Month: September 2023

Though it's not said publicly at any great volume within bloodstock circles, it's understood that a horse bred with turf leanings has an unspoken commercial ceiling when they're sent through the ring at North American auction. When a turf-bred stallion enters the breeding shed, he does so with a similar imposed handicap.

North America is a dirt-centric racing jurisdiction, and as long as the sport's richest races – and those viewed as stallion-making races – are held over that surface, the incentive to breed a horse for the grass in the commercial marketplace is going to take a backseat.

The overarching rule of the commercial Thoroughbred market, though, is that money talks, and every September, Kentucky Downs puts a lot of it out there in purse money during its boutique turf-only meet.

The benefits are especially apparent for Kentucky-breds, who compete for significantly more with additional purse income from the Kentucky Thoroughbred Development Fund. For example, a Kentucky-bred winner of a maiden special weight at Kentucky Downs would earn the winner's share of a $150,000 purse, while a winner born out of state would recieve the lion's share of an $80,000 purse.

With Kentucky being the primary hub for Thoroughbred breeding activity in North America, and the KTDF sweetening the pots so strongly at Kentucky Downs, the incentives to breed and sell for turf appear as high as they've ever been.

“Obviously, if you're running for $100,000, or $150,000 allowance or maiden race, if you're not a Kentucky-bred, you're cheating yourself,” said Ted Nicholson, vice president of racing at Kentucky Downs. “When you fold that into as an owner looking to buy at Keeneland or Fasig-Tipton, you're thinking, 'Kentucky Downs' purses are so large, I'd love to get a turf horse.' To have a turf horse that has a chance to break its maiden for $150,000 or win an allowance race for $180,000, you're not going to find that anywhere else.”

Those high purses for Kentucky-breds go beyond just being a happy reward for the owner of the winning horse. They can also influence the sire lists. A burst of big earnings can go a long way in determining where a stallion lands on the year-end earnings hierarchy, particularly in the freshman sire race, where fewer races are available. Stakes wins can be hard to come by for a rookie sire, and picking up a stakes-level purse in a maiden race can give turf-leaning horses a nice advantage.

“If you have a freshman sire and they can win a race or two out of the 70-some-odd races that we're going to run here, that really bodes well,” Nicholson said. “There's no question that'll pick your head up, especially at the same time that the Keeneland sales are going on.”

If the purses at Kentucky Downs end up influencing the breed, Nicholson said it would be a happy byproduct of the greater strategy of promoting Kentucky-breds that began with the expansion of Historical Horse Racing in the state during the previous decade.

Purses were bolstered significantly at Kentucky's tracks after HHR funds started rolling in, particularly for horses born in the state. The funds were managed with the goal of keeping horsemen in the state year-round, instead of shipping elsewhere during times when the purses had been comparatively weaker – particularly the Ellis Park and Turfway Park meets. The incentives to keep a Kentucky-born horse racing in Kentucky were becoming too good to pass up.

“A lot of it was launched in the 2015, 2016, 2017 years,” Nicholson said. “That was the push initially, and once we started to see what was happening, and we were seeing trainers not ship their horses to Saratoga, for example, because the purse structure at Ellis was good enough and the racetrack was good for them to try to break maidens at Ellis instead of Saratoga.

“At that point, I think that's when people within the KTDF and KTA were thinking maybe this gets to where this helps the breeding side,” he continued. “Then, the next thing to conquer was 'Well, this isn't just going to help the breeding side, this is going to help the turf breeding side.' It's kind of like a chronological domino effect. First, it was to help the purses, then it was to help the overall Kentucky breeding.”

Furthering the idea that Kentucky Downs could help shape the direction of turf breeding, the growth of the track's HHR revenues and its mission to bolster other tracks within the state helped birth Kentucky Downs Preview Day at Ellis Park. This year, Kentucky Downs Preview Day featured a trio of $200,000 stakes races to serve as preps for standout races during the Kentucky Downs meet.

The Kentucky Downs meet is just seven days long, but its influence as a force to expand turf racing into a commercially appealing product for breeders and buyers goes outside its own property lines.

“For us, it's pretty simple,” Nicholson said. “We realize the importance of the Kentucky-bred. We're in the state of Kentucky. We're only in it less than a mile from the border, but the reality is we feel really compelled to show that Kentucky-breds are the most important thing. When you think about Kentucky as a state, you think about horse racing and bourbon. It's that drive that you take between Lexington and Louisville, and you see all the horse farms, that's what we're all about here in Kentucky.

“There's nothing better than being able to promote the fact that you're going to be heavily compensated if you purchase a Kentucky-bred,” he continued. “We have the highest Kentucky Thoroughbred Development Fund money available in our purses. If you win a maiden race, your non-Kentucky-bred horse is going to get a share of $80,000, whereas if you win a maiden race and you are a Kentucky-bred, you're going to have the winner's share of $150,000. Obviously, that extra $70,000 is huge. When you say those differences out loud, you can't help but promote the fact that we love the Kentucky-bred, and we want them to thrive in the arena that we have.”

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