Kentucky Derby horse Confidence Game owned by Connecticut man

WEST HARTFORD — For the second time in five years, a local man has ownership in a horse running in the Kentucky Derby.

Mike Gualtieri, a West Hartford resident and the owner of ProCourier in town, is part of the stable group Don’t Tell My Wife that owns Confidence Game, one of 20 horses running in this Saturday's race at Churchill Downs in Louisville.

Horse racing wasn't on Gualtieri's radar until 2010, when he visited a racetrack while in New Orleans on a business trip, he said.

"It was a casual meeting after a long day of board meetings," said Gualtieri, a Waterbury native, recalling the day where he and a group of others would start the stable.

At the track, they had met Keith Desormeaux, a trainer they still work with today. Desormeaux's brother, Kent Desormeaux, is a decorated jockey who was inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.

"He proposed the idea to buy a horse," Gualtieri said. "I wasn’t much of a horse guy at the time. We all kind of ponied up a small amount of money and bought one horse. One thing led to another."

The stable got its name after the snap decision to buy their first horse, when Gualtieri said to the rest of the group: "I’ll write you out a check, just don’t tell me my wife immediately. I’ve got to come up with a story."

Initially, they were running horses in what Gualtieri said are "claim" races, where horses that run can be bought by others immediately. Through it all, the group was having fun, which Gualtieri said was entirely the reason for starting the stable.

"We just wanted to do it for fun," he said. "For the first several years, it was just kind of enjoying ourselves, paying the bills. We weren’t spending a lot of money. We weren’t losing a lot of money."

Things began to evolve, Gualtieri said, as they opened investor opportunities to more people. But the real secret to success, he said, was Desormeaux.

"He knew we operated on a limited budget, so in 2018 and this year’s Derby, he selected horses with good pedigree and for the money, he thought there were good values," Gualtieri said.

In 2018, the group ran My Boy Jack, which finished fifth in the race. This year, Confidence Game — a horse with 30-1 odds at winning — will take its shot.

The horse, which Gualtieri said cost $25,000 to buy, will be going up against some horses worth millions. It qualified for the race after winning the Rebel Stakes in Arkansas in February, the last time it's been on a racetrack.

"He wasn’t supposed to win," Gualtieri said about that race. "He was a long shot at 18-1, he wasn’t expected to do well at all. He came out of nowhere for that. But he won convincingly and earned 50 points. Once he won the Rebel, we knew he was in. He was an early qualifier."

Confidence Game hasn't raced since the Rebel Stakes, meaning there will be about three months in between action for the horse, which Gualtieri said has some speculators concerned. Their group, though, isn't worried.

"He hasn’t raced in awhile, and that’s what the big chat is," Gualtieri said. "Keith was looking for the right spot for him and not racing him again was always an option. The experts think it's not good to have gone for so long without racing, but he’s been trained hard with breaks in between."

Gualtieri said his group's confidence is high in Confidence Game, considering the track record the horse has.

"He’s probably the most well-bred horse that we’ve ever owned in terms of his lineage," he said. "That together with his recent workouts and what he’s accomplished, I think puts him in the hunt."

Gualtieri said he's grateful for the opportunity to experience the Kentucky Derby as an owner again and realizes his horse is up against 19 of the best racing horses in the world.

"We could win very easily and we could also finish in the back of the pack,"  Gualtieri said. 

Being included in that group of esteemed horses, owners, trainers and jockeys for the second time is gratifying, Gualtieri said.

"It’s remarkable," Gualtieri said. "It takes a little bit of skill, which is Keith's, and a lot of luck. We were so fortunate and happy to be in it five years ago and could never have predicted this. We’re tremendously grateful as a group. We started the stable to have fun. We don’t want to lose sight of that. It still is an awful lot of fun. We never thought we’d get to race like this, nevermind twice."

Gualtieri and family leave Thursday for the race, excited to watch Confidence Game run, but the race is actually taking a back seat to something else happening in his life this week: the arrival of his first grandchild.

"Who would think having a Kentucky Derby horse would be the second most exciting thing this week," Gualtieri said. "It would be the highlight of most years."