it all before.
“I don't know if John remembers it, but I remember him saying, 'So, I guess you want to win the Kentucky Derby?'” To which Kosta replied: “'I'm more interested in the Breeders' Cup.' And John looked at me kind of perplexed, like, 'Where did that come from?' I said it just seems like an easier window to fit through, because you could have a colt or a filly. You could be dirt or turf. You could run short or long. It just seemed like I could maybe fit into that group easier than finding a 3-year-old, two turns on the dirt on the first weekend of May.”
Nine years might seem like a short time to build from the foundations up a world-class stable, but the way in which they've done it has been anything but haphazard or rushed. “I remember at the end of 2010 we had three horses, and I thought 'Oh my gosh, we have three horses now, what are we going to do?'” Success came almost instantly, and the brothers soon had ideas of raiding the yearling sales. Sadler nixed that plan flat. “Yeah, he was going to bring us along slowly at a pace that he felt comfortable with, and that we were comfortable with,” Kosta said. Quickly, though, Sadler's carefully curated approach brought dividends.
Click here to read the rest of this story in the February TDN Weekend.
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