Latest / Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson / Ep 17: Victor Bahna - Author Heliacal Star

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Ep 17: Victor Bahna - Author Heliacal Star · Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson

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  Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Live Free Ride Free, where we talk to people who
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  have lived self-actualized lives on their own terms, and find out how they
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  got there, what they do, how we can get there, what we can learn from them.
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  How to live our best lives, find our own definition of success,
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  and most importantly, find joy.
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  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
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  New York Times bestselling author of the Horse Boy.
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  Founder of New Trails Learning Systems and long ride home.com.
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  You can find details of all our programs and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
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  Welcome back to Live Free, Ride Free, where we talk to people who are living
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  self actualized lives and finding out what we can learn from them.
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  And how we can self actualize more.
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  So today I've got a rather interesting man.
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  I've got Victor Barna, who is both a techie he's up there in
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  Seattle, teching away, and we're going to ask him about that.
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  And he's also the author of a book, of a new thriller, about the racing
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  industry, the horse racing industry.
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  Which is doing quite well.
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  And he's a lifelong passionate devotee of the racing industry.
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  His book delves into some of the darker sides of the racing industry,
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  which of course is pretty interesting.
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  Makes it interesting as a thriller and it joins a long line of racing thrillers by
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  authors such as Dick Francis and so on.
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  But at the same time he does draw attention to some of the things
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  within that industry that could do better, that could use some reform.
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  And also he's in a position to sort of talk about how as a young boy in Long
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  Island growing up far from horses, he sort of Managed to self actualize both
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  as a, as a geek and as someone who fell in love with the horse and Speed and
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  that the sort of beauty and of the whole aesthetic and has managed to sort of
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  marry the two things together in a rather interesting way While living in You
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  know, a quiet private life and, you know, the sort of life that most of us lead.
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  So I think for those of you who are interested in how do you write a good
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  book and how do you self publish it, those of you who are interested in
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  the racing industry, those of you who are interested in tech, and how
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  the whole tech boom has happened and where it's going and all that, I
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  think Victor's got a lot to tell us.
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  And his book Heliacal Star sort of serves as a bit of a
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  nexus for all of these things.
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  So, welcome to Live Free Ride Free, Victor.
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  Please tell us a little bit about who you are and how you came to be.
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  Victor Bahna: Well, thank you for, for the invite and thank
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  you for having me on today.
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  I really appreciate it.
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  And as far as, you know, my, my story is, as you referenced, I,
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  I grew up on Long Island not You know, from a geographic perspective,
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  just a few miles from JFK airport.
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  So, pretty close to to New York City and not a place where you necessarily
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  find a lot of horses, unless you're at Belmont racetrack, which is also
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  kind of on the New York City line.
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  And not too far from where I grew up and that's, that's where I actually
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  was first introduced to to any kind of a horse through through, through the
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  racing business when I was probably not legal to be gambling on horses.
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  I found my way to to the racetrack and it was at a time where.
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  We actually had to ask other older people to make our bets for us because we would
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  get carded and and not allowed to bet.
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  But that was my first that was my first experience with
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  with horses and with racing.
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  And it was very alluring.
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  It was very intoxicating.
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  There was a bit of a taboo in the sense of, you know, we weren't legal to do that.
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  So we had that sort of allure but there was also this, this potential for
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  making money by doing a little homework, understanding, you know, how to read
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  a racing form and, and handicap and putting ourselves in a position where we
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  could possibly win, win a few dollars.
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  And then after winning a couple of dollars, a few times, you know, that.
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  Also sort of became an interesting hobby, let's say amongst
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  myself and a few of my friends.
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  And so this is this is where we spent our, our classroom time in in high
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  school, oftentimes, you know, inside of our textbooks, we would find some of
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  the past performances of the racetracks.
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  And instead of paying attention to the, the instruction of the
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  day, we would be figuring out who was going to win the late double.
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  And that was that was a fun
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  Rupert Isaacson: bus.
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  In other words,
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  Victor Bahna: Yes, we were doing calculus and math and statistical analysis back
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  then we were we were a little ahead of our time, I guess, in that sense.
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  And this is, of course, before the Internet and before the Sort
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  of the tech boom, so to speak.
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  So, you know, everything was on paper back then, and we had our our pens
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  and markings and all that other stuff.
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  That was seems like a very long time ago.
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  And, you know, what?
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  How do you say it?
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  Long time ago in a place far, far away.
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  And so, after college, went to, went to college on Long Island as well.
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  Found myself employed at a personal products company called Unilever,
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  which you may be familiar with.
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  Rupert Isaacson: I went to school next door to the head office.
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  Victor Bahna: Ah, okay.
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  There you go.
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  In the city of London.
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  Yeah.
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  Yep.
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  Yep.
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  It was anglis, Anglo Dutch company.
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  Mm-Hmm.
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  . It had had headquarters in in, in London, excuse me, and in Netherlands.
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  And so I spent my first eight years of my career working in supply.
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  For in New York City for Unilever, the subsidiary was called Lever
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  Brothers in in New York City.
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  It was quite a, quite a nice place.
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  It was on Park Avenue.
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  And so I got to have that experience of, of working in downtown
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  Manhattan for for about 8 years.
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  And I got a call from Microsoft at that time, and it was 1995, and they were
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  looking for someone to, this is when we were still doing a lot of shrink rep.
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  1995 product for for tech.
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  So everything was in a, in a floppy disk.
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  CDs weren't even out yet at that time.
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  So everything was boxed up in floppy disks and, and there was a supply
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  chain, and believe it or not for for technology back then, and Microsoft
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  was trying to launch their windows 95 product, and we're looking for someone
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  to help them with their supply chain.
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  So I interviewed, got the job.
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  We ended up going from New York to Seattle.
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  Which is where I am today, ended up spending 17 years at Microsoft.
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  And I went from the interesting thing about Microsoft at that time
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  was you can actually reinvent your career without changing your company.
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  They were very much a company that looked at your skills and your talent.
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  And they understood that even if you weren't necessarily.
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  Deep in one particular domain, we could train you in that domain.
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  If you had different skills, like leadership skills and.
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  Acumen for learning and so forth.
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  So I actually ended up going from supply chain while I was at Microsoft into it.
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  And my first exposure to it was running their internal help desk, which I did
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  for a couple of years, but the help desk I thought was the best way for
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  me to get introduced into tech because I got to learn everything through the
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  problems people were experiencing.
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  And these were users.
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  Of Mike, since it was an internal help desk, it wasn't for external
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  customers, but it helped me understand where people were running into issues.
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  And it was actually in almost a backwards way of learning.
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  But, but you, because typically when you learn in a textbook, you're learning about
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  how things are supposed to work and I was learning about things because they were
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  broken and kind of reverse engineering back to how it should be working.
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  And so that was a very unique, but I thought pretty powerful way for me to
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  to get into it and to get into tech.
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  And started out managing vendors initially, but then, you know, when you
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  immerse yourself in that environment.
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  You start to pick up and learn the jargon and the technology
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  and it evolved from there.
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  I ended up doing several things in the tech space, or in the IT
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  space, I should say with Microsoft.
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  Then they started launching their online services which you may know
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  today as it's Azure and it's Office 365 or the sort of Charter products
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  that they, that they offer on online.
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  And so, I did some, some work with with those groups.
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  Went to another company called ServiceNow back in 2012.
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  Spent a few years with them and then ended up with my current
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  company which is Nutanix.
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  When I was at Microsoft, it was probably about, I want, I want to
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  say about 10 years into the gig at Microsoft, where I was fortunate enough
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  to have accumulated some some equity.
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  And I started to revisit my interest in horses at that time.
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  So I went to a local racetrack here called Emerald downs.
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  And after a couple of visits to their track, I kind of got that because, because
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  for a long time between really, you know, my college years and this you know, 10
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  years into Microsoft, I hadn't spent a lot of time at the races with horses, because
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  I'd just been super busy, you know, with work and the family and young kids
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  and all the stuff that comes with that.
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  And so finally, I got to the point where, Hey, I have a little bit of time.
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  I have a little bit of money went back to the racetrack and that feeling came
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  back in terms of the excitement and the allure, but this time I was looking at
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  it from a slightly different perspective and I went to what, what they had an
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  owners or potential owners seminar and a couple of trainers were speaking at
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  the seminar and it just, it just was something that seemed like it would
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  be a really interesting, you know,
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  Pursuit to maybe get into the ownership side of, of racing.
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  And Emerald downs is not your Belmont or Saratoga, or, you
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  know, the Santa Anita or Del Mar.
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  It's not one of your bigger venues.
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  So the entry point into ownership is not very high compared to
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  some of those other places.
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  The, the, the cost of a horse is going to be a little bit lower.
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  The day rate's going to be a little bit lower.
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  So it's a.
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  It was an easier place to.
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  Rupert Isaacson: What's the day rate?
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  What does that mean?
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  Victor Bahna: The day rate would be what you're paying your trainer basically for
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  the boarding and training feeding care of your horse when they're out of the track
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  and those day rates can vary quite a lot.
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  Back then it was probably 50 or 55 a day in Washington state where yeah,
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  If you were in some of the bigger circuits like Del Mar or or New York, it
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  would be over a hundred dollars a day.
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  So almost a two X difference in, in day rate.
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  And you know, over the course of 30 days, that can, that can add up quite a bit.
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  Yeah.
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  So, so I did, I, I ended up claiming a horse.
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  What is my first claiming horse, claiming horse basically is every horse that's in
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  a claiming race is effectively for sale.
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  And what you would do is you would Make sure you've got the funds at the
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  bookkeeper ahead of the race and you would file a form that would basically be
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  a claim form that, that says you intend to buy this horse, you've got the funds
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  which means after the race is over, that horse becomes yours, but the results of
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  the race still go to the previous owner.
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  What makes claiming interesting is that it's a bit of a.
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  It levels the playing field quite a bit with with the races in the U.
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  S., because if you're putting your horse up for sale for, let's say, 20,
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  000 and your horse can't compete at that level, then you're going to have
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  to drop that horse into a lower level.
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  So you might have to drop them into a 10, 000 race or even a 5, 000 race
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  where they become more competitive.
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  That makes them more likely to be claimed or sold, you
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  know, in that race as an owner.
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  You don't know if that horse is, you don't know if another owner has made a claim on
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  your horse until after the race is over.
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  So you don't have the option of, let's say, withdrawing your horse because, oh,
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  wait, I don't want this horse to get sold.
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  So therefore I'm going to pull them out of the race at the last minute.
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  You don't know if anyone's putting in a claim, so you don't really.
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  have a you're not going to be able to make that decision.
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  So that's what I ended up doing is I put in a claim for this horse.
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  I was able if, and if there could be multiple claims also for any particular
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  horse how do they decide who wins
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  Rupert Isaacson: the claim?
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  Victor Bahna: Well, what they would do is they would put your effectively, they
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  put your names in a hat and they pull one out and they say, okay, you're the winner
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  of this this particular claim to actually use lottery balls and everyone gets
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  assigned a lottery ball and they shake them up and they pull one out and whoever
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  is the lucky or unlucky person that has that number ends up with the horse.
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  I say lucky or unlucky because if the horse runs well, you want to
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  be the one that wins that horse.
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  And if the horse runs really poorly, you're hoping that maybe someone
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  else will, will, will get that horse.
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  So, so that's, that's one of the eight ways in which you can, you
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  can actually become an owner of a racehorses by just you know.
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  You say eight ways.
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  It's one of the ways, sorry.
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  There's, there are multiple, there are definitely multiple ways in
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  which you can acquire a racehorse.
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  This is probably the, the One of the easier ways, it's one of the least risky
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  ways, but it also has limited upside, because you've also seen that horse
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  likely perform on the racetrack at least once or twice, or maybe multiple times,
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  so you kind of know what you're getting.
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  As long as the horse stays sound and in this case, I was able to to, to get
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  my first racehorse and, and it kind of took off from there in terms of
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  my, my level of interest, my ownership and my passion, really, I mean, you,
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  you mentioned actualization, I think that might've been the start of my
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  actualization because, you know, it led to so many different things for me,
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  including getting to the point where I was retiring some horses for various reasons
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  and decided that I wanted to, well, this is actually where I learned quite
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  a bit about what happens to these horses potentially after they're done racing.
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  And some of the outcomes are not very good, especially for the horse.
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  And so this is where I decided that I was going to make sure that, you
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  know, my horses, if I'm retiring them, are not going to end up in a
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  situation where, you know, they're going to be put at any kind of risk.
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  So I ended up Keeping a couple and one of the horses that I, that I
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  did keep, he's he's currently an 18 year old thoroughbred and I ride
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  him on a pretty regular basis now.
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  So, I, I started getting into riding lessons.
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  I started to work with him on a, on a regular basis, learned
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  a lot of horsemanship in, in the process of doing that.
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  And also built a relationship with him to the point where At first it was a
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  situation where I wasn't really sure, you know, what to do or what he wanted.
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  And now we're at a point where I feel like we communicate with
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  each other very effectively.
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  Like I could read his, his signs and he tends to read mine actually.
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  And it's, it's quite an interesting relationship now
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  that I've, I've built with him.
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  So that's also part of the kind of that whole process that I've been through
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  with regard to having that experience.
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  And it's, it's one of those things.
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  That I feel is hard to explain unless you experience it yourself.
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  You know, you can, you can talk about it and it's kind of like watching a show
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  versus, you know, or watching a travel show versus visiting the travel site.
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  Having that experience and, and having that relationship with with this horse
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  was, is, and continues to be a, a very fulfilling and mostly positive experience.
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  Why
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  Rupert Isaacson: is the relationship with the horse fulfilling?
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  Victor Bahna: It, he's become a counterbalance to the stresses
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  in the world of tech for me.
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  The horse is bringing me back to nature.
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  It's bringing me back to a it's.
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  It's not a machine.
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  You know, some people think of our horses, especially racehorses and
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  machines, and they're just going to do the same thing every time.
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  He's definitely not a machine.
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  I didn't know that you can actually have this kind of a relationship
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  with a horse where you can, you can, you can really relate.
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  To him, I, I actually joke around sometimes and I'm, I'm partially
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  serious though, in the sense that he's, he's become very therapeutic for me
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  in, in managing some of my stresses.
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  Just being able to
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  spend time with him and just general lessons that I've learned from him,
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  like with a horse, you don't, you don't escalate, you deescalate when
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  you're in a situation where things are getting a little bit testy.
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  When you're on, on.
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  When you're riding a horse.
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  It's best to try to relax and not be nervous, because if you're nervous, he's
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  going to get nervous, and if he gets nervous, then he's going to get on edge,
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  and if he's on edge, then he's going to spook, and then if he spooks, you might
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  get thrown from the horse, and it's almost counterintuitive, because your instincts
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  are to Grab the horse with your legs and hold on and make sure you don't fall off.
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  But that's really the opposite of what you want to be doing.
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  And so this is the kind of stuff that I, that I learned in, in just
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  interacting with him, learning to read his, his body language.
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  Like if he reacted to something, maybe it's not because he's being fresh.
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  Maybe he's.
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  Not feeling well, or he's got an issue, and, you know, we find out that, oh, he's
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  got an abscess, or he's got, he's got a scratch somewhere, or, you know, some
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  kind of a cut somewhere or, you know, just being sensitized to some of that,
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  and sometimes he is being a brat, and being able to understand the differences
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  between when he's just being, you know, a little playful, let's say, versus,
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  versus, you know, having, having some issues, so a lot of this really was, you
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  know, was grounding for me in the sense that you can't just bully a horse either.
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  You have to learn to work with them as a teammate.
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  You have to cooperate with them.
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  You could try to, you know, in the old days, I guess this is what
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  we did is we, we broke horses.
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  We still call it breaking, even though we don't necessarily follow
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  the same process that we did, you know, 40, 50, 60 years ago.
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  But breaking the will of the horse is not how you're going
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  to build that relationship.
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  But understanding you've got a thousand or 1200 pounds.
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  of animal that if you don't learn how to work with them, it's just not going to
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  be a great experience for either of you.
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  So a lot of these things really kind of came through in In my relationship
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  with this horse and, and a lot of those things I'm able to carry through in
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  my job as well, you know, I, again, like deescalating, you know, people,
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  especially with electronic communications can be, you know, keyboard warriors,
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  as we say, and you know, they don't necessarily mean everything that they're
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  saying, but if you can just kind of.
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  Just assume good intent with with what people are trying to communicate and
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  then just rephrase it or just kind of,
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  Victor Bahna (2): you know,
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  Victor Bahna: tone things down a little bit, you know, things tend to get done
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  a lot, a lot better than when you're when you're, you know, combating it
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  or, or raising the bar, so to speak, or taking it to the next level.
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  And, you know, I don't know if I would have, you know, Gotten there.
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  If I didn't have some of these experiences with did you used to be
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  Rupert Isaacson: a tech escalator?
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  Like, was there a time when you were like, Oh, I
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  Victor Bahna: was a hothead.
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  I was total hothead.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
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  In what way?
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  Because I presume that, okay, we all, you know, know what internet trolls
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  are like, and we all know that people feel bolder behind the keyboard than
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  they would standing face to face on the street, obviously say things they would
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  never say to anyone's face, but That's a given, but I would have thought that if
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  you were going to pursue and then keep a good career with, for example, Microsoft,
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  surely they would be looking for people that were not like that because at the end
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  of the day those people cause conflict and conflict is a draining of resources rather
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  than a, you know, Bringer of resources.
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  So when you were, say you were a hothead, were you a hothead at Microsoft?
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  And if so, like, how did you get away with that?
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  Or did they even encourage that at the company?
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  And when did you find perhaps in the short term that it worked for you or
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  did it always work against you and you just sort of didn't know, in which
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  case, sort of, how didn't you get fired?
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  Like, talk, talk us through that a little bit.
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  Victor Bahna: Sure.
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  I think in the early days of tech and I was fortunate enough to be sort of
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  in those early days of of technology.
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  It was more about results.
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  It was, you need to deliver results and it didn't really
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  matter how you got those results.
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  Rupert Isaacson: And what results were you being expected to get?
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  Victor Bahna: In, in my case, it was ensuring that we had enough product.
• 21:39
  It was ensuring that we you know, had the right, and again, back to the
• 21:44
  package product days when I started at, at Microsoft, it was all about ensuring
• 21:49
  that the stores had product, but that we didn't have too much product where it was.
• 21:56
  Costing us a lot of money to, to hold that product or to, or
• 21:59
  to buy an expense, that product.
• 22:01
  And so that was where the pressure was, is you had to sort of hit
• 22:04
  that sweet spot with regard to the amount of inventory that you carried
• 22:08
  Rupert Isaacson: that's when you were on the, on the, on the product
• 22:11
  line, right on the, that's what,
• 22:12
  Victor Bahna: yeah, on the supply.
• 22:14
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 22:14
  And I can, I can see people.
• 22:16
  Being aggressive about getting a good deal.
• 22:19
  But once you moved over to Microsoft and you made the shift to tech itself,
• 22:24
  did that hotheadedness stay with you?
• 22:27
  And that escalatory thing and how did that not negatively
• 22:31
  impact your career basically?
• 22:34
  Victor Bahna: I think it, I think I wasn't 100 percent hothead, so I should probably
• 22:38
  qualify that but there were definitely moments where I was, I was very pushy.
• 22:42
  I would, I would require you know, people to be working probably
• 22:47
  hours that were not reasonable.
• 22:49
  I pushed myself where I was working probably,
• 22:54
  I would, I would get to the, I would leave my house probably around 7 a.
• 22:57
  m.
• 22:57
  most days.
• 22:58
  Get to the office by 730 and I would probably wouldn't come home till you
• 23:02
  know, 8 9 o'clock A lot of nights and then again we weren't necessarily on on
• 23:06
  laptops at home then And that and and because I was doing that that was my
• 23:11
  expectation of other people as well But
• 23:14
  Victor Bahna (2): you know,
• 23:14
  Victor Bahna: I I I Kind of pushed people into doing things that I look
• 23:18
  back on today and think, you know, that probably wasn't the right thing to do,
• 23:23
  but at the time it was the corporate
• 23:24
  Rupert Isaacson: culture of the time.
• 23:25
  Yeah, it
• 23:26
  Victor Bahna: was to a large extent and and results mattered.
• 23:29
  And so if we needed to work, well, 14, 15 hours a day, you know, over several weeks
• 23:34
  or months, you know, that's what we did.
• 23:36
  And I pushed my team to to do that as well.
• 23:39
  And, you know, sometimes.
• 23:42
  You know, they wouldn't necessarily agree with all that.
• 23:44
  And, you know, that's when the the terseness might might come
• 23:48
  into play in terms of, you know, we have to get this done.
• 23:50
  This is our job.
• 23:52
  This is what we're paid for.
• 23:53
  And it wasn't necessarily very friendly or encouraging or motivating.
• 23:57
  And, and in time, you know, I did, as I, as I aged, you know, I, I learned
• 24:02
  some self introspection, but I think it really kicked in a lot more when I started
• 24:10
  working with with the retired resource.
• 24:12
  I think that was when everything really came together for me and,
• 24:16
  and my tone and behavior probably shifted much more towards the.
• 24:23
  Let's, let's really work together.
• 24:26
  Let's be much more positive.
• 24:27
  Let's be more encouraging.
• 24:29
  Let's be more motivating.
• 24:31
  And that continues.
• 24:32
  It's so it's always a working process.
• 24:33
  I mean, but I have learned to to not react as much from from where I was
• 24:40
  back in my early days of my career.
• 24:42
  You would send an email back then and.
• 24:45
  You know, six hours, day later, you'd, you'd be like, why did I send that email?
• 24:49
  You almost regret it.
• 24:50
  And so, you know, that, that restraint wasn't there, you know, the, the
• 24:54
  filters weren't there and, and you know, maybe I would have gotten there.
• 24:59
  Maybe I wouldn't have.
• 25:00
  But I do think that the awareness that I gained by working with the racehorse
• 25:06
  was, was taking it to a new level for me.
• 25:09
  And and I, and I genuinely appreciate you know, how, however that came to be.
• 25:15
  However, things ended up working out.
• 25:18
  I, I genuinely appreciate the fact that he's in my life and, and we've
• 25:22
  built a really strong relationship.
• 25:25
  Rupert Isaacson: Now you, you now own a resource owning syndicate Royal Victory.
• 25:30
  Thoroughbreds, is that correct?
• 25:32
  Victor Bahna: That's correct.
• 25:33
  Yeah,
• 25:33
  Rupert Isaacson: and you're also you're not just owning racehorses
• 25:36
  You're breeding them Tell us a little bit about why you got into that and
• 25:40
  then i'm going to ask you a couple of I'm going to warn you in advance
• 25:43
  slightly challenging questions about the racing industry because I I know it.
• 25:47
  From several different sides and I know You know what's not good about
• 25:52
  it as well as what's good about it.
• 25:54
  So you're now
• 26:00
  Working on, if you like, perpetuating the industry.
• 26:06
  What
• 26:09
  prompts you to get together with other groups of owners for the syndicate,
• 26:17
  you all own a share and a horse, etc.
• 26:20
  What's the motivation there?
• 26:21
  What's the motivation for the breeding?
• 26:23
  And what do you feel it's bringing to the world?
• 26:28
  And then I want to go a little bit into your book and then let's
• 26:31
  talk about the industry a bit.
• 26:33
  Victor Bahna: Yeah, sure.
• 26:34
  Rupert Isaacson: Sounds good.
• 26:34
  Victor Bahna: I'll start with breeding.
• 26:36
  So, as I mentioned a bit earlier, horses, tend to run into issues at some
• 26:43
  point in their career where they're not going to be competitive anymore.
• 26:47
  I had a, a mare who had won a couple of races and she was not
• 26:55
  going to be able to run anymore.
• 26:57
  In fact, she, she came down with a suspensory injury.
• 27:00
  And
• 27:01
  Rupert Isaacson: can you explain what a suspensory injury is for those?
• 27:04
  Yeah, it's,
• 27:05
  Victor Bahna: it's, it's an injury.
• 27:06
  Of the ligaments in the, in, in her case, it was her right front foreleg and between
• 27:14
  the knee and the the ankle or the fetlock.
• 27:18
  And what happens is those, those, those ligaments are very
• 27:22
  tight when, when a racehorse.
• 27:25
  And if they end up pulling or injuring those ligaments, they end up becoming
• 27:32
  less it affects their ability to to run quite frankly, because you know,
• 27:38
  that that tautness isn't there anymore.
• 27:40
  It's it's kind of like think of your own leg in that sense.
• 27:44
  There are some bones that connect into those ligaments.
• 27:48
  And one of those bones and I think it's called the sesamoid, is what
• 27:55
  this particular mare had fractured.
• 27:58
  After a race that she had been in, and my 1st reaction was, Oh, no,
• 28:04
  because you hear about, you know, horses injuring legs and they get
• 28:07
  they get euthanized on the racetrack.
• 28:09
  And that was my 1st fear was, Oh, my gosh, you know, minus situation where we're
• 28:15
  going to have to put this horse down.
• 28:17
  And so I, I.
• 28:19
  Went right back to the barn after, after that race and spoke with the
• 28:23
  veterinarian and the veterinarian said that you know, she's got an injury.
• 28:27
  It's most likely a career ending injury.
• 28:31
  And my first question was, is she Is she going to be okay, though?
• 28:36
  You know, are we going to have to put her down?
• 28:39
  And he reassured me, though, that we wouldn't have to do that.
• 28:42
  In fact, in this case, it wouldn't even require surgery, but she
• 28:45
  would need at least a year off.
• 28:46
  And we would have to nurse it back so that, you know, she
• 28:49
  gained, regained her health.
• 28:51
  Actually, I don't, actually, I don't remember if there was surgery or not.
• 28:53
  I don't think there was.
• 28:55
  Suspensory,
• 28:56
  Rupert Isaacson: it's just, basically, nine months of
• 28:58
  rest is usually the, the cure.
• 29:00
  Yeah.
• 29:00
  Victor Bahna: Yeah.
• 29:01
  I don't, yeah, I don't think there was any any surgery for this.
• 29:04
  Anyway, she so I've got this horse that is never going to race again.
• 29:08
  And what do I do with this horse?
• 29:10
  And, and I thought, well, you know, let me, let me see if I can breed the horse.
• 29:16
  She had good pedigree and she had good confirmation which is, which is how
• 29:20
  they're built, it's bone structure.
• 29:21
  And I thought she would maybe make a potentially good broodmare.
• 29:25
  So that's really how I got started in the breeding business is I thought
• 29:28
  it would be good to keep her to give her a home and to see if she can
• 29:32
  produce some, some babies that would eventually make it to the racetrack.
• 29:37
  And that's, that's, I, I've done that with a couple of mares.
• 29:40
  I've got, I've got two mares today that were former racehorses
• 29:44
  of mine that I'm breeding.
• 29:45
  One is On the East coast, one of them on the West coast.
• 29:47
  And it's been, it's been a good experience in the sense of learning sort of the
• 29:51
  whole life cycle of of, of the racing process from researching stallions to
• 30:00
  paying for stud fees, to pulling the baby, to watching them grow up, it's getting
• 30:04
  them to the racetrack and then even, you know, past that in terms of retirement,
• 30:07
  The partnership came about because I thought it would be, I, I.
• 30:14
  Get very excited.
• 30:15
  I don't think there's many circumstances as, as an older adult now, in
• 30:21
  which I get to act like a child.
• 30:23
  And so one of the experiences is when you're at the racetrack and
• 30:26
  you're, you're, you're watching your racehorse run, you can, you
• 30:30
  can act like a bit of a child.
• 30:32
  You know, you could scream at the top of your lungs.
• 30:34
  You can, you could feel that.
• 30:36
  That thrill and excitement.
• 30:38
  When, when they're coming down the lane, you know, and they're, they've
• 30:40
  got a chance of winning that race.
• 30:43
  You could also feel sort of the, sort of the, the, the crushing
• 30:47
  weight of defeat when when they lose and, and the utter disappointment
• 30:51
  that comes with with it's going to
• 30:52
  Rupert Isaacson: happen more often, you know, odds are, yeah.
• 30:54
  Victor Bahna: Odds are it's not going to happen.
• 30:56
  Yeah, exactly.
• 30:56
  You're going to, you're going to lose a lot more than you're going to win.
• 30:59
  And so, I, the rollercoaster of emotions that you go through is just, it's
• 31:03
  just one of those unique experiences.
• 31:05
  And, and it's just, I, in my, in my experiences, it's just not
• 31:09
  something that you could find in, in, in a lot of different areas.
• 31:14
  I mean, you can, you can invest your money in, in the stock market, but you're not
• 31:19
  going to be screaming at a stock ticker.
• 31:20
  Maybe you are, but you know, most, most people aren't going to be
• 31:23
  screaming at a stock ticker like they are, you know, a horse race.
• 31:26
  You can go to sporting events and, you know, watch football or, or
• 31:30
  hockey or something like that.
• 31:31
  And you can get into the, into the game itself.
• 31:33
  But nothing in my opinion really kind of matches the, the sense of excitement.
• 31:39
  And, and knowing is that you're, you're a you're a participant in the sport.
• 31:43
  You're not just a spectator.
• 31:45
  I think really.
• 31:47
  Raises the bar, so to speak.
• 31:48
  And so I wanted to share that with some of my some of my colleagues and
• 31:51
  friends and give them the opportunity to do the same, and they might not
• 31:55
  necessarily have done the research or understand, you know, what it's like,
• 31:59
  you know, how to get into the game.
• 32:01
  So providing them a really easy entrance ramp with regard to participating letting
• 32:06
  them have that experience as well.
• 32:09
  And, you know, if they, if they feel that same level of excitement, then great.
• 32:14
  You know, they can, they can continue to you know, to.
• 32:17
  To purchase shares in, in in horses.
• 32:19
  And if they don't, that's, that's okay as well.
• 32:21
  They can, they can always step out.
• 32:24
  There's not a, a long, you know, everlasting commitment that they have.
• 32:28
  And, and to, to the large extent, you know, the folks that I've, I've
• 32:32
  brought into the partnership have, have been have been pretty optimistic.
• 32:37
  I think, I think they've, they've enjoyed the experience that they've had.
• 32:39
  And I generally do everything at cost.
• 32:42
  I'm not trying to make money off of a partnership.
• 32:44
  So whatever the actual charges that I see, I just pass them on to you
• 32:49
  know, to the different partners so that they're not feeling like they're
• 32:52
  getting, you know, having to pay a premium or anything like that.
• 32:55
  For me, it's just being able to share the experience and giving
• 32:57
  them that opportunity as opposed to, you know, me trying to make
• 33:01
  a dollar or two off of them.
• 33:02
  We let the performance on the racetrack decide if we're
• 33:04
  going to make money or not.
• 33:05
  And so it also makes, makes it more.
• 33:10
  Of me having a vested interest in the success of the horses in which
• 33:14
  they're owning because I'm also going to own a, you know, a good percentage
• 33:19
  of each of those horses as well.
• 33:21
  Rupert Isaacson: So it's a passion thing.
• 33:23
  Victor Bahna: It's definitely a passion thing.
• 33:24
  Yeah.
• 33:24
  Yeah.
• 33:25
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 33:25
  And then let's talk a little bit more about passion and then let's go back
• 33:29
  to, to the thoroughbred industry.
• 33:32
  So you've now written a book and you've written a book about A darker side of
• 33:36
  the industry and also writing a book is a passionate process and you've self
• 33:40
  published it and that's not easy I've self published a book and I I know a little
• 33:44
  bit about what goes into that Tell me, you know, why did you decide to do that?
• 33:48
  How did you make it work?
• 33:50
  There'll be a lot of listeners there who are flirting with the
• 33:54
  idea of self publishing and each year the landscape on that, the
• 33:59
  geography on that, changes a bit.
• 34:01
  You know, the last time I did it was, I think, back in 2015 or 14 or so.
• 34:07
  And I know things have changed since then.
• 34:09
  So talk to us about your experience.
• 34:11
  Why did you decide to do it?
• 34:12
  How did you as a non writer get to a point where you could write a book, which is,
• 34:17
  is, it's picked up some very good reviews.
• 34:19
  And why did you choose the particular subject matter, the sort of darker side
• 34:23
  of the racing industry and thriller you know, talk, talk, talk us through the
• 34:28
  process, conception, reasons, publishing, how, how you found Figure that why did you
• 34:33
  publish the way you published and so on
• 34:37
  Victor Bahna: I was sitting on a beach one day and It was chatting with my wife
• 34:44
  And I was thinking about ways in which I can, what, what would be like the next
• 34:52
  kind of big project I would want to do.
• 34:54
  And it just was one of those lightbulb moments where we were just
• 34:57
  kind of batting around a few ideas.
• 34:58
  And, and I've been doing a fair amount of business writing at the time.
• 35:04
  And thought to myself, you know what, I think maybe I should write a book.
• 35:09
  And it was literally just this lightbulb moment where, I had not honestly really
• 35:14
  considered or thought about it, you know, up to that point, it was, it
• 35:18
  was literally just kind of hit me.
• 35:20
  And I was thinking, okay, well, if I write a book, what would it be about?
• 35:25
  Well, of course, it would have to be about horses because that's
• 35:28
  where I'm spending, you know, quite a bit of my time and energy.
• 35:31
  And so that, that really was the, the starting point.
• 35:36
  But what I, what it was, was bothering me.
• 35:39
  At that time, and this was probably 2016, maybe 2017, but what was really
• 35:45
  bugging me at that time was the, you mentioned the darker side, the excitement
• 35:51
  in the racing and the attention is all given to the horses that are racing.
• 35:59
  But there's a lot of horses that don't race anymore.
• 36:03
  And back then there were a lot of those horses that were, were being
• 36:08
  shuttled you know, in crowded vans up to from the U S at least up to Mexico
• 36:14
  or down to Mexico or up to Canada.
• 36:16
  And they were going to the slaughterhouse.
• 36:21
  And I, and it really bothered me that, you know, you can have, and I read the story
• 36:25
  of Ferdinand, I'm not sure how familiar you are with Ferdinand, but he was a
• 36:28
  Kentucky Derby winner back in the 80s.
• 36:31
  I'm not
• 36:31
  Rupert Isaacson: familiar.
• 36:32
  No, tell us.
• 36:33
  Victor Bahna: Yeah.
• 36:33
  Yeah.
• 36:34
  Ferdinand won the Kentucky Derby back in the 1980s.
• 36:37
  I don't know exactly which year it was.
• 36:39
  And he was sold as a stallion to a group in Japan.
• 36:46
  Yeah.
• 36:46
  This for us.
• 36:47
  One of the most prestigious race in the US he was very well regarded,
• 36:53
  you know, would, would have a very, you'd expect a very prosperous
• 36:56
  and, and successful stud career.
• 36:59
  Highest bidder was in Japan at the time, he ended up going
• 37:02
  to Stallion Farm in Japan.
• 37:05
  After he retired from racing.
• 37:08
  Apparently his prodigy was not very successful in, in, in large part.
• 37:13
  And he got sold to another farm in Japan.
• 37:17
  He ended up passing through a couple of different places.
• 37:21
  Ended up, actually he ended up in a slaughterhouse, actually.
• 37:24
  And was, was, you know.
• 37:27
  That was his end and after I don't know how old he was.
• 37:34
  I don't think he was that old probably somewhere between maybe he
• 37:38
  was like 12 or 15 or something Yeah,
• 37:40
  Rupert Isaacson: not old.
• 37:41
  Yeah midlife.
• 37:42
  No,
• 37:42
  Victor Bahna: no, definitely not old.
• 37:44
  And it was basically he was unsuccessful He passed through,
• 37:47
  you know multiple hands.
• 37:49
  And the last Group that got them decided that it was going to be best to, you
• 37:55
  know, send them to a slaughterhouse because they can get money for the
• 37:58
  pound for him, which is just amazing.
• 38:01
  So I thought to myself, you know, how does a horse like that, who wins
• 38:05
  the most prestigious race in the U.
• 38:06
  S.
• 38:07
  end up in a slaughterhouse and how can any horse that you may spend.
• 38:13
  You know, a couple hundred thousand dollars on or even more at some
• 38:18
  point in their career, you know, find themselves on a trailer heading
• 38:21
  to heading to a slaughterhouse and that really, really disturbed me.
• 38:25
  So, I thought to myself that would actually be a good story to, to write
• 38:30
  about and maybe expose a little bit more of what's going on, but doing
• 38:35
  it in a way that's not preaching.
• 38:37
  That's not trying to shame anybody, but more just.
• 38:41
  In the, in the, in the form of a narration and of a, of an interesting
• 38:44
  story I don't think people read novels to be scolded or to be
• 38:51
  Victor Bahna (2): you know,
• 38:52
  Victor Bahna: given a sermon, but I think, I think they're, they're
• 38:54
  reading novels because they want to be entertained and they want
• 38:56
  to they want to read a good story.
• 38:58
  And so that that's what I ended up doing was, was, you know,
• 39:02
  capturing that scenario with this horse whose name is Heliacal Star.
• 39:08
  And sort of working through those progressions of him being a a
• 39:13
  fancy yearling that gets sold for quite a bit of money at a, at an
• 39:18
  auction has a, has a racing career.
• 39:22
  But at some point that career ends and, you know, he finds himself in a.
• 39:27
  In a in a van going, going in the wrong way.
• 39:30
  And I don't want to give too much away of the story itself, but, but that,
• 39:33
  that really became the arc of the story.
• 39:35
  And then the, at first I was thinking I would write it from the horse's
• 39:40
  point of view, but after after a couple of starts on that, realize that that
• 39:45
  probably wasn't going to make much sense.
• 39:47
  So developed a few characters and.
• 39:51
  Was able to weave several subplots that I find are actually pretty
• 39:58
  interesting from a, from a reader's point of view that cover different
• 40:01
  areas of, of the racing business.
• 40:02
  And when I was doing some, some research on writing itself, you know, the, the,
• 40:08
  for one of the first lessons that that I picked up on was, You should write
• 40:13
  what you know don't, don't, you know, start out with, you know, a topic that
• 40:17
  you're familiar with and write what you know, and, and, and write the way
• 40:22
  you want to tell the story, you know, don't necessarily let other people
• 40:29
  or or styles, you know, necessarily change or alter what you want to say.
• 40:34
  And so that's what I, that's what I ended up doing.
• 40:36
  I probably took the really long road to doing this.
• 40:39
  Having not having any experience in publishing or writing a novel and
• 40:45
  I say the long road because I would write the first version of this and
• 40:50
  I would get to the, I finally got to the very ending of the story and I
• 40:55
  thought to myself, okay, this is great.
• 40:56
  You know, this looks good.
• 40:57
  This is the, you know, it's going to be the right length
• 41:00
  and I'd start rereading it.
• 41:01
  And I was thinking to myself, this is awful.
• 41:04
  This is terrible.
• 41:04
  And so I ended up going through multiple.
• 41:09
  Multiple iterations and started adding more depth with each iteration made,
• 41:15
  made things, you know, a lot more interesting from a reader perspective,
• 41:18
  you know, cut out things that just weren't moving the story forward added
• 41:22
  things that could move the story forward and after six years of doing this.
• 41:28
  They ended up finally getting to the point where I thought it had a readable version
• 41:31
  of the book and it actually all tied together and and that's when I started
• 41:35
  to, you know, solicit some feedback from from a couple of folks close folks that I
• 41:39
  know that I, I know are readers and, and then after they gave me their feedback and
• 41:44
  I made another rewrite of the book then I, then I started to shop for editors.
• 41:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Tell us quickly the plot and Then I want you to talk about the
• 41:56
  editing process because I think a lot of people when they want to write a book
• 42:02
  they don't realize that the success of the book is really predicated upon the
• 42:07
  editor or editors and that this has to be a sort of creative and happy marriage
• 42:13
  Between author and editors, but without a good editor, there is no book and
• 42:18
  without the good editor, there is no film.
• 42:20
  It's, it's, it's, call it killing babies but it's, it's a difficult process.
• 42:26
  So what's the plot of the book and how did the editors, how did you find the editors?
• 42:32
  How did the editors help you craft the book to its readable form?
• 42:36
  What it costs you to find, to, to employ those editors?
• 42:40
  And then how did you move it through to publishing?
• 42:42
  Mm-Hmm,
• 42:45
  . Victor Bahna: So about the book itself, it's the namesake iCal star.
• 42:49
  He is a, a race horse.
• 42:50
  Why
• 42:50
  Rupert Isaacson: iCal, by the way?
• 42:52
  Victor Bahna: I actually had a horse that was called iCal Rising.
• 42:56
  Okay.
• 42:56
  That I raced in in Maryland.
• 42:58
  And I, I thought the name was unique enough where it was gonna catch your eye.
• 43:03
  It's, it's not boring in terms of, and it, and it's something that most people
• 43:08
  don't necessarily know and therefore.
• 43:12
  I thought it would be a just something that would, would catch someone's eye.
• 43:16
  Rupert Isaacson: It means relating to or near to the sun, right?
• 43:18
  Heliacal.
• 43:20
  Yeah, it has to be the, yeah,
• 43:22
  Victor Bahna: the star Sirius and it, it being the first time it rises
• 43:27
  before the solstice, I believe.
• 43:30
  And I, and I knew that because of Palaeocal Rising, which
• 43:33
  was, which was effectively, you know, named after that event.
• 43:37
  And it actually goes back to to ancient Egypt.
• 43:40
  And so, yeah, I just, I just kind of liked the name and thought it was catchy
• 43:42
  and and just slightly altered it for the book because I didn't Want to use a name
• 43:47
  that had already been used in racing.
• 43:48
  So I also checked to see if anyone actually named a horse, a
• 43:51
  lyrical star with the jockey club.
• 43:53
  And there were none, none out there.
• 43:55
  So I was like, okay, I can, I can go with this book.
• 43:57
  No one's gonna.
• 43:59
  Chase me down for copyright infringes or anything like that.
• 44:02
  So yeah, he's a racehorse.
• 44:03
  And our main character Who is a former bookie?
• 44:11
  with organized crime He ends up taking a liking to this horse after
• 44:17
  he places a hunch bet on with him in a race at at Belmont Park one day.
• 44:23
  And so he gains this affinity for, for this racehorse because of the
• 44:29
  results of, of that particular race in which in which he made a wager.
• 44:34
  And so he's also someone that's been at the racetrack, you know, throughout his,
• 44:38
  his childhood and was brought there by his by his dad who has since been Deceased
• 44:44
  and he's feeling nostalgic one day.
• 44:46
  He goes to the racetrack and and kind of relives.
• 44:51
  I think it's on his dad's birthday.
• 44:52
  He relives sort of the experience that he had when he was younger.
• 44:56
  When he would go to the racetrack with his, with his dad, he gets on
• 45:00
  a, a tram ride that takes you through the backstretch of Belmont Park.
• 45:05
  And then when he's on the tram ride, he hears a call out to this horse,
• 45:10
  Heliacal Star, who happens to be in a, in a barn that they're passing.
• 45:16
  And on a whim, he decides that he's going to go take a look at this
• 45:20
  horse and say hello to him up close.
• 45:23
  And it's just one of those sort of unexplainable, hey, I just
• 45:26
  want to do this kind of thing.
• 45:28
  And as he approaches the shed row where the horse is, he stops just
• 45:33
  short of the shed row because he hears a conversation that's taking place.
• 45:38
  And it's a conversation that involves this particular racehorse.
• 45:44
  And he recognizes one of the voices.
• 45:47
  It actually paralyzes him because he recognizes his voice as one of his
• 45:52
  cohorts from his organized crime days.
• 45:55
  His, his relationship with the organized crime family ended very badly for him.
• 46:00
  And this is the last group of people he ever wants to deal with
• 46:04
  or, or interact with ever again.
• 46:07
  But the conversation is so disturbing to him that He now faces a bit of a moral
• 46:12
  dilemma in that does he actually say something and report what he's hearing
• 46:18
  to the authorities, which will likely be something that they find out about,
• 46:24
  and he would have to, he would have to confront his past which is something
• 46:30
  that he feels he's, he's moved past, you know, long ago, or does he just pretend
• 46:38
  that he never heard anything kind of go on with his, with his life as it is?
• 46:43
  And of course.
• 46:45
  He decides, you know, to do the right thing, you know, from a moral perspective,
• 46:48
  and the story, you know, picks up from there in terms of the the danger that
• 46:53
  he ends up winding himself or putting himself in as a result of of facing
• 46:57
  these, these mobsters once again.
• 47:01
  He does meet a trainer in, in the process.
• 47:05
  Somewhat happens chance running into this trainer and she and he develop a
• 47:10
  relationship as well, and she teaches him quite a bit about what happens
• 47:15
  on the backside of the racetrack.
• 47:16
  Cause he, he had always been in on the handicapping gambler, spectator side of
• 47:22
  things, and she kind of brings in a little bit inside the, the, the world of racing
• 47:27
  from a, from an insider perspective.
• 47:29
  So they, they end up.
• 47:31
  Bonding over you know, they, they both love horses, but they come at it
• 47:35
  from a slightly different perspective.
• 47:36
  And they form a relationship in the process as well.
• 47:41
  And then you get to see what happens to this racehorse.
• 47:43
  It's, you know, political star himself as he kind of goes through
• 47:46
  this progressions, as I mentioned.
• 47:48
  In his career,
• 47:51
  Rupert Isaacson: we don't want to give away the, plot too much, but it's a
• 47:54
  thriller, but the obvious question here is how much is organized crime involved.
• 48:00
  Interesting.
• 48:04
  Victor Bahna: Honestly, I don't know the answer to that question.
• 48:06
  I don't think it's as much as it used to be, but I wouldn't
• 48:08
  say it's, it's 0 percent either.
• 48:10
  It's, it's it's, it's hard to tell.
• 48:12
  I think, I think with the.
• 48:15
  With the internet these days there's more access to gambling.
• 48:18
  It's, it's interesting in the U S when I was, when I was younger
• 48:22
  gambling was quite the taboo.
• 48:25
  As the government started to figure out that they could earn a lot of money
• 48:30
  through things like lotteries and stuff like that, it became a little bit more.
• 48:35
  Acceptable.
• 48:37
  And nowadays, it's everywhere, it's, it's, it's, it's amazing in just, you know, in
• 48:44
  a matter of a couple of decades, it went from being this, this horrible addiction,
• 48:50
  and it's, and it could be a terrible addiction, a lot of people do suffer
• 48:53
  from, from, from gambling addiction, to a very accepted vice, let's call it,
• 49:01
  you know, with gambling on everything, you know, any sporting event in the U.
• 49:06
  S.
• 49:06
  is going to have it.
• 49:08
  gambling and easy access to it as well, you know, through the internet
• 49:12
  or, you know, casinos are everywhere.
• 49:14
  I, I think that fixing of games and fixing of, of races to say that it doesn't
• 49:22
  exist at all would probably be naive.
• 49:25
  But I, I, I honestly couldn't, couldn't give you an answer because I, I, well,
• 49:30
  Rupert Isaacson: it's an interesting thing because in the UK growing up So
• 49:33
  full disclosure, you know, thoroughbred industry was all around me growing up.
• 49:36
  And I'll go into that in a moment.
• 49:38
  But in the UK, of course, Betting is not a taboo.
• 49:41
  It's an accepted thing.
• 49:43
  There's betting shops, you know, on every high street, you
• 49:46
  know, several chains of them.
• 49:48
  And it's considered kind of almost like a fun family activity.
• 49:51
  You put a, you know, we call it having a flutter.
• 49:54
  And everyone puts something on the Grand National.
• 49:56
  Everyone puts something on the FA Cup final in football.
• 50:00
  Everyone will put something on.
• 50:01
  Is it going to be a white Christmas this year?
• 50:03
  You know, they'll, they'll, you know, Different shops will put on different
• 50:06
  odds and it's all very above the board and controlled by the government and taxed.
• 50:10
  And as you know, in in the racing industry, we have something called the
• 50:13
  tote, which is basically, you know, a government controlled betting thing
• 50:17
  where their rationale is a little bit like prostitution in Amsterdam.
• 50:21
  So look, it's going to go on.
• 50:23
  So we might as well control it.
• 50:24
  And, you know, Benefit from it and build roads out of it, which is, you
• 50:28
  know, relatively enlightened, but the there's also, as we know, there's,
• 50:33
  there's a lot of unofficial betting and that unofficial betting tends to have
• 50:37
  its connections to the organized crime.
• 50:41
  And it was interesting to me growing up because, I don't know
• 50:46
  if you're aware of this in the UK.
• 50:48
  You probably are because it exists on the east coast of the US as well.
• 50:52
  We have what are called hunt racers, which are all point to points,
• 50:56
  which are amateur racers, but they usually run on race tracks.
• 51:00
  And they look to the outside eyes, just like a regular racer,
• 51:03
  jump racers, steeplechasers.
• 51:06
  But they're run by hunts, packs of hounds as fundraising days, and they
• 51:11
  can raise a lot of money this way.
• 51:13
  And so there's a whole industry of sort of whole amateur industry, but it's
• 51:17
  basically professionalized a lot of money changes hands, but not as much
• 51:22
  as, you know, the, the top industry.
• 51:24
  And of course a lot of, there's a lot of home breeding for these point
• 51:28
  to point race horses, which are thoroughbreds, but also horses that
• 51:32
  have sort of trickled down through.
• 51:34
  Maybe not done Fantastically on the professional track might do very
• 51:40
  well on the point to point track.
• 51:42
  So Some horses from the racetrack find themselves a actually sort of second
• 51:47
  career point to pointing others are bred for it Definitely there was a kind of a
• 51:53
  rural mafia around this growing up and there were people you just didn't cross,
• 51:58
  you know, that there were people that were around and it was like in the village
• 52:02
  pubs and it's not, you know, people think about organized crime as you know, this.
• 52:08
  Urban thing and it's chaps in cheap Italian suits wasting each other, you
• 52:13
  know and it wasn't like that at all, but it was violent and You were aware that
• 52:19
  there was this edge and places you did not go but of course people would lay
• 52:25
  money with these people because as you said people who were either gambling
• 52:28
  addicts or Looking to make a faster buck or maybe these bookies would give
• 52:33
  them longer odds, you know um Chance for making more money Interestingly, I know
• 52:40
  one who went on actually to become quite a philanthropist later on in his life.
• 52:45
  But it, it, and a lot of these, these unofficial bookies were kind of math
• 52:49
  geniuses, oddly enough, who, but they could get financed, they could get
• 52:54
  backing from sort of local mafia people.
• 52:57
  It was it was what it was so but I think that that Side of things the racing is
• 53:03
  quite familiar with people because any anywhere there's gambling anywhere with
• 53:06
  money You're going to see this what of course is tragic is that you know, the
• 53:09
  horses are innocents in this and they have no Yeah, so if someone's going to
• 53:14
  break the leg of a horse for insurance reasons or something like that, that's
• 53:17
  yeah Yeah, and I think as you say that used to go on more than it perhaps
• 53:21
  does now But it was a thing growing up
• 53:26
  Victor Bahna: I agree.
• 53:26
  Yeah, I do think there was, there was, it was much more prevalent and maybe a
• 53:31
  little bit more obvious or less subtle back you know, back in the seventies or
• 53:35
  the eighties, I think that I think you're right whenever you've got money involved,
• 53:40
  whenever you have gambling involved, whenever you've got high stakes involved
• 53:44
  there's the propensity for cheating and and you know, you could call it fixing.
• 53:50
  You can call it.
• 53:52
  The way in which you cheat then is, is.
• 53:57
  Okay, you can, and there are various ways, I think, in which you can,
• 54:01
  you can alter maybe the outcome of a race you might not be able to make it
• 54:05
  exact, but you can, you can pay off the participants, like you can pay off the
• 54:10
  referees in a, in a in a sporting event, not to make certain calls or to make
• 54:14
  certain calls, you can, you can pay off.
• 54:17
  You know, a rider to to race harder, not to race hard.
• 54:20
  Usually it's easier to get them not to race harder than it is to
• 54:23
  race hard because, you know, it's easier to lose than it is to win.
• 54:27
  And so if you can find a race with, let's say, 8 horses and you've got.
• 54:34
  You know, seven of the riders all running to lose that you're going to figure out
• 54:38
  who's gonna who's going to win that race.
• 54:40
  So that, that could be one way of doing it.
• 54:42
  You know, another way would be to get into medications and again, back in the,
• 54:49
  Victor Bahna (2): you know,
• 54:49
  Victor Bahna: 70s or 80s, maybe the scrutiny and the number of
• 54:54
  drug tests that were being done are, are, you know, miniscule
• 54:57
  compared to what we're doing today.
• 54:58
  I mean, they're a lot more thorough in terms of the urine test and making
• 55:02
  sure, you know, we're checking all of their, their blood samples and so
• 55:05
  forth after a raise, but there are still, there are still loopholes.
• 55:09
  And if somebody wants to, you know, really bend the rules, you know, they
• 55:14
  could probably do something that goes You know, that goes under the under
• 55:20
  the radar, so to speak, again, I don't think it's done nearly as much as it
• 55:24
  would have been in the past because you have a lot more activism today.
• 55:30
  You have a lot more awareness of some of these things.
• 55:32
  There's a lot more testing.
• 55:33
  There's more regulations, but I, again, I would say it's naive to think that, you
• 55:36
  know, there aren't some out there that are trying to bend or break the rules to
• 55:41
  you know, make things work in their favor.
• 55:44
  My, my experience with People on the backstretch has been I would
• 55:48
  just call overwhelmingly positive.
• 55:50
  And I think, I think there's some self policing that's being done.
• 55:54
  I also think there's a little bit of the, we don't want to rat on our friends.
• 55:58
  Kind of mentality as well that happens.
• 56:02
  But I think the overwhelming number of people are honest on the backstretch.
• 56:07
  I think they do deeply care about the racehorses.
• 56:10
  It is the minority and the few bad actors that tend to give the
• 56:15
  industry at, at large, sort of a bad.
• 56:18
  Reputation at times.
• 56:20
  And I think it's important if we can keep a level playing field for, for all of
• 56:24
  the participants, you know, if you feel like you're up against a person that is
• 56:29
  suspicious or has been under, you know, under suspicion and their horse tends
• 56:35
  to run a lot better than you think it should, you know, you're going to start
• 56:39
  asking yourself the question, you know, is the, is the playing field really
• 56:42
  level or, you know, do I have to might be bending or cheating on the rules.
• 56:50
  So it's, it's a, it's a hard, it's a hard one though, because you just,
• 56:53
  You just don't know and you just hope that people are, for the most part,
• 56:57
  going to, going to do the right thing.
• 56:59
  I know the people that I associate with.
• 57:01
  I see every vet bill.
• 57:02
  I get, I go down to the backstretch.
• 57:04
  I watch them train.
• 57:06
  I speak regularly with with, with the people that I entrust with my horses.
• 57:11
  And and I'm, I'm very confident that they are They're doing the right thing.
• 57:14
  If there's an issue with the horse, they'll immediately call me and, and
• 57:19
  we'll back off, we're not gonna, we're not gonna push, we're not gonna, we're
• 57:24
  not going to do things that are unnatural.
• 57:26
  And you know, if, if a horse can't compete, we're going to try to find
• 57:31
  a level where they can compete as opposed to, Hey, let's jack up the
• 57:34
  source on, you know, some medication that will make him, You know, a
• 57:37
  better resource than he should be.
• 57:38
  So, but again, a lot of it depends on who you're working with.
• 57:42
  A lot of it depends upon, you know, what, what kind of exposure you're having.
• 57:46
  And you got to keep your eyes open, in my opinion, and associate
• 57:49
  yourself with the good people.
• 57:51
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 57:51
  I mean, so that's one side of it for sure.
• 57:54
  The other, of course, difficult side, and this is a side, again, that's well
• 57:58
  known to me is, as you say, what happens to the horses after their careers, but.
• 58:02
  So, it's a use them up, spit them out thing, meaning that, you know, millions
• 58:08
  and millions of racehorses get bred every year over the, across the world.
• 58:13
  And, obviously, there's always more losers than winners.
• 58:16
  So, horses that, you know, are sold for a lot of money as yearlings or
• 58:22
  two year olds, as you say, often, you know, by the age of five, are done.
• 58:27
  And, They've got 25 years of life ahead of them, and they might come
• 58:33
  out of that two years or five years that they're running with injuries
• 58:39
  almost, almost inevitably they will.
• 58:42
  Partly because they're too young to actually bear weight when
• 58:45
  they're, and, and to bear impact.
• 58:48
  Hard impact anyway.
• 58:50
  You know, in the riding horse world, not the racehorse world, you never
• 58:56
  start a horse before three or four.
• 58:58
  And you work them very, very gently, and you build the muscles, and
• 59:01
  you build the top line muscles.
• 59:03
  I mean, ideally you should, there are people who don't,
• 59:04
  but let's say that's the ideal.
• 59:06
  And in the racing industry, you know, they're racing at 18 months to two
• 59:10
  years old and, you know, sustaining lifetime, you know, impact injuries,
• 59:17
  which are then going to affect them.
• 59:18
  Now, all of that said, the thoroughbred is very tough, very resilient animal
• 59:22
  coming out of, you know, the desert steps coming out of Central Asia.
• 59:26
  So, and they love to run but there's no question they do it too early.
• 59:31
  And there's no question that the bones and the cartilage are impacted in ways that
• 59:37
  sometimes render the horses unrideable.
• 59:40
  And then, of course, the other problem is that if you take an
• 59:44
  adrenaline fueled animal that
• 59:48
  works off its amygdala, its fight flight freeze response, and you jack that up to
• 59:52
  the point where it's just always going to run, so its first response is to run,
• 59:56
  then that makes it a very difficult animal to put with the average rider because
• 1:00:01
  it's too fiery, it's too dangerous.
• 1:00:03
  Now, all of that said, Where I grew up in Leicestershire in the UK, all we did was
• 1:00:10
  take thoroughbreds off the track and rehab them into various types of sport horse.
• 1:00:15
  So we would turn them into fox hunting horses, we would turn them into
• 1:00:18
  showjumpers, we would turn them into eventers, and we would we would go
• 1:00:23
  up to it's what we did if what people did when they didn't have much money
• 1:00:27
  is you'd go to Doncaster sales or one of the big organized auctions that
• 1:00:33
  happen at the end of the steeplechase, particularly the jump racing.
• 1:00:36
  Yeah.
• 1:00:37
  And you see what you could pick up cheap that looked like it might be sound and you
• 1:00:43
  take a punt on it and you'd retrain them.
• 1:00:45
  And for the most part, I'd say all of those horses went on to.
• 1:00:49
  Good homes and good ends and the horses that I had and I kept were the ones we
• 1:00:54
  couldn't sell because they were too nuts.
• 1:00:57
  But I still made them work and hunted them and team chased them and invented
• 1:01:02
  them and stuff and retired them and they died, you know, in their thirties.
• 1:01:06
  But it's not always that good of an outcome.
• 1:01:08
  However I now work very much in the therapeutic riding field.
• 1:01:13
  And many people say that thoroughbreds are wrong for this.
• 1:01:17
  And we've just, we've disproved that.
• 1:01:20
  So we work primarily with autism.
• 1:01:22
  We work primarily with mental health.
• 1:01:25
  And.
• 1:01:27
  One of our best programs is a a non profit called Square Peg Foundation in
• 1:01:34
  Half Moon Bay, California, outside of San Francisco, which basically, more
• 1:01:39
  or less exclusively takes thoroughbreds off the track from the Thoroughbred
• 1:01:43
  Aftercare Alliance, and has turned them into absolutely fantastic therapy horses
• 1:01:50
  now has two campuses in California.
• 1:01:52
  And we have a couple of programs in Ireland, too.
• 1:01:55
  One in Kilkloon in just outside Dublin, near the Coolmore
• 1:02:00
  Stud, which is a famous stud.
• 1:02:02
  And another down in a place called the Skinnet in County Limerick.
• 1:02:06
  And again, we've managed to rehab, retrain many horses off the track for this job.
• 1:02:15
  And they, their sensitivity is
• 1:02:20
  very well matched.
• 1:02:21
  We find actually with the acute sensitivity, the sensory sensitivity
• 1:02:26
  of people on the spectrum.
• 1:02:27
  And now we've moved into working.
• 1:02:30
  Very much with adults with trauma with the U.
• 1:02:33
  S.
• 1:02:34
  Air Force, with the Bundeswehr, which is the German Army I live in Germany now,
• 1:02:38
  and the Dutch Defense Force, and so on.
• 1:02:40
  Again, we find thoroughbreds are very, very good at this work, but
• 1:02:44
  what is lacking at this point?
• 1:02:47
  It seems, is any really
• 1:02:52
  coherently, let's say, credible effort from the racing industry as
• 1:02:59
  a whole to really back the work that all the pioneers are doing privately
• 1:03:07
  to mop up the dregs of the industry?
• 1:03:10
  Dirty work and the mess and the waste of the industry itself.
• 1:03:14
  We also have a great place in Japan, by the way.
• 1:03:16
  Just outside Tokyo, which again uses mostly horses
• 1:03:20
  called it's called Equitopia.
• 1:03:23
  It's worth looking up and the, the husband of the vet who runs it is actually
• 1:03:27
  a very prominent trainer in Japan.
• 1:03:30
  So that's Square peg foundation in California Stewart's care
• 1:03:35
  and in outside Dublin and St.
• 1:03:40
  Joseph's Foundation in Charleville County Court, but their farm is actually over
• 1:03:45
  the border in Limerick, and Equitopia in Japan, all using thoroughbreds.
• 1:03:51
  I know there's more out there, these are just the ones that
• 1:03:53
  we happen to be involved with.
• 1:03:55
  But what we see is that, although I think organizations Aftercare
• 1:04:00
  Alliance get behind them and give grants to these organizations, the
• 1:04:05
  thoroughbred industry, with all its money And it has a lot of money.
• 1:04:09
  Does not.
• 1:04:10
  So I'm calling bullshit on the desire from the industry to really do the right thing.
• 1:04:18
  Because I think we'd see a slightly different picture if that were true.
• 1:04:24
  I think they do rely upon good hearted individuals and non profits
• 1:04:30
  to come in and pick up the pieces.
• 1:04:34
  But really, the Jockey Club has so much money.
• 1:04:38
  It could be seen to look after the animals that it purports
• 1:04:46
  to be so passionate about.
• 1:04:49
  Much, much more from sort of birth to death.
• 1:04:53
  Yet it does not.
• 1:04:57
  Why doesn't it?
• 1:04:59
  How might it?
• 1:05:00
  And how can we be a force for change with that?
• 1:05:03
  Victor Bahna: Yeah.
• 1:05:04
  See, you, you covered a lot of ground and it's important stuff.
• 1:05:09
  So I'll give you my, my perspective on, on this because I think to
• 1:05:14
  a large extent, my, my thought process is not very different than,
• 1:05:19
  than what you just referenced.
• 1:05:21
  It's.
• 1:05:22
  As I mentioned earlier, it was, it was
• 1:05:24
  Rupert Isaacson: just, don't get me wrong.
• 1:05:24
  I'm not anti racing and I know that the horses, I'm not, yeah,
• 1:05:30
  Victor Bahna: I'm very much in,
• 1:05:31
  Rupert Isaacson: we just need to look after the animals,
• 1:05:33
  Victor Bahna: but, but, but one of my inspirations for writing this book was
• 1:05:37
  to bring more attention to the, the very topic that you just referenced.
• 1:05:41
  And I will say that the racing industry, in my opinion, this is my opinion.
• 1:05:49
  Has a hard time getting out of its own way.
• 1:05:51
  Sometimes.
• 1:05:51
  I mean, there's a, there's a new law that was passed or regulatory
• 1:05:59
  body that was formed in the U.
• 1:06:02
  S., you know, called the Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Act.
• 1:06:07
  And the entire reason for having the government get involved in
• 1:06:10
  regulating the horse business or the racing business very specifically
• 1:06:14
  is because the racing business couldn't figure this out on their own.
• 1:06:19
  It's like, guys, wake up and look, look, what's going on around you.
• 1:06:25
  And quite frankly, the racing business is.
• 1:06:30
  It's competing with other sports in the U.
• 1:06:32
  S.
• 1:06:33
  and it's losing that fight because, you know, people are watching
• 1:06:36
  and gambling on football, U.
• 1:06:38
  S.
• 1:06:38
  football.
• 1:06:40
  They're, they're going to the casinos that are everywhere now.
• 1:06:44
  It's hard.
• 1:06:46
  for a handicapper to predict who's going to win a horse race.
• 1:06:51
  It's, it's hard to understand all of the different exotic
• 1:06:55
  wagers that you have to make.
• 1:06:56
  Exact the boxes and triples and super effectors and daily doubles
• 1:07:02
  and pick threes and so forth.
• 1:07:03
  It's, you gotta kind of know that stuff.
• 1:07:06
  You're not just going to walk in and You know, be able to just pick
• 1:07:12
  them out of a hat necessarily.
• 1:07:14
  But if you're a football fan or a baseball fan or a hockey fan, and you're
• 1:07:19
  following different teams, making a bet on a, on a, on a game is very easy to do.
• 1:07:24
  You don't have to put a lot of thinking or thought into it.
• 1:07:27
  You just do it more intuitively.
• 1:07:29
  So that competition is there.
• 1:07:31
  And I'm bringing this up because it's just.
• 1:07:35
  The horse business itself, the racing business itself has got to
• 1:07:40
  figure out how they're going to stay competitive in the marketplace.
• 1:07:46
  And one of the areas that they can do a lot of good for themselves.
• 1:07:50
  Would be to be much more active in promoting the aftercare of these
• 1:07:56
  horses and being much more active in Showing that hey, we're not just
• 1:08:00
  about the race itself We're about the whole life cycle of the racehorse.
• 1:08:07
  And yes, you've got a hot blood.
• 1:08:08
  You've you've got a a very high strung animal who is going to be very flighty
• 1:08:17
  but the stories that you're referencing and this the work that you're doing You
• 1:08:21
  And being able to get that much more publicized and saying, Hey, you know what,
• 1:08:25
  you might see a, a, a very athletic high strung, fast athlete on the racetrack,
• 1:08:34
  but that same athlete is going to be very kind and very gentle once they're
• 1:08:38
  retrained and they're going to have such a value to the community after, you know,
• 1:08:44
  after they're done with their careers.
• 1:08:48
  And we have to get that word out a lot more.
• 1:08:50
  And, and yes, you know, grassroots and private organizations
• 1:08:55
  are certainly helping.
• 1:08:57
  And social media is certainly helping.
• 1:08:59
  And we are seeing a trickle, I'll call it, from, from the racing business.
• 1:09:03
  Like we're donating certain, a few dollars, you know, per start
• 1:09:07
  to aftercare foundations that are sponsored by the various racetracks.
• 1:09:11
  And they're doing a little bit more marketing and promotion about some of the
• 1:09:16
  some of the aftercare that they're doing it's a start, but we've got to do a lot
• 1:09:21
  more in the space and the and just think of the exposure that the business would
• 1:09:26
  get if they could demonstrate that, yeah, once the horses are over, they're being
• 1:09:34
  taken care of because we're making sure that you know, that the owners that we're
• 1:09:39
  holding the owners responsible for what happens to those horses and, and, and
• 1:09:42
  to an extent they are if, you know, If a horse, you know, if there's a tattoo,
• 1:09:48
  which has now been replaced with digital chips, you know, if that horse ends
• 1:09:52
  up in an agricultural auction and goes into a, a kill pen with, you know, being
• 1:09:59
  purchased by a kill buyer, and that gets discovered, the owner of record, the last
• 1:10:06
  owner of record with that horse and the last trainer of record of that horse has
• 1:10:10
  to have to pay a pretty hefty fine and they get called out by the jockey club.
• 1:10:15
  I think it's the jockey club.
• 1:10:17
  , so there is some accountability, but I think that the racing business can do
• 1:10:21
  a lot more in terms of just promoting the opportunities and creating more
• 1:10:26
  awareness and, and being more active and supporting that because you're right.
• 1:10:30
  There's a ton of money.
• 1:10:32
  If you ever go to a Keeneland auction.
• 1:10:35
  I have worked at the Keeneland auctions.
• 1:10:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:10:38
  In one of my first jobs under the table illegally in the USA training
• 1:10:43
  horses, I've shown thoroughbreds in the auctioneers ring at Keeneland.
• 1:10:49
  And it's interesting.
• 1:10:49
  I mean, it's a hard business run by hard people.
• 1:10:54
  There's not much humanity in the treatment of the people,
• 1:10:57
  in the treatment of the horses.
• 1:10:58
  It, I mean, The horses are well looked after to the degree that they're
• 1:11:02
  well fed and cleaned and cared for.
• 1:11:04
  But
• 1:11:04
  Victor Bahna: I bet the horses are probably better cared for than the people.
• 1:11:07
  Well,
• 1:11:07
  Rupert Isaacson: indeed, indeed.
• 1:11:08
  And for all we English and Irish boys that were there under the
• 1:11:11
  table taking the hard knocks.
• 1:11:14
  You know, for any one of us, there were 10 Mexicans who were,
• 1:11:18
  you know, taking it harder.
• 1:11:21
  So It was exploitative at the same time it provided us with many opportunities
• 1:11:27
  and for me as a, as a, you sort of accepted that exploitation to some
• 1:11:32
  degree and said, Okay, well, look, you know, I'm, I'm living on my wits
• 1:11:36
  here in the USA without a work permit.
• 1:11:37
  I could go home, you know, but here's an opportunity.
• 1:11:40
  So I will take it.
• 1:11:41
  I've got some horse knowledge, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.
• 1:11:43
  And then you get, you know, pretty heftily shoved around in a rather inhuman way.
• 1:11:49
  But at the same time, you kind of, you accepted the adventure.
• 1:11:52
  You were a young man, you know, you could.
• 1:11:54
  Sort of handle it, but you weren't going to stay there forever.
• 1:11:57
  But nonetheless, I think it was sort of indicative of the industry as a whole.
• 1:12:02
  That there was a,
• 1:12:07
  almost a sort of desire power play in that way, not confined to that industry.
• 1:12:14
  Of course, you find it in many things, but nonetheless, very, very prevalent there.
• 1:12:18
  So I think that, again, that's why I questioned the sincerity.
• 1:12:23
  of the Jockey Club or the rest of it.
• 1:12:25
  Victor Bahna: I think it almost doesn't matter anymore.
• 1:12:28
  I think it's going to become existential for this business to recognize the
• 1:12:34
  necessity for them to be more active in the aftercare of Thoroughbreds.
• 1:12:41
  And I think they're starting to get it.
• 1:12:42
  But I, I think there are two major inhibitors that are hard to ignore.
• 1:12:50
  The first one is the one I mentioned before is that the racing business seems
• 1:12:54
  to not be able to get out of its own way.
• 1:12:56
  They can't, it seems like you can't make a decision without,
• 1:13:01
  they just can't make decisions.
• 1:13:03
  And you would think that, that this horse racing and safety act integrity
• 1:13:07
  and safety act would have woken them up to the fact that Hey, maybe we
• 1:13:11
  should get our act together and, you know, make the need for government
• 1:13:15
  regulation obsolete because we can demonstrate that we're doing it ourselves.
• 1:13:19
  But what are they doing instead?
• 1:13:20
  They're fighting the, they're fighting the the, the regulatory
• 1:13:25
  effort that's going on.
• 1:13:26
  Yeah.
• 1:13:26
  They're trying to say it's illegal and you can't do this.
• 1:13:28
  And so instead of, you know, understanding the whole reason behind it, you
• 1:13:33
  know, they're, they're arguing it.
• 1:13:35
  And, you know, I, I can, I can see a lot of flaws in how it's being run
• 1:13:40
  and managed, but that's not the point.
• 1:13:42
  Point is you can get your shit together and now you're, you're,
• 1:13:47
  you're where you are because you created this mess yourself.
• 1:13:49
  So I think that's the first problem is, and I don't know where that's going.
• 1:13:54
  I really don't.
• 1:13:55
  That was
• 1:13:55
  Rupert Isaacson: my question.
• 1:13:55
  Is racing going to survive?
• 1:13:57
  Victor Bahna: I don't know.
• 1:13:58
  I think, I think it will survive.
• 1:14:02
  But I think it's going to have to change, I think.
• 1:14:04
  Rupert Isaacson: Will it shrink?
• 1:14:04
  What will it look like?
• 1:14:06
  It will shrink,
• 1:14:06
  Victor Bahna: yeah.
• 1:14:06
  I think it will shrink.
• 1:14:07
  I think, I think you're seeing, I think California right now is is struggling.
• 1:14:15
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:14:16
  Victor Bahna: And it's one of the bigger racing venues in the US.
• 1:14:20
  Part of it is geographic because you're so far away from where
• 1:14:23
  all the other racetracks are.
• 1:14:25
  And as you know, you know, shipping a horse from east coast to west
• 1:14:29
  coast or vice versa is not,
• 1:14:31
  Is, is a an expensive venture.
• 1:14:33
  So, you're kind of on an island to some extent when you're, when you're out west.
• 1:14:38
  But part of it is just that the competition in the handle is, is reducing.
• 1:14:44
  And a lot of the players that were big horse fans, racing fans, People that
• 1:14:50
  would go to the racetracks, quite frankly, are getting old and they're dying off
• 1:14:53
  and the next generation is not coming up with the same enthusiasm for racing
• 1:14:58
  that the previous generations have had.
• 1:15:00
  So yeah, I do think there's some, I do think there's some awakening
• 1:15:05
  that's going to happen and I think that the industry will eventually
• 1:15:08
  figure it out, but it's going to probably take some time before they do.
• 1:15:11
  Rupert Isaacson: Do you think it's going to go back to being what it was
• 1:15:13
  originally, which is a sport of gentlemen?
• 1:15:15
  And and gentle people.
• 1:15:17
  What I mean by that is for those listeners that don't know the history
• 1:15:21
  of the thoroughbred horse they go back to a handful of stallions that
• 1:15:26
  were brought into England in the late 17th century by a handful of people
• 1:15:32
  who acquired horses from the Central Asian step through the Ottoman Empire.
• 1:15:42
  And to some degree from the Arabian world, also through the Ottoman
• 1:15:45
  Empire because of the wars that were going on between the Ottoman Empire
• 1:15:50
  and Central Europe at that time.
• 1:15:52
  A good example would be the Bayali Turk, which was, you know,
• 1:15:55
  a famous foundation stallion.
• 1:15:57
  Who was acquired by a man called Biley, who was an Anglo Irish cavalry officer
• 1:16:03
  who found himself at the siege of Vienna in 1680, where the Ottoman Empire
• 1:16:09
  pushed into central Europe and was busy about to kind of swallow it all up.
• 1:16:15
  The rest of Europe kind of went, Oh, shit, you know, we better temporarily
• 1:16:18
  stop fighting each other and come together to push this common enemy out so we
• 1:16:22
  can get back to fighting each other.
• 1:16:24
  And at the siege of Vienna, this man, Bilye, who was part of an Anglo
• 1:16:27
  Irish sort of adjunct semi mercenary regiment, cavalry regiment acquired
• 1:16:32
  this horse from, from the Turks.
• 1:16:33
  And legend doesn't really say whether it was bought, stolen, Spoil of
• 1:16:40
  battle what but what was very clear was when barley got hold of it.
• 1:16:43
  It was as fast as it was Maneuverable because of course a close order cavalry
• 1:16:50
  horse was not actually designed for speed.
• 1:16:53
  It was designed for agility and So this horse seemed to have both so he
• 1:17:00
  brings this horse home to a Ireland, actually, County Meath and instead
• 1:17:05
  of putting it at stud initially, he finds himself at the Battle of the
• 1:17:07
  Boyne, which is what decides whether Britain will be Protestant or Catholic.
• 1:17:12
  A big battle is fought there and he's, luckily for him, on the
• 1:17:15
  winning side, on the Protestant side.
• 1:17:17
  And at the end he does put the horse out to stud and it is one of the foundation
• 1:17:21
  horses of the, of the thoroughbreds and of the race, of the thoroughbred itself.
• 1:17:26
  And the reason I tell that story is because Where Thoroughbreds
• 1:17:30
  began, it was just sort of coteries of private individuals who were
• 1:17:33
  interested in this kind of thing.
• 1:17:35
  And then who ran races on open areas of ground, like Newmarket, like
• 1:17:40
  Lambourne, like places in Ireland.
• 1:17:42
  And then, of course, as soon as the colonies in America began, in
• 1:17:46
  Virginia, in New York, anywhere, you know, that had good pasture.
• 1:17:50
  And exported that along with fox hunting and all the other British stuff.
• 1:17:54
  And It's still there to this day, but it wasn't an industry.
• 1:17:57
  It was collections of private individuals who were enthusiasts and working
• 1:18:03
  with, you know, a handful by today's standards of horses, you know, a few
• 1:18:08
  hundreds or a few thousand horses sort of sprinkled over a few countries.
• 1:18:12
  And now of course it's grown into this bear mob.
• 1:18:14
  And it is, is that the problem is that it's become a victim of itself.
• 1:18:17
  And if it shrinks, is that maybe a good thing that it goes back to its roots
• 1:18:21
  in a way and that people like you.
• 1:18:23
  You know, unlikely techies with a passion for the thing, rather like Captain
• 1:18:30
  Biley back in the day, say, well, look, you know, we just love this horse and
• 1:18:33
  we sort of want to see what it can do.
• 1:18:35
  And, and then might it be easier to do the aftercare because you just don't
• 1:18:39
  have so many horses to, to deal with.
• 1:18:41
  And actually, is that not a tragedy, but maybe kind of a
• 1:18:44
  good thing at the end of the day?
• 1:18:45
  Yeah.
• 1:18:46
  Victor Bahna: I think I do think it will shrink.
• 1:18:47
  I think we're seeing shrinkage already.
• 1:18:50
  And even if you look at the breeding numbers for the last, Dozen or two dozen
• 1:18:54
  years, you could see them coming down.
• 1:18:57
  You know, year over year, they're, they're kind of stabilizing at this point, but,
• 1:19:01
  but they're definitely about half, maybe what they were, you know, 20 years ago.
• 1:19:05
  Already half.
• 1:19:06
  Rupert Isaacson: I mean, that's, that's big from,
• 1:19:07
  Victor Bahna: from maybe not quite half, but, but sizable decrease in the number
• 1:19:11
  of thoroughbreds that are bred every year.
• 1:19:14
  And I think it's just a reflection of the industry shrinking.
• 1:19:16
  I don't, I think we're going to get back to, to the gentlemen's sort of sport that
• 1:19:22
  it might have, might've been in the past.
• 1:19:23
  And I think, but is
• 1:19:24
  Rupert Isaacson: that not what you yourself are doing?
• 1:19:25
  Are you not a gentleman getting together with other gentlemen?
• 1:19:30
  It depends upon
• 1:19:31
  Victor Bahna: who you talk to, I suppose.
• 1:19:33
  But I would say that we are seeing interesting trends though.
• 1:19:36
  The syndicate is one of those trends that started Cott Campbell, I believe started
• 1:19:41
  that back in the 1980s, 90s here in the U.
• 1:19:44
  S.
• 1:19:44
  Now that's evolved into these very broad partnerships like myresource.
• 1:19:49
  com, in which you can have hundreds of, Owners of a particular racehorse,
• 1:19:54
  they put in a few hundred dollars and they get the emails and the updates and
• 1:19:58
  they get, and I think that's one way to maybe attract some new interest and
• 1:20:03
  ownership into the into the business, but I don't think, I don't think in general.
• 1:20:11
  We're going to go back whether it's racing or whether it's any organized sport.
• 1:20:16
  I mean, you could, you could look at any organized sport and say, it seemed
• 1:20:20
  a lot more pure, perhaps back in less technical, perhaps, you know, back in the,
• 1:20:27
  Victor Bahna (2): you know,
• 1:20:27
  Victor Bahna: 50, 60 years ago, whether it's baseball or soccer,
• 1:20:31
  football, what have you now, it's everything is just so technical.
• 1:20:36
  I go to a hockey game here in Seattle and the entire game is
• 1:20:43
  choreographed and I don't mean it from the play on the on the ice.
• 1:20:46
  I mean, it from between the face offs.
• 1:20:49
  I mean, in terms of the Yeah.
• 1:20:51
  The script that, you know, you, you're constantly being bombarded
• 1:20:55
  with with entertainment and sensory you know, activities.
• 1:21:00
  And that never used to be the case.
• 1:21:01
  I mean, you used to go to a, I used to go to a hockey game and watch a hockey game.
• 1:21:04
  I didn't have to be entertained outside of the, the game itself.
• 1:21:07
  But, you know, today we feel like we're force fed with all of this,
• 1:21:12
  you know, entertainment, so to speak, if they want to call it that.
• 1:21:15
  And to me, it's a little overload.
• 1:21:16
  I think it's, you know, It's not necessary, but that's what they're doing.
• 1:21:19
  They try to bring in and it's very scripted too.
• 1:21:22
  I mean, it's like, it's almost like you can go to any arena in the U S and you're
• 1:21:26
  almost going to get the same experience.
• 1:21:28
  Just different colors on the, on the, on the, on the shirts.
• 1:21:31
  And, you know, maybe
• 1:21:32
  Victor Bahna (2): the
• 1:21:32
  Victor Bahna: game itself might be a little bit different.
• 1:21:35
  And I think racing is the same.
• 1:21:36
  I think it's become.
• 1:21:38
  You know, very programmatic in a way it's become very commoditized in that sense.
• 1:21:44
  And I don't think you can go back.
• 1:21:46
  I don't think you can go back to organic once you've been commoditized.
• 1:21:50
  I think that's just you know, to use a cliche you know, once, you
• 1:21:55
  know, you can't put the horse back in the barn on this one.
• 1:21:58
  And so I think that's probably where we are with with the racing industry.
• 1:22:01
  Now it can evolve, you know, And I think that's where it needs to is,
• 1:22:05
  and especially in the aftercare, I think that's the biggest area for me
• 1:22:08
  where we can do a lot more awareness.
• 1:22:11
  I mentioned the industry itself having difficulty getting out of its own way,
• 1:22:15
  and I think whether it's the jockey club or the various racing jurisdictions,
• 1:22:19
  you know, having somebody really step up and show some leadership there
• 1:22:23
  would be, would be a welcome change.
• 1:22:27
  The other factor, though, I think that.
• 1:22:29
  We're facing, and I'm sure you're facing this in Europe too is just the cost of
• 1:22:35
  maintenance of a horse is, you know, and you're thinking about a horse that
• 1:22:39
  retires at five or six that might live to the 30, you know, you've got 25
• 1:22:44
  years of care and feeding of that horse.
• 1:22:48
  It's expensive and the amount of land that's available is shrinking too.
• 1:22:52
  You know, there's more development, there's more urbanization,
• 1:22:56
  there's less there's less farmland and there's less expertise.
• 1:23:02
  Where I live, finding a farrier is hard.
• 1:23:08
  I have one and he's a good one.
• 1:23:10
  I'm fortunate to have that, but you know, there's not like, you know,
• 1:23:14
  a Rolodex of farriers that I can go through and say, well, you know,
• 1:23:16
  if this one's not available, I have to, I can just schedule another one.
• 1:23:20
  That's just an example of the sort of changing landscape that we're
• 1:23:24
  seeing, you know, my farrier.
• 1:23:26
  I, I, I, I'll, you know, just on that story alone, you know, I, I
• 1:23:30
  hold my farrier appointments, like.
• 1:23:32
  These are the most unmovable appointments that I've got on my calendar.
• 1:23:36
  Rupert Isaacson: I've got this amazing farrier who's approaching retirement.
• 1:23:39
  And it's like, I'm just in total denial about it because it's,
• 1:23:42
  I can't imagine life beyond it.
• 1:23:45
  Yeah.
• 1:23:45
  And
• 1:23:45
  Victor Bahna: I know that if I, if I missed that appointment
• 1:23:47
  for whatever reason, it's like getting back on his calendar is
• 1:23:50
  going to be like near impossible.
• 1:23:51
  So it's like, I tell everybody by
• 1:23:53
  Rupert Isaacson: your, by your girlfriend or your boyfriend, you have to do this.
• 1:23:55
  Exactly.
• 1:23:55
  It's like, no,
• 1:23:56
  Victor Bahna: the farrier takes.
• 1:23:58
  Complete priority over everything else.
• 1:24:00
  So, but that's just an example.
• 1:24:03
  But yeah, the cost is, the cost is high.
• 1:24:06
  And, and I don't think that when a lot of owners, when they get involved
• 1:24:10
  in racing, they, and I, and I was of this case too, you know, you think
• 1:24:14
  about the racing, you think about the excitement, you think about the, you
• 1:24:16
  know, you have this dream of going to the Kentucky Derby and being the guy that's.
• 1:24:22
  holding the trophy one of these days and, and, you know, gaining all that
• 1:24:26
  glory, but you don't necessarily think about, Hey, I'm going to retire this
• 1:24:29
  horse one day, and I'm going to make sure he's on a farm and I'm going to
• 1:24:32
  be paying board rate for, for this horse for, you know, 25 or 30 years.
• 1:24:38
  It's not something you just generally start thinking about when you're making
• 1:24:42
  that purchase decision, you know If you're in if you're in Keeneland, and you're
• 1:24:45
  you're bidding Eighty ninety a hundred thousand dollars on the horse, you know,
• 1:24:50
  you're not thinking hmm What am I gonna do with the source after they're done
• 1:24:53
  racing you're thinking about which is
• 1:24:54
  Rupert Isaacson: so interesting, isn't it?
• 1:24:55
  Because everybody knows how long horses live, you know And so the
• 1:24:59
  person who buys that horse really is only thinking it's saying well This
• 1:25:04
  is a hundred thousand that I'm willing to spend and lose but the loss You
• 1:25:12
  They're thinking it's just my financial loss.
• 1:25:15
  Victor Bahna: That's right, they're thinking it's a financial loss
• 1:25:16
  and it's a three or four year investment is what they're thinking.
• 1:25:18
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:20
  Not a thirty year investment.
• 1:25:21
  Rupert Isaacson: What happens to the horse the rest of the time.
• 1:25:23
  But I'm glad that you're, you know, drawing attention to this.
• 1:25:27
  And of course it's a, you know, it's a longer conversation.
• 1:25:30
  And it's not something one can solve in one podcast, but I think it's a
• 1:25:35
  Victor Bahna: hard conversation at that I mean, it's it's it's a hard reality
• 1:25:38
  that we have to confront in my opinion
• 1:25:41
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, and it'll be interesting to see where it goes.
• 1:25:43
  I think you know, we're all involved in in this aftercare business but it's
• 1:25:47
  interesting that it's Us as individuals and small organizations really
• 1:25:52
  which brings me to actually another industry which has acquired a bit of
• 1:25:56
  a dark side of life and that's tech.
• 1:25:58
  So, you know, when, when the tech boom happened you know, it was the great thing
• 1:26:04
  and it is, I mean, look here at you and I on zoom, we wouldn't be able to do this.
• 1:26:08
  You wouldn't have been able to publish your book, you know,
• 1:26:10
  without so, so easily at any rate.
• 1:26:13
  It, so, you know, social media makes.
• 1:26:16
  So much possible and it's been really the big thing that's come out of tech
• 1:26:21
  except for AI and we know that Australia has just passed a law a groundbreaking
• 1:26:30
  law banning I don't know how they're going to enforce it but banning the
• 1:26:35
  use of social media for under 16s.
• 1:26:38
  That's a pretty good litmus test of the damage that's being done.
• 1:26:45
  I've got two younger kids now and it's very interesting to see how
• 1:26:50
  the impacts of social media begin.
• 1:26:53
  And to already now be thinking about how do I mitigate this?
• 1:26:58
  How do I battle this unseen demon that is so much bigger than me yet with
• 1:27:03
  which you cannot do without anymore?
• 1:27:06
  And, Full disclosure, yeah, in certain cases, I will absolutely go ahead
• 1:27:11
  and use some chat GPT here and there.
• 1:27:13
  Like everybody else, it's like having a secretary that you don't
• 1:27:16
  have to pay for, it's incredible.
• 1:27:17
  And at the same time, we know that they're busy trying to replace the
• 1:27:21
  human, and what we think of as AI is not what's coming, you know, and we have
• 1:27:27
  no idea really of what's coming, but we know it's going to be as fraught with
• 1:27:33
  the goods and the bads as everything else that humans have come up with.
• 1:27:37
  You're in the middle of the tech industry and you've been in there since
• 1:27:41
  it's earlies and you're still there.
• 1:27:44
  You're sitting there in, in, in Washington State, in Seattle, you know,
• 1:27:49
  people think of Silicon Valley, but Microsoft obviously and many other big
• 1:27:53
  tech companies are up there in Seattle.
• 1:27:57
  There's a bit of a parallel really between the the racing industry and the original
• 1:28:03
  sort of origins of the thoroughbred and tech, because it began, you know, with
• 1:28:11
  groups of nerds, you know, and I remember contemporaries of mine who were at
• 1:28:15
  university who were, you know, 57 now, and they were the computer science, you know,
• 1:28:22
  Geeks who then went on to rule the world.
• 1:28:25
  They were the princes of tomorrow Many of them became that and then they offered us
• 1:28:31
  Stuff beyond our wildest imaginations and we all took it, you know gladly and still
• 1:28:35
  do Yet this small league of gentlemen developing this technology whether it's
• 1:28:41
  the thoroughbred horse, you know, it Baboof became an industry rather quicker.
• 1:28:46
  And now here we are.
• 1:28:49
  You're still right there in it and where's this going for us?
• 1:28:56
  And what's the aftercare for us?
• 1:29:00
  The horses upon which the, the, the AI and the social media are
• 1:29:08
  being ridden, you know, we are, we are the horses we're being ridden.
• 1:29:11
  What, what, what, what's the, what's the prognosis from someone
• 1:29:15
  who's in the middle of it?
• 1:29:16
  And maybe is that your next novel?
• 1:29:19
  Victor Bahna: I don't know if it's my next novel.
• 1:29:21
  It's a, it's a very interesting subject and it's one we're all living
• 1:29:25
  through as, as, as you referenced.
• 1:29:27
  It's interesting the Australia thing.
• 1:29:29
  I don't, I don't think you can regulate morality.
• 1:29:32
  I think that's I think that's just the
• 1:29:34
  Rupert Isaacson: fact that it's come to this, that a, that a
• 1:29:36
  government is doing this is indicative of People going, oh shit.
• 1:29:41
  On a, on a big , it's a,
• 1:29:43
  Victor Bahna: Yeah, it's with, with every advance that we make, you know,
• 1:29:47
  there's, there's always that sort of paradox of, of, of good and bad.
• 1:29:53
  And, you know, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.
• 1:29:56
  And, you know, I think we experience that, you know, quite a bit.
• 1:29:59
  And I think, I think it's just accelerated with with technology over the last.
• 1:30:04
  30 years.
• 1:30:05
  And the industry itself has, has transformed, I think, in,
• 1:30:10
  in the time that I, from when I started to, to where I am now and
• 1:30:14
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah, you were doing supply chain of floppy disks and
• 1:30:17
  Victor Bahna: yeah, we were, we were basically
• 1:30:19
  Rupert Isaacson: plastic packages.
• 1:30:20
  I
• 1:30:20
  Victor Bahna: remember being in a, in a in a warehouse and we were actually
• 1:30:24
  physically shrink wrapping the boxes ourselves and putting in the disks.
• 1:30:27
  And I think it was my, I think it was office 95 had.
• 1:30:32
  48 or 64 floppy disks to, to do an upgrade.
• 1:30:36
  Think about that today.
• 1:30:37
  It's like, what?
• 1:30:38
  And, and, you know, I, I might be, you know, from the last generation that,
• 1:30:42
  that grew up in, in a pre internet sort of world and, you know, I tell my kids
• 1:30:49
  and, you know, you know, I'm 59 myself and I tell my kids, I'm like I'm glad the
• 1:30:56
  internet wasn't around when I was your age because I might not want you to see
• 1:31:01
  what what might've happened back then.
• 1:31:02
  Nor do I necessarily want to remember, but it's, it's transformed a lot.
• 1:31:07
  And I don't know, I think, I think that within the industry itself, it's.
• 1:31:15
  Similar like you mentioned to the business of racing and horses
• 1:31:19
  in that it's very commoditized.
• 1:31:20
  It's become all about the next earnings report.
• 1:31:24
  It's all about how much revenue are we going to make?
• 1:31:28
  It's about how much, how much control can we, can we impart to some extent
• 1:31:35
  it's about clicks and eyeballs and our attention spans have been dramatically
• 1:31:40
  reduced as a result of all of the information overload that we're seeing.
• 1:31:45
  I mean, how many, how often are you just walking through your
• 1:31:49
  neighborhood and you see people with their heads in their phones?
• 1:31:54
  I mean, people aren't even, they're crossing the street
• 1:31:58
  without even looking up sometimes.
• 1:31:59
  And, and it's just like, we're, we're just like consumed by what, whatever that
• 1:32:06
  next click is, or I don't know if it's, if it's the dopamine rush or if it's
• 1:32:10
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, we're consumed by each other really, as we always have been.
• 1:32:13
  But it's just, as you say.
• 1:32:16
  On turbo fuel and accelerated and
• 1:32:18
  Victor Bahna: And it's just getting it's going to get faster and faster.
• 1:32:21
  And I think in a way I think this is where my thoroughbred is, has rescued
• 1:32:27
  me in some ways, because he brings me back to something that's real,
• 1:32:31
  something that I could touch and something that I can interact with.
• 1:32:35
  And there's no, there's no phone.
• 1:32:38
  I leave my phone in my truck when I go see him.
• 1:32:41
  I don't even want to be disturbed.
• 1:32:42
  You know, it's just it's just nature.
• 1:32:44
  And it's back to something that just.
• 1:32:47
  To me is just such a good counterbalance to being on the
• 1:32:50
  machine all, all, all day long.
• 1:32:53
  But it's a, it's a challenging space.
• 1:32:55
  The the industry has grown up fast.
• 1:32:58
  I mean, the valuation of tech companies today is, is.
• 1:33:03
  Mind boggling actually.
• 1:33:04
  You know, when you think of the market market cap, you think about the largest.
• 1:33:09
  Companies in the world by market cap and, you know, a lot of them are the tech
• 1:33:13
  ones, you know, Microsoft, Apple NVIDIA.
• 1:33:16
  I mean, these are the companies that are leading the way from a, from a valuation
• 1:33:20
  perspective and, and you got to think about, you know, the larger they get,
• 1:33:25
  you know, the more they get to sort of control the narrative, so to speak.
• 1:33:29
  But even that, I mean, I think it's out of, I don't think it's
• 1:33:33
  any entity or person or thing.
• 1:33:35
  I think it's kind of.
• 1:33:36
  It's on its own to this extent, you know, this is another example.
• 1:33:39
  I just don't think you put the horse back in the barn.
• 1:33:41
  Rupert Isaacson: No, for sure.
• 1:33:42
  It's just interesting.
• 1:33:44
  It's interesting to speculate.
• 1:33:45
  Where's it going to go?
• 1:33:47
  I was listening to a An investment guru on a podcast, the diary of a CEO podcast.
• 1:33:55
  And it's a, it's a good one.
• 1:33:56
  And he was, he's a crypto guru can try and find his name.
• 1:34:01
  If I get on my phone at my phone, which is of course sitting right by next
• 1:34:04
  to my hand while I'm talking to you.
• 1:34:06
  And He was saying, if you're going to invest in the next
• 1:34:11
  little while, you either invest in crypto and tech, or it's opposite.
• 1:34:21
  And this was really interesting.
• 1:34:22
  He said, or you invest in nature.
• 1:34:26
  And he pointed out that the more people become tech focused, the
• 1:34:32
  more the nature need becomes acute.
• 1:34:36
  Because nature can mean many things, but it's also a human,
• 1:34:42
  human interaction, right?
• 1:34:44
  So if you were going into the office in the old days, even if the office
• 1:34:47
  was shit and your boss was shit and it was a shit environment, it was a group
• 1:34:51
  of people and you were interacting with a group of people and you were on
• 1:34:53
  the subway going there and there were groups of people there and again, it was
• 1:34:56
  divorced from nature with a capital N, but the interactions were still there.
• 1:35:01
  And of course that's not gone away completely, but it's on its way out.
• 1:35:05
  And You think, well then with home office or being able to work
• 1:35:08
  remote and that sort of thing.
• 1:35:09
  Well, great, great.
• 1:35:10
  I'm now free.
• 1:35:10
  I'm free to do what?
• 1:35:12
  Sit in front of a screen for 14 hours and not interact with anybody.
• 1:35:16
  But nature is right outside my door.
• 1:35:19
  So, do I go and seek those experiences for my mental health or not?
• 1:35:25
  And, so his point was this is going to become more and more acute.
• 1:35:29
  There you are, within the tech industry, going and seeking for your mental
• 1:35:33
  health, which has Basically what this horse is giving you nature through
• 1:35:38
  four legs and this sentient being who is Extremely sensitive and is
• 1:35:44
  showing you all sorts of wonderful life lessons like the escalation and so but
• 1:35:49
  also just love just the relationship
• 1:35:50
  Victor Bahna: Yeah,
• 1:35:51
  Rupert Isaacson: and the passion and so on and the beauty
• 1:35:57
  Is that where the nexus of what you're doing?
• 1:36:01
  With tech and the racehorses and the aftercare can come together.
• 1:36:06
  Do we need to go and rescue?
• 1:36:07
  Burned out techies With sensitive horses, but but seriously, I mean Nature
• 1:36:14
  coming to the aid of what else could
• 1:36:20
  Victor Bahna: I think there is an option to
• 1:36:22
  Rupert Isaacson: cure us, but nature for this.
• 1:36:23
  Yeah,
• 1:36:24
  Victor Bahna: I think that it's interesting the reference that you
• 1:36:29
  gave because I agree with that is I think statistically we're seeing we're
• 1:36:36
  seeing higher level of medications, whether it's, you know, depression,
• 1:36:42
  anxiety or other we're seeing a higher number of a higher necessity and, and
• 1:36:48
  maybe it's not necessarily a higher necessity, but more recognition for the
• 1:36:51
  need for, for therapy in, in general.
• 1:36:54
  And I think that.
• 1:36:56
  We could look at the horses as a, a very rich and powerful source of that
• 1:37:01
  kind of, that kind of relief or therapy whether it's helping with with anxiety
• 1:37:06
  or depression or you know, providing some kind of therapy and it's not
• 1:37:10
  necessarily a silver bullet that's going to solve all problems, but,
• 1:37:13
  Victor Bahna (2): you know,
• 1:37:14
  Victor Bahna: I do think that there's something to be said for getting back to
• 1:37:16
  that and you know, burned out employees is not the tech industry works people hard.
• 1:37:22
  I mean, it's, it's, it's not for the faint of heart.
• 1:37:26
  It's become more and more competitive in the, in the years
• 1:37:30
  that I've been involved in it.
• 1:37:31
  It's become more specialized.
• 1:37:33
  The, the, the entry bars to get in are, are raised.
• 1:37:38
  So the point where the competition is, is significant and it's global.
• 1:37:43
  You know, when I started it was mostly within the U.
• 1:37:45
  S., but it's, it's entirely global now.
• 1:37:48
  You're going to find an engineering organization that's, that's going to be
• 1:37:53
  you know, very diverse in, in that sense.
• 1:37:55
  And it's, it's only.
• 1:37:58
  Increasing, I think the, or accelerating, you know, the progress of the industry
• 1:38:04
  itself, but it's also, you know, you're seeing a couple of dominant players
• 1:38:09
  come out of this and, and, you know, they're probably going to be the ones
• 1:38:12
  that dictate the future and is clearly one of the it's, in my opinion, it's
• 1:38:18
  just, it's just the next thing that the next revolution that we're going to see.
• 1:38:22
  And I don't know where it's going.
• 1:38:23
  I'm a little scared of it, but I also know that I've got a, I've got
• 1:38:26
  a horse I can run to if I need to.
• 1:38:28
  And You know, he'll he's not going to worry about about AI or you know, or
• 1:38:33
  the internet or anything like that.
• 1:38:35
  So, yeah, it's, it's, it's hard to predict though, and we are living through
• 1:38:38
  it, but I, I would, I would say, you know, if we can, if we can exploit the.
• 1:38:44
  Value that we gain from these from these horses and we could do that in
• 1:38:48
  a in a constructive and positive way and provide an outlet to folks that
• 1:38:51
  are have their head in their phone, you know, when every waking hour that
• 1:38:57
  to me would be something that we can, we can definitely I could, I could
• 1:39:02
  definitely see some opportunity there.
• 1:39:06
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, it's a lot of ground covered.
• 1:39:10
  Victor Bahna: Yeah.
• 1:39:12
  Rupert Isaacson: A rich and interesting life.
• 1:39:14
  I would say self actualized what's next for you.
• 1:39:16
  What are you, what are you going to do now?
• 1:39:18
  You're obviously producing thoroughbreds.
• 1:39:22
  I presume you're going to keep writing books and keep working in tech, but what's
• 1:39:25
  yeah, what's, what's your next thing?
• 1:39:28
  Victor Bahna: I would like to continue to learn more about this aftercare space.
• 1:39:35
  Yeah.
• 1:39:35
  I think if I'm going to throw myself into something that would probably
• 1:39:39
  be a, a pretty Good place to do that.
• 1:39:43
  Don't know how much longer I've got in tech in regards to, you know, career path.
• 1:39:48
  I'm kind of near the, I'm on the the back nine or maybe the back
• 1:39:51
  one of my, of my tech career.
• 1:39:55
  And that, that should free me up to do, maybe do a few more things.
• 1:39:58
  I, I definitely think, you know, involving horses and, and, you know,
• 1:40:03
  promoting, you know, some of the things that they do getting more involved,
• 1:40:06
  I think would be something I would.
• 1:40:07
  I would look to look to pursue if there's another story in there.
• 1:40:12
  There's another good narrative that I can I can create.
• 1:40:15
  Yeah, I think I would, I would definitely go down that path as well.
• 1:40:19
  But I think there's a little bit of time for self reflection to
• 1:40:23
  that will have to take place.
• 1:40:24
  And, you know, I don't necessarily just want to go 100 miles an hour
• 1:40:29
  from from 1 thing to another.
• 1:40:31
  So, I don't think a lot of time for self reflection, but just
• 1:40:34
  enough to make sure that the next.
• 1:40:38
  The next big project is, is going to be a fulfilling 1 you
• 1:40:41
  know, for, for what it's just
• 1:40:43
  Rupert Isaacson: interesting, isn't it?
• 1:40:44
  How this conversation starts with a boy who isn't experiencing much
• 1:40:49
  nature, who finds an expression of it
• 1:40:54
  through the horse through racing.
• 1:40:59
  And that, because that's also what was available in terms of the horse, but
• 1:41:02
  also the thrill of, of the betting, which to some degree takes the
• 1:41:08
  place of the sort of hunter gatherer thrill, you know, that's innate in us.
• 1:41:14
  And then you take this long segue through the tech industry and where do you
• 1:41:20
  come back to nature through this book?
• 1:41:23
  And I do think that's such a metaphor for, you know, All of us, really.
• 1:41:28
  You know, when we're facing a shit, what is going to happen in this future?
• 1:41:31
  What is happening with AI?
• 1:41:32
  I think the more, the only thing that comes to mind is going to the
• 1:41:37
  bush, get on a horse and go into the bush, you know, sure, we might have
• 1:41:40
  a drone up top, you know, looking out for some things, you know, but yeah
• 1:41:46
  Victor Bahna: Well, that's good because if you get thrown from the horse, the drone
• 1:41:47
  will pick it up and they'll be able to call a vet for you or the or the doctor.
• 1:41:51
  So you can actually come and physically
• 1:41:52
  Rupert Isaacson: lift you.
• 1:41:53
  And yeah, there you go.
• 1:41:55
  And I would love to connect you with the people that I know who are
• 1:42:00
  working in these various countries with thoroughbred aftercare.
• 1:42:04
  I think you guys are natural partners and I'm very happy to work with you.
• 1:42:07
  That'd be awesome.
• 1:42:08
  Victor Bahna: I would love to get more connected in that space.
• 1:42:12
  Rupert Isaacson: But listen, thanks, it's been a great conversation.
• 1:42:15
  Tell us again the name of your book, where they can find it, and if people
• 1:42:18
  want to find out more about what you're doing with thoroughbreds.
• 1:42:21
  Give us the link.
• 1:42:22
  Yeah,
• 1:42:22
  Victor Bahna: so the name of the book is Haliacal Star.
• 1:42:25
  And that's H E L I A C A L star.
• 1:42:30
  And you can find it on Amazon or any of your online booksellers.
• 1:42:35
  Rupert Isaacson: It's a five star reviewed book, by the way, everybody.
• 1:42:37
  It's worth a read.
• 1:42:38
  Yeah.
• 1:42:40
  Victor Bahna: Thank you for that.
• 1:42:41
  And you can also go to my website, which is my first name, last name, victorbana.
• 1:42:48
  com.
• 1:42:49
  B A H N A.
• 1:42:51
  Yeah.
• 1:42:51
  B A H N A, correct.
• 1:42:52
  Yeah.
• 1:42:53
  And you will find information about the book and you'll, you'll
• 1:42:57
  see you know, some of the things that are, that are happening.
• 1:43:00
  And you also have an email for me on that contact on that on that website as well.
• 1:43:05
  So, you know, feel free to contact me as well.
• 1:43:08
  Very good.
• 1:43:08
  But I, I would really appreciate the, the introduction to some
• 1:43:13
  of these rescue operations.
• 1:43:15
  It's definitely an area of high interest for me and I, I do see myself getting
• 1:43:19
  more involved in this as as I continue to to, to move forward in my own life cycle.
• 1:43:25
  Rupert Isaacson: And I'll throw that one out there to the listeners
• 1:43:27
  too, if any of you are interested in getting involved in this aftercare of
• 1:43:31
  thoroughbreds thing, it's, it's worth it.
• 1:43:33
  And these are animals that have a lot to give and absolutely help people.
• 1:43:38
  I was just, just doing a training in Scotland with a group called
• 1:43:43
  Horseback UK, who use a lot of off the track thoroughbreds with ex
• 1:43:47
  special forces guys who've come back.
• 1:43:49
  Missing large parts of themselves and at risk youth and many other
• 1:43:55
  vulnerable populations and the horses are just doing an incredible job.
• 1:43:58
  So, yeah, yeah, as as the world gets techier, we get horse here.
• 1:44:03
  Yeah,
• 1:44:05
  Victor Bahna: exactly.
• 1:44:07
  Rupert Isaacson: All right, my friend.
• 1:44:08
  Well, I look forward to more conversations.
• 1:44:09
  Thank you so much for coming on.
• 1:44:11
  Victor Bahna: Yeah, thank you again for, for having me.
• 1:44:14
  I really appreciate it.
• 1:44:15
  I enjoyed the conversation and and looking forward to to more in the future.
• 1:44:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Till next time.
• 1:44:21
  Thank you for joining us.
• 1:44:22
  We hope you enjoyed today's podcast.
• 1:44:24
  Join our website, new trails learning.com, to check out our online
• 1:44:29
  courses and live workshops in Horse Boy Method, movement Method, and Athena.
• 1:44:35
  These evidence-based programs have helped children, veterans, and people
• 1:44:40
  dealing with trauma around the world.
• 1:44:42
  We also offer a horse training program and self-care program
• 1:44:46
  for riders on long ride home.com.
• 1:44:49
  These include easy to do online courses and tutorials that
• 1:44:53
  bring you and your horse joy.
• 1:44:56
  For an overview of all shows and programs, go to rupert isaacson.com.
• 1:45:01
  See you on the next show.
• 1:45:02
  And please remember to press, subscribe and share.