Inside 'Race for the Crown' farm owned by John Stewart in Kentucky
Olivia Evans
MIDWAY, Ky. — Coming off the 2025 Kentucky Derby and the release of the Netflix docuseries "Race for the Crown," thoroughbred racing fans across the globe have come to know horse owner and car enthusiast John Stewart.
The mild mannered, eccentric, addicted-to-fast-things Kentucky man has made a quick name for himself in the horse racing industry.
Stewart purchased his first horse, Shiloh’s Mistress, in 2022 at the Keeneland September yearling sale. That horse would bring him his first taste of the winner's circle during the 2024 racing season with a win at Turfway Park in Florence.
By December 2023, the once self-described "industry outsider" had purchased the old Shadayid Stud farm in Midway, giving Resolute Racing, Stewart's breeding and racing business, a new, sprawling 1,300 acre property home base. The full scale operation at the farmstead launched in January 2024, Julianna Havnaer, a communications manager for Resolute Racing, told The Courier Journal.
"We just started the farm, and we already have emerged as one of the top players in the space," said Stewart, whose horses have racked in nearly 20 wins in 2025 alone, including wins at Keeneland and Churchill Downs.
The Woodford County farm at 1936 W. Leestown Road, is home to some of the most popular horses in the industry right now, including 2024 Broodmare of the Year, Puca, who is the dam of Mage, the 2023 Kentucky Derby winner, Dornoch, the 2024 Belmont Stakes winner who also ran in the 2024 Kentucky Derby, and Baeza, who took third in both the 2025 Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes.
Resolute Racing also stables Eclipse award winner Goodnight Olive, racehorse Just A Touch, and dozens more yearlings, foals and two year olds in training.
But it’s not just the horses that set Resolute Racing apart from the dozens of other horse farms dotting the commonwealth.
In a massive garage on the farm property, Stewart and his son, Andrew Stewart, store a more than $20 million collection of cars, with everything ranging from a vintage 1973 Ferrari Dino to a modern Maserati MC20.
"To be able to see those types of things in conjunction, I think it just adds to what we're trying to build," Stewart told The Courier Journal during a recent visit to the Kentucky farm. "We want to be the top quality of everything."
For many in the industry, rising to be the largest purchaser of bloodstockfor two consecutive years and being home to an elite stable of horses, is the dream.
But for Stewart, a private equity tycoon, Resolute Racing started as a side quest aimed at claiming his own piece of classic Kentucky fun to share with his family — and perhaps a larger space to store his car collection.
It has since morphed into a vehicle for Stewart to support the community he grew up in, combine and share his passion of fast horses and fast cars, and do something different in an industry continually looking to stay relevant outside of the first weekend in May.
"I famously tell everybody I don't do anything halfway," Stewart said. "So, when I decided to get into horse racing, it was never going to be just to have a couple of racehorses."
A love for fast cars
Stewart was 19 years old when he dropped out of college and went to work on the assembly line at Toyota Motor Manufacturing in Georgetown where he worked the night shift.
As a young man with ADHD and autism, he said he was often told what he couldn’t do in life. But rather than listen, he blocked out the noise and worked his way up in Toyota during an 18 year career, eventually running one of the company’s factories in Europe.
This formative experience helped bolster his love and fascination with cars, but it also taught him the importance of betting on himself, even when he seemed like a long shot.
"If I listened to everybody else in my career, I'd probably still be working on the production line somewhere," Stewart said. "I just charted my own path and believed in what my capability was and never let what anybody else said interfere with what I thought I was capable of doing."
After Stewart left Toyota, he founded MiddleGround Capital, a Lexington-based private equity firm.
Somewhere along the way, he purchased his first collector car, a 1966 Corvette "resto-mod," which was made in Bowling Green and has been meticulously restored and equipped with a modern engine and 700 horsepower.
The collection, which he and his son proudly display for visitors to Resolute Racing, stands at 41 cars, but the Stewarts are always looking at auctions and car shows to further grow the bevy of vehicles. Stewart said he owns six of the 10 fastest car types in the world, including a McLaren 765LT an Aston Martin SUV, what Stewart said is the fastest SUV type.
Andrew Stewart said one of his favorite things about having such a wide range of cars, from itty bitty Italian sports cars like Lamborghinis to tricked out high horsepower SUVs, is the ability to take a different car for a spin every day.
The thrill of going 0-60 mph in mere seconds, or owning something so few people in the world will ever see, has kept Stewart obsessed with his fast cars. He knows every detail about each car, whether he's telling a visitor about the 2015 Porsche 918 Spyder, which he owns vehicle number 402, or the 1992 Lamborghini Diablo.
"After I drove (the Diablo), I told my fiancé that this one I'll probably die in because it's so fast," Stewart said with a laugh.
In the Netflix series, which debuted in April of this year and was filmed during the 2024 racing season and followed owners like Stewart as they chased big racing wins at the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes, many of Stewart's scenes feature his cars — including his series introduction in episode two where he pulls up to a private plane is a sleek red Ferrari.
A different type of horse farm in Kentucky
After Stewart got his first taste of horse ownership, he wanted more.
He returned to the Keeneland fall sale in 2023 and bought "a bunch of horses," Havnaer, with Resolute Racing, said.
But Stewart wasn't just buying horses that were bred to be sold — he was seeking racers. From his years as a racing fan to his now prominence in the ownership world, Stewart said he's watched horses increasingly being bred to sell rather than to race.
At Resolute Racing, he breeds to race and isn't afraid to try out bloodlines that are less common in the U.S. He owns a handful of prominent English, Irish, South African and Canadian horses on his farm.
Essentially, Stewart says he's breeding based off genetics targeting racing speed where other breeders often target things like a horses' apperance.
"People buy them when they're a year old based on what they look like, but it has no determining factor on how they're going to run on the track," Stewart said. "As an investor, I've made a lot of money off investing in places where other people thought there wasn't an opportunity. I'm trying to breed to race and I'm trying to make the genetics of the horses stronger."
The farm's goal, according to its website, is to compete at the sport's highest levels while cultivating pedigrees rooted in the most successful bloodlines — those known for producing Graded Stakes winners, prioritizing long-term success and quality over volume.
"I'm the kind of person that I'm not going to complain about something; I'm just going to do something about it," Stewart said. "I decided to get in and do something about it, and do it on a meaningful scale. To try to do something that's going to have a lasting influence on the industry."
Fast Cars and Fast Horses tour at Resolute Racing
Stewart wants to share his vision for the future of horse racing with visitors through tours on the farm, including the Fast Cars and Fast Horses tour. The tour, which costs $35 and lasts about an hour, is his way of introducing visitors to the horse racing industry and his evolving vision for what horse racing in Kentucky can be.
The tour kicks off in the barn with Goodnight Olive and Puca and some yet-to-be-named foals. Guests will spend some time with the iconic horses before hopping in a tour van and taking a peaceful ride through the scenic rolling hills to the other side of the farm property and heading into Stewart's garage to explore his collection of cars showcased on the Netflix show.
"I like to inspire young people," Stewart said. "I started my career as an hourly employee, and then worked really hard and now I'm able to enjoy these types of things. We live in a country that may have its own faults and so hopefully, this inspires people to see that if you set your sights on it, it can be done. We've assembled this in just a couple of years."
It’s not just this specialty tour — in addition to a separate classic farm tour solely focused on the foals and bloodlines — that sets Resolute Racing apart from other farm tours. Resolute Racing also hosts family days and babies and brunch events.
"It's cool to be able to do that for people and give them that experience and be open with our facility," Stewart said.
He said the Fast Cars and Fast Horses tour stays booked, often bringing people to Resolute Racing who are car geeks but may be less familiar with horse racing, giving his team an opportunity to share the love of the industry, and the sport, with potential new fans.
"Our racehorses and our cars, we try to think of the same way," Stewart said. "They're the same quality of horses that these cars are. They literally are collectors' items."
While the two-year-old farm prepares for the fall sales and racing season, Stewart is already looking to the future.
He and his son, Andrew, hope to expand the car offerings of the farm and create a road track "to replicate the great tracks from Europe in North America." Stewart said he is actively working on this tourism project and plans to create a state of the art road track where people can come and drive luxury cars in Kentucky.
Additionally, Stewart recently acquired a straw field across the street, which will soon become a horse training center, filling another gap in the industry as stabling space and training centers continue to shrink across the U.S.
"I just want to inspire other people that may have challenges and may think, 'Oh, I live in Kentucky, I can't accomplish anything big in life,'" Stewart said. "It's all baloney. You can do anything you want and Kentucky is as good a place as any to do that."