Harper's Corner Raises Ceiling for Perl

“Anyone can play our game,” says Sean Perl with a shrug. “So walk outside and raise your hand.”

We're talking during the recent Fasig-Tipton July Sale: a recalibration, start of a new yearling cycle, but essentially just another variation of an infinitely repeating challenge, with Thoroughbreds of every kind, to come out the right side of value.

“Which is why I'm usually involved in the marketplace from sun-up to sundown,” Perl continues. “Because you never know when the next one's going to come through the ring. That might be the one for you.”

That diligence certainly paid off, at the 2023 Keeneland November Sale, when the local bloodstock agent gave $23,000 for a 7-year-old Speightstown mare. Stonestreet had paid $390,000 for Toscana as a weanling, but she disappointed in three starts and was duly culled, for $70,000 in 2020, with a maiden cover by Kantharos. Curiously her value now slumped again, even though her granddam's Grade I-placed half-sister had meanwhile put Life Is Good on the page as grandson.

True, that would become a pretty remote distinction by the time Toscana's foals were catalogued. But she was always guaranteed Perl's attention. For one thing, she was in-foal to Speaker's Corner, a horse so admired by his client that they had sent him six mares.

“And then I'm a huge fan of Speightstown, as broodmare sire,” Perl explains. “I bought four Speightstown mares that year: I knew they weren't going to make them anymore; and also that they come in all shapes and sizes. Some are big and tall, some small and sprint-looking, but they can all work.

“Basically, my business model is to find value. At that sale, I'll look for horses that maybe need a different environment; or for the combination, a mating that works for us. For this client, they have to pass my physical–and she was good-sized, very correct–and then he has to like the baby that'll be coming out of her.”

In this case, a filly. Straightforward, correct, just medium-sized but they gave her until Fasig-Tipton October to mature. She still realized no more than $30,000, but even that cleared the cost of the mare–who remained young enough to benefit from anything her daughter might do. Pinhooked for $70,000 at OBS, the filly joined Cathal Lynch and on debut pulverized her pursuers round Laurel by eight lengths. Sent to Saratoga for the Schuylerville

Stakes, she again burned them off by five. For this is Harper's Corner–and suddenly that $23,000 Speightstown mare is hot property.

Schuylerville winner Harper's Corner draws post 6 in Saturday's GI Spinaway Stakes | Sarah Andrew

She already compressed the usual ups-and-downs into her record. The Kantharos is now stakes-placed in Italy, while her son by More Than Ready was last seen breaking his maiden at Aqueduct; on the other hand, she had bad luck breeding the past two years. She is currently in New York, in-foal to Mo Donegal, but playing the state-bred market may no longer suffice. They considered putting Toscana in a digital sale, and have weighed private approaches, but for now Perl's client is biding his time.

Regardless, Toscana is no flash in the pan. At the very sale where he found her, Perl also paid $11,000 for a Giant's Causeway mare. The following summer, her daughter Caitlinhergrtness (Omaha Beach) won the King's Plate. Just two days after the Schuylerville, moreover, Mi Bago dead-heated for the GIII Kelso Stakes—so upgrading his dam Wabanaki (Indian Charlie), picked up in a digital sale in December 2024 for $45,000. Already that year Perl had turned round a young Curlin mare, culled by Godolphin in February for only $20,000. Her Nyquist half-sister promptly emerged as champion Immersive and Perl cashed her out in November for $325,000. Godolphin again proved a fertile draft, just weeks later, when he gave $9,000 for Dowager (A.P. Indy), meanwhile dam of multiple graded scorer Banishing (Ghostzapper).

“Obviously I can't control what's going to happen afterwards,” Perl acknowledges. “I just kind of look for 'running' pedigrees and hope to get lucky, which you always need in this business. In my opinion, there's a thousand ways to lose, only one way to win. Everyone has their own ideas, their own ways of going about things. Speaking for myself, if something's worked for me, I go back to the well. If I've had success doing something, why switch it up? Sticking to what I know works, I feel comfortable putting skin in the game, whether for my own company or my clients.”

But if that self-belief has been earned, plenty was required even to get started. Perl had to open every door himself. Growing up in South Florida, he took the industry program at the University of Arizona, meanwhile working Saratoga summers for Todd Pletcher plus Lexington and Florida sales with leading consignors. Though he initially took a white-collar path, reaching assistant racing secretary at NYRA, in 2017 Perl cut the chain to the desk.

“Noone ever took me under their wing and said, 'Here's how you do this, how you do that,'” he says. “I had to take a little piece of everything and then do it my way, taking chances and swinging the bat. I left a six-figure salary, took 95-South from New York and said, 'Here I am.' Either I was going to make it, or I wasn't, but I didn't want to look up and see a ceiling over my head, in an office. I wanted to be where the sky's the limit.”

He gratefully recognizes a debt to many people—starting with an acquaintance made in his previous job, who rang Perl on his way to OBS to say that he had just signed a $25,000 credit authorization. (The horse he was able to buy was aptly named First Opportunity.)

Thereafter collaborators like Barry Eisaman, Nick and Tristan de Meric, and Mike Maker all proved instrumental in Perl's initial success, their early belief enabling him to establish a platform to build towards the next level. Examples of his work with the de Merics include a $350,000 Bolt d'Oro filly found at Saratoga in 2022, sold on for $850,000 at OBS the following spring. More recently a $30,000 Constitution filly, at Fasig-Tipton last October, hoisted her Timonium value to $575,000.

“I needed to prove that I could do it: first to myself, and then everybody else,” he says. “There's obviously been speedbumps along the way. But I did know that if I wanted to play the major leagues, I had to be where it's all happening. Kentucky is horse capital of the world and, moving here, I wanted the clients supporting me to know that I was in the thick of it, looking after their investments.”

Perl emphasizes that he relies entirely on referrals. “That means my business basically comes from success on the racetrack,” he says. “Yes, it's tough without the Book 1 budget. But I'm not afraid to stand behind a horse out of those later Books. It's more gratifying, if you can see something where somebody else might not. I used to be concerned about not having the support to buy what I liked. Fast forward to today, I don't have that pressure. Everybody wants to be part of success and, knock on wood, we've shown we can hit the ball.

“I don't depend on anybody. I don't have a staff of 20, or interns doing research. I seek out the pedigrees myself, at night, and next day go see whether the physical matches up. And then you say, 'Hey, for a certain price, this can make sense.'”

The portfolio has evolved. Starting in Florida, broodmares were hardly his launchpad. “But now it's all year, always a different facet,” he says. “Now it's mares and weanlings, as well as racehorses and yearlings, it's matings, seasons, partnerships, everything. It doesn't stop. But it's just got better and better. I don't look back. I know there's always another day, another sale, another horse out there. And it's my job to find it.

“The way I look at it, I don't work a day in my life,” he says. “As long as I can pay my bills, I'm happy to be here. I don't put pressure on myself. I love the game and I'm just glad to be part of it.”