Peace Rules, among the stallions who will stand at Vinery's Florida farm.
Dr. Tom Simon, who is in the process of curtailing his Vinery Australia operation, is going full steam with his newly formed Florida venture. Simon is building a stallion station, two 40-stall barns, and two training tracks on 220 acres of land near Ocala. Though the project won't be completed until the middle of next year, Simon plans to stand grade I winner and millionaire Peace Rules in 2005 in the Sunshine State. Simon is leasing the stallion barn and an office at Richard Simon's Sez Who Thoroughbreds. Retired from racing this fall, Peace Rules is the first of Tom Simon's stallions to stand at that Ocala, Fla., nursery. (The two men are not related.) The Vinery Florida operation will be limited to farm horses. "We will be breaking and training our own horses," said Bates Newton, general manager of Vinery near Lexington. "There won't be any boarders. We'll have a seven-eighths-mile dirt track and a three-quarter-mile turf course." The Kentucky Vinery operation will stand nine stallions, including More Than Ready and Brahms, both of whom stood at Vinery Australia this season. Vinery has engaged in a program of supporting its stallions by purchasing some of their offspring at sales. "It's part of the business," Newton said. "We've bought some of More Than Ready's offspring, and he has 16 winners from his first crop. We also bought five Brahms yearlings at the Keeneland September sale, and weanlings from the first crop of Pure Prize and Yonaguska at Keeneland in November." Vinery owns part of Texas Glitter, but there are no plans to stand him in 2005 at Sez Who. He will remain at William C. Schettine's Signature Stallions.
