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By Emily Shields
Stephanie Wedge-Bond has become quite the racing enthusiast since marrying trainer Jeff Bonde, right
When Stephanie Wedge first met trainer Jef Bonde in 2013, she didn’t know a furlong from a farrier. After marrying Bonde, helping manage her husband’s business, and buying racehorses of her own, Wedge-Bonde is now well on her way to mastering the once incomprehensible racing jargon.
A full-time real estate agent from Northern California, Wedge-Bonde was taking in the races at Pleasanton when she met the trainer.
“I thought all horses were Kentucky Derby horses when I first met him,” she said. “I was the most novice of novices.”
The ambitious Wedge-Bonde decided the best way to learn was to jump in with both feet. She invested in Lady Wedge, a $16,500 purchase who went on to earn $34,315.
“When she doubled the money, I was hooked,” Wedge-Bonde said.
Another driving factor was that at the time, Bonde was training a filly named She’s a Tiger, one of the leading juveniles of 2013. She’s a Tiger won the Del Mar Debutante Stakes (G1) and ran second in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies (G1) the same year that the Bondes met. Voted the Eclipse champion 2-year-old filly of 2013, she ultimately sold at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky November sale for $2.5 million following the conclusion of her racing career. After the experience with She’s a Tiger, Wedge-Bonde began to fall in love with other horses her husband trained. She especially became attached to Distinctiv Passion, a $564,855-earning, multiple graded stakes winner. Wedge- Bonde accompanied the horse and his trainer to Dubai for the Al Quoz Sprint Empowered by IPIC (G1) in 2015. “That was the first love I had with something I didn’t actually own,” she said. “When he got claimed, I cried.”
Other barn favorites include California-bred ….. CONTINUE HERE