Bargain buy Ocelli coming into his own * The Racing Biz

Bargain buy Ocelli coming into his own

$12,000 yearling has earned over $600k

Press Release
May 8, 2026

Jockey Tyler Gaffalione will be back aboard when Ocelli – the winless horse that nearly won last Saturday’s Kentucky Derby (G1) – runs in the 151st Preakness Stakes (G1) May 16 at Laurel Park. Gaffalione had never ridden the 0-for-6 Ocelli before the Derby, which they lost by a scant length as the longest shot in the field at more than 70-1 odds.

Gaffalione’s Derby mount was supposed to be Turfway Park’s Jeff Ruby (G3) winner Fulleffort, but that horse was scratched two days before the race allowing Ocelli into the field and putting Gaffalione in position to be snapped up by Ocelli’s team.

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The Whit Beckman-trained Ocelli may be winless, but he’s earned $609,800, more than all but one of the probable entries for the Middle Jewel of the Triple Crown. Only Arkansas Derby (G1) runner-up Silent Tactic has made more at $1,051,922, thanks to racing in all four of Oaklawn Park’s big-money stakes leading up to the Kentucky Derby, with a win and three seconds.

Ocelli’s late-running third by a total of a length in the Derby was worth $500,000. That payday is more than 40 times the $12,000 that the Legion Bloodstock partnership paid for Ocelli toward the end of Fasig-Tipton Kentucky’s 2024 October yearling sale.

“We buy a lot of those horses out of the back,” Legion partner Kyle Zorn, at Churchill Downs Thursday morning to watch Ocelli jog, said. “We said it with [Kentucky Oaks (G1) runner-up] Drexel Hill. We paid $50,000 for her and $40,000 for [$895,215-earner] Honor Marie. We look for athletes. A lot of them, people overlook because they stand one way, or they’re crooked here or something with their gait. But [Ocelli] just had all the physical characteristics that we look for, and we were kind of shocked nobody else was in on him.

“He was one of those that just had that standout walk we look for. He didn’t seem to have a lot of [bidding] action, and we just took a shot,” he added. “I don’t remember what our opening bid was, but I remember when the hammer fell. We thought we got a deal.”

Zorn said Legion partner Travis Durr did the bidding. Ocelli races in the name of Durr’s wife, Ashley, along with Anthony Tate and Front Page Equestrian.

“Ever since he got him to his training center [in South Carolina], Travis loved him,” Zorn said. “The biggest thing for us is when he got to Whit. I’ll never forget, we got the phone call from Whit in November and he said, ‘Hey, I’m going to get this horse to the Derby.’ That was the beauty of it, with Travis’ wife owning the majority of him, there was never any pressure. If he didn’t run a good first race, or second race or third race, we stayed the course because Whit kept believing.”

Ocelli had a third sprinting at Churchill Downs in his debut, followed by a good second and third in two 1 1/16-mile maiden races at Fair Grounds before he moved into stakes company. After a pair of sixth-place finishes in Tampa Bay Downs’ Sam F. Davis and Colonial Downs’ Virginia Derby, he earned a crack at the Kentucky Derby with a late-running third in the Wood Memorial (G2) at Aqueduct.

“The crazy thing about this horse, if you watch his ‘numbers’ – we go off Thoro-Graph first and foremost – he ran a 9 and a 7 in Virginia, a 5 in the Wood and now a 2 in the Derby,” with the lower the faster, Zorn said. “I think he’s just one of these horses who’s coming into himself right in the middle of the Triple Crown.”

Beckman’s original thinking did not include the Preakness after Ocelli’s big Derby.

“That night, we all came back to the barn, just kind of celebrating,” Zorn said. “[Ocelli] about ripped the feed tub out of the groom’s arm. Had his head out the whole day, the very next day. He wasn’t one of these horses that stay in the back of his stall [after a race]. “I’d like see and say that this horse is going to take a step forward,” he added. “Whit was making changes along the way. It was only his second race taking the blinkers off. A lot of people forget he just missed finishing second in the Wood by a dirty head bob. I think if he ‘pairs’ [runs another 2], he’s going to be pretty darn salty with the horses they say are going.”