Susan and Charles Chu

Susan Chu fell in love with horses long before she saw her first horse race. A native of Taiwan, which she describes as a “beautiful but small country,” she discovered horses after her children decided they loved them and wanted to ride them. “I took them to the mountains to see horses, but I never had a chance to touch one,” she said. “My kids wanted to ride, so I started sending them to camp at horse farms to ride little ponies. They so enjoyed it.”

She would too, after her daughter Vicky pushed her to learn how to ride. Susan did dressage, hunter-jumping and show jumping, eventually acquiring and developing Olympic-level show jumpers with her husband Charlie. That was after four-fifths of their family emigrated to the United States. 

Susan and her three kids, Vicky and sons Leo and Jerry, emigrated to America in 2000, landing in North Andover, Mass., just north of Boston. Charlie, 55, remained in Taiwan to run their business, Portman Electronics, which manufactures GPS navigational systems and has grown substantially since its inception. Charlie supervised the manufacturing while Susan, 52, traveled the world promoting their company, frequently being the lone woman in meetings and trade shows.

Susan and Charlie not only run their business 8,500 miles apart, but they raised their family as well, spending one week a month together. The arrangement has and continues to work for Susan and Charlie, who has evolved into a world-class design engineer, traveling the globe as a consultant, assisting other Asian technology firms and hoping to break into foreign markets.

When her three kids were in college, Susan got a call from Vicky, an engineering major at Boston University who had been given an internship in Louisville, Ky. “She called and told me about the Kentucky Derby,” Susan said. “I didn’t know anything about it. What is the Kentucky Derby? My daughter advised me it was very exciting. We had no idea what is horse racing.”

She and Charlie decided to find out. They went to the 2010 Kentucky Derby and watched Super Saver win on a sloppy track. “That was really the first time we realized how many people went to the Derby,” she said.

The family returned to Louisville to watch 15-1 I’ll Have Another win the 2012 Run for the Roses, a race which redirected their lives. They bet on I’ll Have Another. “Charlie picked one horse, and he won!” Susan said. “We won a lot of money betting him. Charlie was very, very happy. He said, kind of joking, `We should go into this business.’ I said, `No problem.’ We had so much fun watching the race because we love horses so much—such beautiful creatures.”

When Charlie returned to Taiwan, Susan went to work. “I started to study,” she said. “I decided to create a company to run this business. If I want to do this business, I want to do good. I want to do it right. I realized how wonderful the industry is. I am Taiwanese. I am a woman. I needed to hire people who knew more than me—people who have a passion like me.”

They would race under the names of Baoma Corp and Tanma, which means “horse in the sky.” She made equine welfare a top priority.

Initially deciding to buy six horses, Susan needed a trainer. She traveled the country to interview seven trainers with Derby experience in New York, Maryland, Kentucky and California. The last trainer she talked to was a man used to finishing first, Hall of Famer Bob Baffert. “He was so very clear: `How many horses do you want to buy,’” Susan said. “He tells me the business is not easy.’”

Baffert remembers their first meeting: “I tried to talk her out of it. I said, `It’s a lot of ups and downs. You’ve got to be able to handle it. It’s a beautiful business, but there’s a lot of disappointment.’”

Susan appreciated his honesty. She knew she had her trainer. “I had great pleasure to talk to Bob,” she said. “I said this is the man I should be working with. Everything went so well.”

It hasn’t stopped. “I feel so much joy. I’m so grateful to Bob,” Susan said.

Baffert said, “She’s a lot of fun. She spends three hours feeding them carrots. Her husband Charlie..he’ll fly in from Hong Kong just to watch his horse run in a maiden race. He loves it. He loves the action.”

  He’s had lots of it. Their first horse, Super Ninety Nine, won the Gr3 Southwest Stakes by 11¼ lengths, then finished third in the Gr1 Santa Anita Derby. “We watched him win by 11 lengths,” Susan said. “It was amazing. To enjoy so much success so early.”

They subsequently campaigned 2016 Champion Sprinter and Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner Drefong, who also captured the Gr1 Allen Jerkens Memorial; Chitu, a Gr3 stakes winner, who finished ninth in the 2014 Kentucky Derby and is now a stallion for them; Gr2 winner Faypien, and Gr3 winner Lord Simba.

Their success led Charlie and Sue to receive the 2017 New Owner of the Year from OwnerView.  

In 2019, their two-year-old filly Bast brought them back into the winner’s circle in a Gr1 stakes, the Starlet, after she finished third in the Gr1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Filly. “When I went to see her after the Breeders’ Cup, she didn’t come to me like she normally does,” Susan said. “She doesn’t want to eat carrots. She just stood in the back of the stall. She was angry. She lost.”

After the victory in the Starlet, Susan got a different reaction when she came to the barn. “I ran to the barn to thank her, and she was so happy. She came to me. She tried to tell me she won. She totally knows.”

Success hasn’t deterred Susan from her goal of taking care of horses. She has been a huge supporter of Michael Blowen’s Old Friends Farm in Georgetown, Ky. “She came to the farm on a tour,” Blowen said. “She loves the horses. She lights up when she sees them. She’s so nice. Any time we run a little short, I call her and she covers it. Fifty thousand dollars would be a conservative guess of how much she’s contributed.”

She feels she is giving back, saying, “The joys that our horses bring us today, we will have for life.”