Long a horseman, Bolton has owned dozens of thoroughbreds over 19 years - his stock numbers 38 - but none has brought him such treats, emotionally and financially, as Curlin. Purchased in February 2007 after running one race, the chestnut colt blossomed, earning $5,102,800 in nine starts last year, tops in the business.
"It was a ride as exciting as anything I've ever done," Bolton said. "I adore that horse."
Nonetheless, in December, Bolton sold his 20 percent interest in Curlin for millions to Jess Jackson, a billionaire wine merchant with whom he had originally bought the horse.
Jackson's offer afforded Bolton a huge return on his original seven-figure investment and prompted his decision to sell. Simply put, head ruled heart.
"The offer was just so generous that my wife and I didn't agonize over this," Bolton said. "It's not like the horse was claimed for $50,000 and kept on winning while I threw my shoes at the TV. I was a happy seller, not a reluctant one."
He paused.
"There's a price for everything in this business," he said.
It's a business Bolton learned early and, quite literally, from the ground up. At 16, while home from boarding school in Massachusetts, he spent part of his summer mucking stalls and hotwalking horses at Timonium Race Course.
"I thought it would be exciting," he said. "You learn a lot about racing on the backside."
Bolton grew up on the family's 45-acre estate in steeplechase country. His father, Perry Bolton, a longtime horse owner, won the Maryland Hunt Cup in 1998. His great-great-uncle, George Brown Jr., was a racing steward at state tracks in the 1950s and 1960s.
Bolton himself rode ponies as a kid and accompanied his grandmother, Ida Perry Black Bullock, to the races at Pimlico.
"She was a good handicapper who knew how to `skip' races while betting," Bolton said. "She was very savvy at the window."
By college, horses were such a part of his life that one matriculated with him to the University of Virginia. George, a grey foxhunter, lived in a barn behind the house Bolton rented near Charlottesville.
There, he met Bill Farish, a Zeta Psi fraternity brother whose family has deep racing ties. (His father, Will Farish, is past Chairman of the Board of Churchill Downs and owner of Lane's End, a leading stud farm in Kentucky.)
Together, Bolton and Farish entered the breeding business in 1989. Their first buy was a filly named Purse whom they raced for one year and sold for a tidy profit.
