This Colonel’s farm has rank

VERSAILLES, Ky. -- If there is a heaven for horses, it might resemble WinStar Farm, birthplace of Santa Anita Derby winner and top Kentucky Derby contender Colonel John.

The 1,500-acre spread, about 10 miles west of Lexington in the heart of Bluegrass Country, could be described as the Augusta National of horse farms.

Inside the main gate is a man-made lake complete with a waterfall. Behind it is a modern two-story gray-brick office building that has the look of a clubhouse at an exclusive country club. At the entrance are bronze statues of a mare tending to her foal.

The farm is owned by Dallas billionaires Bill Casner and Kenny Troutt, who in 1998 sold their long-distance phone company, Excel Communications, for $3.5 billion.

Both of their main residences are in the Dallas area, but they also own homes at WinStar. While Troutt’s is a showpiece mansion, Casner’s is a little more modest. But neither it nor any of the 10 gray-brick barns that dot the lush green property would appear out of place in Beverly Hills.

Over lunch, Casner, 60, said, “As a kid I’d spend summers on my cousin’s ranch in central Texas. At age 5, I became smitten with horses. It has been a lifelong passion ever since.”

It’s the same with Troutt, also 60. But their mid-life venture into the world of breeding, buying, selling and racing thoroughbreds is not something Casner and Troutt did just for the fun of it.

Their idea was to build a state-of-the art farm. “It’s a competitive business,” Casner said. “At the core of it is our stallions. We have to attract the best stallions out there, and this farm helps us do that.”

The farm was only 450 acres when Casner and Troutt bought it in January 2000. They have since purchased more than 1,000 additional acres. Casner and Troutt, along with WinStar president Doug Cauthen, the older brother of jockey Steve Cauthen, turned the place into what it is today.

However, Casner’s wife of 34 years, Susan, gets credit for the farm’s name.

“This area . . . got hit with a meteor some 100,000 years ago,” Casner said. “Susan thought about a name that had to do with a falling star, and that’s how she came up with WinStar.”

Susan Casner also gets credit for Colonel John, who figures to be the second betting favorite behind Big Brown in Saturday’s 134th running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville, about 90 miles from WinStar Farm.

At a Keeneland sale in November 2001, it was Susan who insisted that her husband buy a black broodmare named Sweet Damsel for $65,000. Sweet Damsel and Tiznow, a two-time Breeders’ Cup Classic winner who stands at WinStar, produced Colonel John.

The horse is named after John Geiber, 52, who works for Troutt and is a close friend of the Casners. Geiber, as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, spent seven months in Iraq in 2005.

Geiber has never seen Colonel John race in person, but he plans to be at Churchill Downs on Saturday.

Two years ago a WinStar horse, Bluegrass Cat, finished second to Barbaro in the Kentucky Derby. Besides Colonel John, WinStar also has a half-interest in another Derby starter this year, Court Vision.

“We’ve had six horses run in the Derby, but none have gone into the race with as short as odds as Colonel John will,” Casner said.

It has been quite a ride for Casner. He started galloping racehorses at age 15. And while in college at Tarleton State in Stephenville, Texas, he did a variety of racetrack jobs. He later became a trainer and for two summers worked for the Daily Racing Form writing out charts. “The racetrack was the best graduate course I could have ever taken,” he said. “You work in excess of 100 hours a week without a day off, it gives you a work ethic.”

In 1972, Casner and Troutt met at a racetrack in Omaha and became friends. Two years later Casner met his wife, a mutuel clerk, at a track in Grand Island, Neb.

Then in the late ‘70s Casner and Troutt became partners in the oil business. “We got out of it when, after the price of gas went up to $17 a barrel, it dropped to $9 a barrel,” Casner said. “That’s hard to fathom these days when gas costs over $100 a barrel.”

It was then on to other ventures, such as car washes and a recycling company. “Our nature is to swing for the fences,” Casner said.

And that’s what they did when Troutt came up with the idea in 1987 to start Excel Communications after deregulation in the telephone industry. “It started out with one employee, which was Kenny, and ended up becoming a $5-billion company” and the fourth-largest long distance carrier in the U.S., Casner said.

Casner well remembers May 10, 1996, when Excel was allowed to join the New York Stock Exchange.

“We had the biggest one-day percentage gain in stock in the history of the New York Stock Exchange, opening at 24 and going to 45. It may have been a dubious honor because we priced our stock too low.”

If Colonel John does what many experts think and wins Saturday’s Kentucky Derby for WinStar, there will be nothing dubious about that honor, the biggest in horse racing.

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larry.stewart@latimes.com