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By Emily Shields
Adrian Gonzalez abided by the “fake it until you make it” school of thought, and ultimately made it. Having been accepted to California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, Gonzalez needed a job to help put himself through school. He had grown up around horses, but not Thoroughbreds.
“I stumbled upon Cardif Stud Farm,” he said. “My very first experience there was as an exercise rider, breaking yearlings.”
Within a year Gonzalez was working as a stallion groom at Creston Farms, then helped handle weanlings.
“I hadn’t done any of that,” Gonzalez admitted. “I thought, ‘fake it until you make it.’ ”
During that year the studious Gonzalez not only saw several different facets of the industry, but also spent time perusing The Blood-Horse’s annual auction results book.
“Not to date myself, but there weren’t a lot of sales results online at the time,” he said. “The farm had a library with all the old stallion registers, and I was taking the auction books and going page by page, highlighting horses that sold in multiple years. That’s how I first started doing pinhooking research. How were these horses selling for nothing in one sale and for lots of money the next year? How did they do that?”
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