Carlos Manresa at the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sales grounds. Susie Raisher photo.
From the windows of his childhood home in Ocala, FL, Carlos Manresa could see J.J. Pletcher’s training facility, and in the mornings, he would look out the back windows to see young Thoroughbreds training.
“It’s a very vivid memory that I shared with my dad, which is really special,” said Manresa, sitting outside the Sequel New York consignment on Saratoga’s Fasig-Tipton sales grounds last week. “He’d wake me up, we’d go downstairs, and he’d say, ‘Look at the horses. Look at the horses.’ But it was always from a distance.”
Now the director of operations for Sequel, Manresa grew up on a small Quarter Horse farm, but despite the proximity, he grew up thinking that the Thoroughbred world was inaccessible.
With no intention of working full-time in the horse industry, Manresa attended Florida State University, where he studied political science and international affairs, and where he met Mckenzie Montgomery, the daughter of Becky Thomas, who owns Sequel. Their friendship led Carlos to summer jobs at the Sequel facility in Florida.
“I cleaned stalls, I bathed horses, I mowed lawns,” he said. “And I had a lot of fun, not just with the horses, but with the people. It’s such a different environment from interning in an office.”
From FSU, Manresa headed to Stetson University to study law, graduating in 2017 with a Juris Doctor degree, getting admitted to the Florida Bar Association, and taking a job as a defense attorney at a firm that represented doctors in medical malpractice suits.
Manresa laughed at the difference between how he started his professional life and what he does now before acknowledging that those lawyer skills can come in handy in managing a horse farm.
“It’s an analytical way of looking at things,” he explained. “A lot of time in the horse business, you can make decisions based on emotions or on relationships, and that can be beneficial. But you also have to be able to step back and say, ‘All right, let’s take myself out of this. Let’s take this relationship out of this, let’s take how I feel about this out of this, and let’s look at the data and be as analytical as possible.’”
“That’s especially important in the seller’s market,” he went on. “You may have a relationship with a stallion or a stallion prospect, and you might think the horse is going to be great, but maybe you need to take a step back and look at it from an investment standpoint.”
Manresa’s relationship with Montgomery had developed into a romance, and after a couple of years of practicing law, he approached Thomas about a job.
“She was very kind,” recalled Manresa, laughing. “She said that she could teach me the business, but I don’t think she had it in her mind that I was thinking about a full-time venture, not just something during my free time. I think she was surprised when I called her and told that I’d quit my job.”
Thomas jumped in to prompt her son-in-law.
“Tell her about when you told your mother,” she said.
Manresa laughed.
“It was Thanksgiving,” he said. “My mom is a high school principal, and she’s been an educator her whole life, so education is really important to her and my father, and to our whole family.
“When I broke the news that I’d quit my job, she just broke down in tears. ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’ she said. You have to remember that this industry was incredibly foreign to my family, and she thought that my life was going to be a hardship. She was thinking that I had the whole world ahead of me and instead, I was choosing something that would be a struggle.”
A few years on, she’s not only gotten used to her son’s career change, but she’s embraced it.
“I’ve invited her to grade 1 races with our graduates, and now she watches races with her friends and says, ‘That horse? My son is part of that horse’s story.’”
Tiz the Law at the Sequel New York Fasig-Tipton Saratoga consignment as a yearling. Susie Raisher photo.
Manresa is part of the story of Laoban, the late stallion that got his start at Sequel New York. The Wine Steward, who was twice consigned by Sequel, selling as a yearling for $70,000 and as a two-year-old for $340,000, and who has gone on to earn $467,000 and place in multiple stakes races. He’s part of the story of Tiz the Law, the 2020 Travers winner and Kentucky Derby runner-up that was consigned by Sequel as a yearling and sold for $110,000, and who retired with earnings of $2.7 million.
Most recently, he’s part of the story of Ferocious, who romped in his first start this summer at Saratoga and who sold for $1.3 million from Sequel’s consignment at this year’s OBS March Sale.
Manresa is involved with pretty much every element of the Sequel operation, from the breeding farm in Hudson, NY to the training facility in Florida, where he is based when he’s not at sales.
“Even if we don’t show up on the buyer sheet at a sale,” he said, “we were there. We’ve seen every horse. We have notes on every horse. We’re taking account of what the horses look like and who purchased them, and we use that information to see how it matches up with our own interpretation of the market. The market is constantly changing, and we’re just trying to analyze it and keep up with it.”
Sequel has 15 horses in its consignment for the Fasig-Tipton New York-bred sale on Sunday and Monday, Aug. 11 and 12. And as soon as the horses are shipped out when the sale is over, Manresa will go back to what he calls “the search,” his favorite part of the job.
“That’s the most exciting thing,” he said. “The second that the two-year-old sales are over, I’m champing at the bit to get to the yearling sales. I’m waiting for the July catalog to come out. I’m looking at digital sales online. There’s always a search for the next one.”
That “next one” might be a weanling. It might be a stallion. It might be a broodmare.
“Because we participate in the industry in such a broad way, I don’t have to narrow my focus so much, which is really great for an addict like myself,” he said, with a trace of a sheepish grin.
Throughout his careers, Manresa has been a man who relies on and trusts data and analysis. But it wasn’t data and analysis that brought him to the job of his dreams; any objective examination of the choice to leave law and work at Sequel would have resulted in his remaining a practicing attorney. But as he looks at horses and manages the Sequel consignment, the little boy who looked out his window with wonder at the Thoroughbreds is still present, and even Manresa has to concede that the decision that he made with his heart has turned out pretty good.
“It’s been absolutely amazing,” he said. “It’s an incredible ride.”
