Shortly after winning the Queen’s Plate with Shaman Ghost, billionaire Canadian horseman and entrepreneur Frank Stronach sat down in Aurora, ON for a wide-ranging interview about turning Gulfstream Park into a horse theme park, breeding better cattle and his renewed focus on horse racing.

A bronze maquette of Rodin’s sculpture The Thinker sits behind Frank Stronach in the corner of a conference room at The Stronach Group’s headquarters in Aurora, ON. Covering a large part of the table is a model of Gulfstream Park in Florida, one of six racetracks he owns. On the video screen is a live camera view of the 11-story (34-metre-high) statue of Pegasus trampling a dragon under construction at Gulfstream. It is “the largest bronze sculpture in the world,” Stronach said proudly of the $30 million project that sprung from his vibrant mind and makes cars and pedestrians look like crickets by comparison. He also has a burgeoning electric bicycle business and his latest pet project — a 90,000-acre livestock ranch in Florida home to 8,000 cattle and counting — is his attempt to produce meat without hormones or antibiotics that is slaughtered in the most humane, stress-free way possible.

To put it mildly, Stronach, the billionaire horseman and industrialist that founded the massive Magna auto-parts company, has made an art — and fortune — from the ability to think big.

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