What would your dream horse ranch look like? Would there be a training track, barns big enough for several fleets of equines and a rehab facility? Well, that’s what the newly purchased ranch of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates resembles.
Gates, whose daughter is a keen show jumper, reportedly paid $18 million for Jenny Craig’s Rancho Paseana, a 229-acre horse farm located in Rancho Santa Fe, in San Diego County. The tech giant plans to turn it into a grand prix circuit for jumpers and hunters.
“I was happy that the buyer is someone who can afford to turn it into the showplace it was meant to be,” Craig told UTSan Diego. “It will be kept as a horse barn so the neighbors will be thrilled … the person who bought it will make it like it can and should be.”
The property includes:
Craig said she received many offers trying to turn the land into something else, like a golf course of hotel, but she wanted to keep it for its original purposes: horses.
Gates and Craig share the love for equine animals. This is not the first time Gates has supported his daughter’s passion for horses either. It was reported that he rented a house in Palm Beach County, Florida, near Wellington’s Equestrian Festival, where his daughter Jennifer is a show jumper.
The Daily Mail Reported that around that time, Gates leased four elite jumping horses for $50,000 to $75,000 each for Jennifer to train. One suspects that such coveted animals surely takes proper horse supplements to stay as fit and healthy as possible.
Gates is ranked by Forbes as America’s richest person, amounting to a net worth of about $80 billion. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has donated about $30 billion since 2000.
