They love their horses at WinStar Farm. The owners, Bill Casner and Kenny Troutt, have played at every level of horse racing. The farm’s top management, Doug Cauthen and Elliott Walden, grew up in the horse business. When Super Saver galloped home first in the Kentucky Derby on May 1, WinStar had reached horse racing’s mountaintop.

Now it hopes to sell the colt that took it there. No offense to Super Saver, the likely favorite in the 135th running of the Preakness Stakes on Saturday. It is what WinStar does: it is a horse-trader.

“Everybody is going to be sold, it is just a matter of when,” said Cauthen, WinStar’s president. “We sell in every market and we buy in every market. We try to find value. We don’t have an unlimited budget, and our goal is to be profitable.”

The farm has sold horses it has bred at yearlings sales — WinStar fetched $3.1 million at Keeneland in 2002 from Ireland-based Coolmore Stud for the eventual European champion One Cool Cat.

WinStar has sold interests in horses en route to the Triple Crown trail — in 2008, it sold 50 percent of Court Vision to International Equine Acquisitions Holdings for several million dollars.

The farm has sold horses as stallion prospects, too, even though WinStar stands seven studs of its own and considers them the core of its business. In 2007, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum’s Darley America reportedly offered more than $30 million to stand the 2007 Haskell Invitational champion Any Given Saturday. He was sold in a heartbeat.

“We’ve sold six Grade 1 winners because you can’t keep them all because costs are high and we need to generate cash,” Cauthen said.

When Casner and Troutt purchased what was then Prestonwood Farm in Versailles, Ky., 10 years ago, they not only wanted to win the Derby and every other big race but also wanted to build a commercial breeding and racing operation that would rival Coolmore and Darley.

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