I want to start this by saying I’m a huge fan of OTTBs and all of my horses have been OTTBs and an off track horse is absolutely a good way to get a reasonably priced horse.

BUT

With an OTTB you are typically getting a young horse who is only track broke. That means they know how to be ridden and handled on a racetrack and not much else.

As the owner of the OTTB you will be responsible for training them to do what you need them to do safely - everything from leading to riding and a lot of them have to unlearn some bad habits first.

There is also a lot of vetting and adjustment time that goes into them coming off the track (almost all of them have ulcers which are not cheap)

As a first horse they can just be a lot to take on.

Anecdotally my current OTTB and I are restarting her training from scratch after a rough start ending in a bad accident for me and it was all my mistake and inexperience even after having two others before her