When the 3-year-old thoroughbred Dornoch, a 17-to-1 underdog, won the 2024 Belmont Stakes by half a length, the result may have come as a surprise to some.
But not to Keith Mason.
“I really wasn’t nervous,” says Mason (BBA ’82, JD ’85) co-founder of the Atlanta-based West Paces Racing and leading owner of Dornoch. “I was excited and looking forward to the race, and I felt like we were going to do alright.”
Mason established West Paces Racing with partners in 2019. The group had a rare accomplishment early in the 2024 racing season when it qualified two horses, Society Man and Dornoch, for the 20-horse Kentucky Derby, the first jewel in horse racing’s Triple Crown. Neither finished in the money, but a foundation was laid for something big.
The Belmont—the third jewel in the Triple Crown—marks West Paces’ biggest victory to date and a personally meaningful one for Mason. He entered the horse racing business about a decade ago in another partnership. That venture produced a win at the 2015 Travers Stakes by Keen Ice, who defeated Triple Crown champion American Pharoah. It was a 17-1 upset on the very same Saratoga, New York, track where Dornoch won the Belmont.
Mason, who graduated from Terry College of Business with his bachelor’s degree in finance in 1982, is also a supporter of the UGA Institute of Leadership Advancement and established the Mason Leadership Lecture Series in 2016.