Justin Casse passed on the family training business over the 4:30 a.m. wake-up calls and built a career on the buying and selling side of horse racing instead. Now 46, he works as a bloodstock agent, helping clients evaluate, buy, and sell thoroughbreds while also breeding and investing in horses himself.
Casse said he owns stakes in about 100 racehorses across six countries. The family name helped him enter the industry, but he left the family operation in 2004 and drove from Toronto to Lexington, Ky., to work for a horse sales company.
That move changed his career. Working outside the family business allowed him to develop contacts of his own. Within a couple of years, he was selling horses for his own clients, including the Steinbrenner family, which owns the New York Yankees. He later expanded into buying horses on clients’ behalf while continuing to invest for himself.
Casse said his early lessons came from his brother, Mark, who pushed him to identify horses he liked and explain their flaws. He also learned the hard way through his own money. At about 24, he bought a horse for $20,000 and sold it 10 months later for $80,000. He said that success made him overly confident, and he was quickly humbled.
'There’s no greater teacher, I’d say, than being financially invested in something,' Casse said.
Travel widened that education. Around 2012, he began making regular trips to Europe and now spends three to four months a year there. He said Europe gave him a different view of how horses are bred, trained, and sold. He contrasted American training, which is centered on racetracks and a fixed morning window, with European facilities that can offer hills, varied routes, and more flexibility.
One purchase showed what that broader market can produce. In 2018, Casse bought War of Will at a sale in France for €250,000 on behalf of owner Gary Barber. Trained by Mark, the colt went on to win the Preakness Stakes.
The business is a reminder that in horse racing, reputation matters, but judgment and capital matter just as much. Casse inherited access, then used mobility and private investment to build leverage of his own.
For readers who care about markets, the story is straightforward: specialized knowledge creates value when it is paired with ownership and risk. The horse world rewards the people willing to put their own money on the line, not just the ones born near the gate. Capital rewards clear rules, and in this case, it also rewarded a man willing to leave the family schedule behind.
