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B l o o d H o r s e .c o m ■
MARCH 7, 2009
T. Paul Bulmahn’s
GoldMark Farm
reaches for racing’s
brass ring
GoldMark owner T. Paul Bulmahn;
horses preparing to go to the training track
at GoldMark Farm near Ocala, Fla.
louise e. reinagel photos; above courtesy T. Paul Bulmahn
R
B y R ya n C o n l e y
unning heavenward through a
spiral staircase in the palatial
GoldMark Farm office is a twostory glass trophy case that for
now serves more as a monument to
potential than actual loving-cup production for the burgeoning commercial
operation located near Ocala, Fla.
Filling that voluminous trophy case
is just part of the grand plan being executed by owner T. Paul Bulmahn, the
ebullient leader of the international energy company ATP Oil & Gas, and his
farm’s general manager, trainer, and
racing manager, Todd Quast.
“I told Todd, ‘No pressure,’ ” said Bulmahn with a laugh when asked about
the trophy-case-in-waiting.
But neither Bulmahn nor Quast kids
around about the kind of horses they
want coming off the 2,500-acre farm
they are developing west of Ocala.
“I really cut my teeth with the Kentucky Derby and watching it on television when it was in black and white,”
said Bulmahn, who was raised in rural
northeast Indiana. “And that’s the level
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MARCH 7, 2009
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GoldMark Farm
I want not only for myself, but for the owners we service as well.”
And Quast, who includes on his resume´
a lengthy tour of duty in the unofficial
trainers’ school of Hall of Fame conditioner
D. Wayne Lukas, said competing in graded
stakes was on Bulmahn’s radar from the
first time the two met in 2002.
“That’s the intent,” said Quast, who
along with his wife, Lori, helps select the
25 or so yearlings GoldMark purchases annually at auction. “Our goal is to compete at
the top level at the best tracks
with the best horses.”
GoldMark Farm received
quick affirmation on those
lofty standards from its first
group of purchased yearlings
when Elusive Lady, a $90,000
buy at the 2006 Keeneland September yearling sale, won the
2007 Tempted Stakes (gr. III)
at Aqueduct in just her third
start. The daughter of Van
Nistelrooy—Song of Royalty,
by Unbridled’s Song, went on
to make the field for last year’s
Kentucky Oaks (gr. I) but was
scratched on race day when
conditions turned sloppy.
“He selected a horse from
the first crop that got all the
way to the Kentucky Oaks,”
said Bulmahn of Quast. “That
really underscores Todd’s
value to our operation.”
The GoldMark operation
was seeded by Bulmahn’s visit
to the 2002 Kentucky Derby
(gr. I) won by War Emblem,
a trip fostered by the success
of ATP Oil & Gas, which he
founded in Texas in 1991. Bulmahn journeyed to Kentucky
in 2001 to accept an award for
ATP, which had been honored
by Inc. magazine as the fifthfastest-growing company for
2000. While in the Blue Grass
State, Bulmahn, as part of
a day trip connected to the
awards ceremony, visited the
Maker’s Mark distillery, where
he entered and won a trip to
the 2002 Derby.
“That was just a fabulous
experience for me,” said Bulmahn, who, along with his
late wife, Mary, enjoyed Derby
doings with Maker’s Mark owner Bill Samuels and his wife, Nancy. “And from that
experience then, my desire to be around
horses, and Thoroughbreds particularly,
was really kindled.”
The ensuing farm name Bulmahn chose
carries a legacy, in part, to the impact of the
trip that propelled him into the Thoroughbred business. “ ‘Gold,’ because it is the
highest award in the Olympics, and ‘Mark’
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MARCH 7, 2009
is what I borrowed from Maker’s Mark,”
Bulmahn said. “I kind of wanted to have
a tribute to that experience with Bill and
Nancy Samuels.”
A few months after the 2002 Derby, Bulmahn put his new passion into practice by
purchasing Stanley Ersoff’s former Triple
EEE Farm. Since then, Bulmahn has added
more property, and he and Quast have
teamed to produce arguably one of the
top training facilities in Florida, if not the
United States.
Included is a 142-stall barn area that
is geared for both optimum work-flow
performance and climate control in the
hot—and sometimes wet—Central Florida summers.
“Everything is close,” said Quast, who
collaborated with Bulmahn on the design
of GoldMark. “When the horses come in,
you’re not wasting time. It’s got a nice flow.
Not a lot of wasted motion. You can spend
as much time as you can with the horses.”
And the three-quarter-mile training
track is GoldMark’s pride and joy, topped
by a Safetrack synthetic surface.
“If it isn’t the best synthetic surface
around, I don’t know what could be better,”
Bulmahn said. “It uses more elastic and a
higher grade of wax than many of the other
tracks, and it also doesn’t have an asphalt
base. It utilizes a geo-textile membrane. In
matters of drainage and cushion, it has big
advantages over what some employ.”
Quast said he researched all
available forms of synthetic
surfaces before recommending
Safetrack. The resulting surface,
which was tweaked to GoldMark specifications and opened
for training in 2006, has produced the most consistent, level,
and maintenance-free training
track Quast has ever seen.
“You have the exact same
racetrack every day,” said Quast,
who typically supervises the
training of 120 young horses,
about 90 of which are for outside
clients.
Quast said the track’s drainage system, which has dogged
other racetracks with synthetic
surfaces, was tested by a dawdling 2008 hur r icane that
dumped 14 inches of rain on the
Ocala area in a 24-hour period.
“We haven’t had that much rain
in a two-year time frame,” he
said. “And we were not only able
to gallop the next day, we were
able to breeze.”
The Safetrack surface isn’t just
restricted to the training track—
it also covers most ground areas
of the complex. “We not only put
it here,” Quast said of the track,
“but you see it everywhere: It’s
in the lanes; it’s in the arenas. In
the shedrow, it’s never dusty…
it’s great for the horses because
you don’t have respiratory issues. And it’s great on their feet.
It gives a lot of cushion to the
horses, and to the people.”
That’s high praise from a
horseman who toiled on dirt
surfaces for 10-plus years under
Lukas, first at the trainer’s former Westerly Training Center in
California, then briefly as an assistant track trainer handling Lukas’ Hollywood Park string, and finally, at the former
Padua Stables in Summerfield, Fla., where
Lukas was once director of operations.
Along the way, Quast was instrumental
in the early training of such champions or
classic winners as Flanders, Boston Harbor,
Timber Country, Thunder Gulch, Grindstone, and Charismatic, the latter three all
Kentucky Derby winners.
But Quast, who earned degrees in agricultural business and horse production
and management at Tarleton State University in Texas, said he easily bought into Bulmahn’s edict for both quality and safety.
“He doesn’t have a horse background,
per se, but his whole objective is to do
whatever is best for the horse,” Quast said.
“Whatever we can come up with from design of the barn, or the track, everything is
done for what’s best for the horse.”
Prominent clients have flocked to GoldMark, including some that followed Quast from his Lukas
days. In the barns are young
horses and/or lay-ups for
Overbrook Farm, Eaton Sales,
Gainesway Farm, Three Chimneys Farm, IEAH Stables, and
Team Valor, among others.
Overbrook Farm’s decision
to send some of its yearlings
to Bulmahn’s facility is based
on reasons both past and present, farm racing manager Chris
Young said.
“There are two main factors; one was Todd’s ability as
a horseman,” said Young, noting Overbrook’s association
with Quast from his days with
Lukas. “Secondarily is the facility in general and the maintenance of the track surface.”
Young, who also sends some
yearlings to Bryan and Holley
Rice’s Woodside Ranch near
Ocala, acknowledged the jury
is still out on synthetic surfaces. “Are they all better than
dirt tracks? Probably not,” he
said. But he feels the Safetrack
surface at GoldMark is a solid
choice until proven otherwise.
IEAH Stables, which campaigned 2008 champions Big
Brown and Benny the Bull, first
heard about GoldMark from
the farm’s assistant trainer,
Karl Keegan, a former New
York-based exercise rider and
jockey valet.
“(Keegan) had nice things to
say about the farm, the people,
and the facility,” said Michael
Sherack, IEAH’s vice president
of investor relations. “When it
came time to send a few yearlings out, we gave it a shot.
Other people have given it great reviews—
they have nice horses for top clients; it’s got
a reputation as the best facility (in Florida).”
Sherack said Quast has been great to
deal with. “He keeps us up to speed—
that’s the main thing with young horses,” he said. “You want someone that is
shooting straight with you, not being told
a horse is a champ when he’s not, or not
hearing about an injury.”
Bulmahn said from the onset he treated
GoldMark Farm like any other business, so
treating his clients well is a priority.
“From the very beginning, I wanted
to have a state-of-the-art training facility
that others would appreciate, and I love
just being around horses,” he said. “And
they don’t have to be my horses for me to
love them. We’ve had some very successful horses come off the farm already, and I
am excited and ecstatic about each of their
performance records.”
Bulmahn, whose publicly-traded energy
company develops offshore oil and natural
gas properties in the Gulf of Mexico and
Europe’s North Sea, sees similarities in his
two vocations.
“First, you need large amounts of capital
to get things started,” said Bulmahn, who
has spent about $11 million on the 70 or so
yearlings he purchased from 2006-08, ac-
cording to The Blood-Horse research. “And
it takes several years per project in developing offshore. Onshore, you can get wells
drilled faster, but in the offshore, you have
long construction lead times.
“And with horses, you have a period of
time in development, where you need to
break to saddle, get them used to being
an athlete, training on the track, and then
graduate to the racetrack. There are long
lead times, and similarities in risk that
have to be addressed. And risks that have
to be overcome.”
Bulmahn and Quast both
subscribe to the “you’re only as
good as the people under you”
business axiom. Bulmahn, who
said until recently he conducted
every employee interview for
ATP Oil & Gas, regardless of position, puts his trust in Quast to
hire the right mix of workers.
“In the Thoroughbred industry, just as with the oil and gas
business, you live and die with
your people,” said Bulmahn.
In addition to Lori Quast and
Keegan, Todd Quast counts on
farm foremen Ricardo Gonzalez and Alonso Pena to keep the
average of 50 employees and
120 horses moving as a unit.
“They make us all look good,”
Quast said with a smile.
One of the perks for the
employees is the use of an allpurpose room on the second
floor of the trackside clocking
stand, which also includes a
two-bedroom guest quarters on
the first-floor. The second floor
features a barbecue stand and
two large-screen televisions.
“It gives them the opportunity to see what they are working
for,” Quast said. “It really pays
for itself in the long run.”
For now GoldMark Farm will
primarily remain a training
center.
“Eventually, we will have
broodmares and probably stallions, but they are going to be
developed through the race program,” Quast said. “If they do
well and we don’t sell them—
the original plan is to sell
them—then they will become
part of the broodmare band. If
we have a stallion good enough to stand,
then hopefully he will be good enough to
stand in Kentucky. But if not, and we need
to start standing a stallion in Florida, then
that’s what part of the rest of the land will
be used for.”
GoldMark keeps about 25 horses at the
track, primarily with trainers Tom Amoss,
Steve Asmussen, Eoin Harty, John Kimmel,
Joe Orseno, and Dallas Stewart. b
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