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ral ability to find an "athlete" and, for that reason, won't shy away from a modestly bred horse. It is, he says, a trait Baffert shares with his father. "My father had an uncanny eye for picking out talent," Shah said. "He would go to the sales and buy horses for modest prices. There would be some very well-bred horses there and he would walk away from them and the breed- ers would get pissed at him. 'What the hell, why are you faulting my horse?' they would say. Bob will do the same thing–walk away from a well-pedigreed horse. It's some- thing he will see in the horse that causes him to walk away. The par- allels are that both of them have an uncanny eye for the right horse. Successful people have to have certain traits; they see things that other people don't." Shah now spends most of him time at CALNET's offices in San Di- ego, where he also has a home and lives with wife Lubna and children Sophia and Arman. Arman, 18, has become particularly interested in racing and will take part in the decision-making process when it comes to the stable. The Shah fam- ily also maintains a home in Vienna, Virginia. Shah also has a small breeding operation and breeds some of his better mares to his stallions. Shah just won the Anokia Stakes with homebred American Gal, who is by a sire he raced out of a mare he also campaigned in American Story (Ghostzapper). He has 24 horses in training and says his ultimate goal is to have an elite stable of all stakes-caliber horses. "Rather than quantity, I like qual- ity," he said. That's the way his father was, too. From him, Shah learned to love the sport. He has few regrets when it comes to horse racing, but one is that he is not able to share his suc- cess with his father. Majeed Shah is suffering from dementia. He believes the last time his fa- ther was able to follow a major race that he had won and compre- hend the impact was when Con- cord Point won the 2010 West Vir- ginia Derby. "When I started buying with Bob, at that time he was in his late sev- enties and could no longer travel here, but he still had an idea of what we were doing," Shah said. "He knew I won the West Virginia Derby and I showed him the videos. He was full of joy. Over the past five years, his Alzheimer's has got- ten progressively worse." His father also taught him what it took to succeed–education, de- termination, hard work and that sometimes you have to take a chance in life. From a country some 8,000 miles away, with a different culture and different religions, he taught him the values of his adopt- ed land. Successful people have to have certain traits; they see things that other people don't. 25

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