TOBA February Member of the Month

Horse racing isn’t usually synonymous with the state of Wisconsin, but Joe Moore is trying to change all that. A real estate agent and former alderman in Green Bay, Moore is building momentum with his own horses and those owned in partnership. Moore didn’t grow up with racing in his backyard. He did watch the sport and heard about Wisconsin native and Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas, whose success intrigued him. Years later, watching his daughter fall in love with horses fueled Moore’s own reconnection with Thoroughbred racing. “And then around that time is when I started really looking into the racing side of things,” he commented, “because that’s more so where my path was: not so much getting up on the backs and riding around like it is for them (his wife and daughter). For me, it was the racing and the industry in general, which—it’s always piqued my interest.” Moore does own an off-track Thoroughbred named Windy O K C, whom he called his “best buddy." Like many newcomers to the sport, Moore initially was worried that he couldn’t afford to own all, or part, of a racehorse. “I’m kind of that guy that always just kind of thought it was out of reach for me. There was no way I’d ever be able to own a horse and actually race a horse. And I just never thought I’d have the money for it. And so, you start researching and you can start seeing some of these, like this MyRacehorse with the fractional ownership options.” Moore spoke with West Point Thoroughbreds’ Jason Blewitt, who laid out the ins and outs and costs of owning a racehorse. Moore decided that he could, after all, afford to embark on a solo ownership journey. But he does own portions of 10 runners with America’s Thoroughbred Investors. His family has also fallen in love with the sport. In fact, it’s his daughter—who was pen pals with Kate Tweedy, daughter of Secretariat’s owner, Penny Chenery—who inspired the stable’s name, Silo Skyline Farms, after two silos she could see from her bedroom window. After buying his first horse in December 2024, Moore has already become a regular in the winner’s circle. Ohio-bred Beautiful Charade won three times in 2025, while the Vino Rosso gelding Peripoli broke his maiden on Dec. 13 at Tampa Bay Downs. Global Event, co-owned by Blazing Meadows Farm LLC and America’s Thoroughbred Investors, broke his maiden in August and placed in a 2025 stake, while hard-knocking Liberate, owned by America’s Thoroughbred Investors, won four times last year. Moore would love to see breeding and racing come to Wisconsin. One key step was learning more about TOBA as an organization, even attending a breeding seminar in Kentucky. He added, “So that was a great experience, to get down there and meet some people and go to some farms and just learn a lot more about what it is they do. But being there and at those farms and seeing the breeding stalls and the way the pastures are laid out, and being there in May, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, so much of Kentucky reminds me of Wisconsin. It’s rolling hills and it’s great agriculture and there are fields everywhere and pastures everywhere and all we miss is the four-rail fence. We just don’t have that. We have cows everywhere. So that is really what kind of triggered something in me to maybe try to get a TOBA established here.” Moore noted that there is the infrastructure to make such a task possible. A state statute allows for parimutuel racing, he said, and there was a racing commission until 2010. The initial response has been positive. Moore explained, “So it’s been a lot of educating people, had a nice conversation with my local state legislator here, and we were just kind of talking about a lot of the peripheral jobs and economic impact that breeding here could have. And this was a fairly recent conversation and I’m really interested in pushing that a lot further with him because he is completely on board with it. It’s something that would be minimal cost, if any, to just reestablish the board. And then we can start talking about things like breeding incentives and what it’ll take to actually breed in Wisconsin again.”