EquiTrace Technology on Display at Fasig-Tipton July

Buyers and sellers on site this week at Fasig-Tipton's Newtown Paddocks may have noticed signage for a fast-growing company called EquiTrace. Launched in 2019, the EquiTrace App not only identifies horses with the use of a microchip scanner, but also provides management and traceability solutions for horse farms and equine organizations.

Dr. Kevin Corley, a veterinary specialist in equine medicine and critical care, was one of the key founders of EquiTrace and said that the idea for the product stemmed from the industry's inefficiencies with identifying horses that have led to several high-profile mix-ups in recent years. As EquiTrace developed further, it expanded from not only an identification method, but also a management tool for farm managers, trainers and other equine-related organizations.

“As we launched EquiTrace, we started with the foundation of identification and then worked to address other issues including traceability, medication and what happens to a horse after racing,” Corley explained. “We've worked to build a system that provides real value to the people using it, but also has side benefits of helping the whole industry.”

EquiTrace was first launched in Europe and has been incorporated into many leading stud farms there, but it is now gaining traction in the U.S. and has been put to use at top farms in Kentucky, including Lane's End Farm. The product has already been used at Goffs Bloodstock Sales, but Fasig-Tipton is the first Thoroughbred auction house in the U.S. to partner with EquiTrace. At the Fasig-Tipton July Horses of All Ages and the Selected Yearlings Sales, all incoming horses were identified and checked in via the EquiTrace App.

Fasig-Tipton's Anna Seitz was the first member of Fasig-Tipton's team to learn about the product. She admitted that she had initial  reservations, but was eager to learn more as soon as she saw the app in action.

“I brought everyone in from Fasig-Tipton and showed it to them,” she said. “We all said that we had to get behind this right away because this is something that should have happened 10 years ago. It's cutting edge and it's a really positive thing for the industry. I truly believe that it's something we're all going to be using in the next couple of years. They've been an awesome company to work with and we're very happy to be partnering with them.”

“I think for Fasig-Tipton, it produces a system where they can 100% stand by it and make everything more efficient for checking horses in,” Corley added. “You've got a verifiable chain of how this horse was identified by this person at this time. It speeds up the process of making sure the right horse goes into the sales ring.”

The EquiTrace App works through the use of microchips, which are required by The Jockey Club for all registered Thoroughbred foals of 2017 and later. With the use of a scanner, the app quickly identifies the horse and pulls up its profile. From there, various pieces of information can be traced and recorded for that horse.

“We're trying to produce really useful tools to capture information that everyone needs to manage an efficient farm or training facility right at the sight of the horse,” Corley said. “Every time you scan the microchip, the app captures its GPS location. If you scan a horse when it comes off the van, you have a complete movement record for the horse. One of our clients was called about a foal and he just looked the horse up in the app and could tell the vet which barn to go to.”

Medical records can be maintained on each horse's page. EquiTrace recognizes over 1,000 products through the scan of the medication's barcode. Veterinarians and managers can enter the necessary treatment for a horse. As approved staff scans the horse, they will see the exact medication required along with its dosage and suggested withdrawal time. Users can choose the state jurisdictions they race under to adjust medication guidelines.

Reproductive records can also be traced through the app. Farm managers can maintain notes on each mare's profile as the mare is examined. That information is then easily accessible to other farm staff looking for up-to-date information on the horse.

While all of this data is accessible for horses with any type of microchip, further information can be tracked from horses with the Merck Animal Health Bio-Thermo Microchip, which contains a biosensor that measures a horse's body temperature.

“This is a really powerful tool because at just the stroke of a microchip scanner, people can get the temperature of their horse and the data is captured immediately onto the app,” Corley explained. “As an internal medicine specialist, that excites me because we're all facing a staffing shortage and it's really hard to take temperatures twice a day. With this system, it's very practical and there are no errors. One of our clients said they recorded 18 temperatures in a minute and 19 seconds.”

Looking ahead to the long-term benefits of EquiTrace, Corley said he believe expanded use within the industry will improve traceability of horses once they are retired from racing.

The approximate cost of the app is $2 per horse each month, with discounts available for farms with larger numbers.

“The idea is to give tools to the industry that help them at what is hopefully a price that everyone can afford,” Corley noted. “We've been delighted with the initial uptake in the States and we're working to continue to further that.”

To learn more about EquiTrace, click here.

The post EquiTrace Technology on Display at Fasig-Tipton July appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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How Brookdale Farm’s Fred Seitz Made a Name For Himself

It felt like everything was up in the air; but actually everything was falling into place. Even as a kid, from nowhere obvious, Fred Seitz had discovered an affinity for horses. And the young man stepping onto the tarmac at Lexington airport had meanwhile learned resilience and adaptability with the Marine Corps. Sure enough, all the perplexity Seitz felt about his future was about to evaporate.

“I was wondering what I was going to do when I grew up!” Seitz recalls in his gentle, humorous tones. (He was, by this stage, a Vietnam veteran and closer to 30 than 20.) “So seeing how I had loved the horses when I was younger, I took a trip out here. I'd never been to Kentucky before. They didn't have jetways back then, so as I went down those steps from the plane, it was a very odd sensation. I just said to myself, 'This is it. This is where I'm going to live for the rest of my life.' And I was right. I went down, I stopped, and I knew.”

And here he is, very nearly half a century later, reflecting in his office at Brookdale Farm on a career best measured not just by the scale or diversity of his achievements (raised and sold a Derby winner; pinhooked an Oaks winner; stood a champion stallion; raised a champion stallion) but by the respect of a whole community. In an industry often dominated by dynastic operations, he has literally made his name—to the point that the next generation, in sharing and enhancing its prestige, are themselves evolving into one of those Bluegrass clans whose nurture is a guarantee of trust. Seitz the outsider has become Seitz the patriarch.

“People use the term 'self-made man',” he remarks. “I don't believe in that. When I think of all the people that have helped me along the way—people who taught me, helped me understand, gave me a push, gave me knowledge, encouragement… That's not self-made. That's made by a lot of kind people. So I've been very fortunate.”

One way or another, it has been quite a journey to Versailles from his native Bronx. But he always had the right stuff in his own pedigree: his father had also been a Marine, serving on Iwo Jima; likewise an uncle, lost in a B-25. And when Seitz was five, he was blessed by a transformative change of environment—the family of six having previously squeezed into a one-bedroom apartment in the city—after his father joined the maintenance crew on a New Jersey farm belonging to the social reformer Geraldine Morgan Thompson. It was called Brookdale and, though since swamped by suburban development (for Brookdale University and a county park), Seitz would eventually preserve the name in tribute to the life-changing opportunity he found there. Because the farm, crucially, was divided between agriculture and a training track.

“All of a sudden, we'd left the streets of New York for this little hamlet in the country,” he recalls. “A wonderful place to grow up. And I became fascinated by those horses. There were all these different trainers in there, renting stalls, and the place had a great history going back. Regret had trained there—a Whitney farm was right across the road—and Colin was another that came off the place in the old days. And I was walking hots by the time I was 10. Of course, they gave me the easy horses, but I couldn't believe they were paying me: I thought it should be the other way round. A dollar per horse! It was a wonderful opportunity to learn, and I was so lucky to be able to find out, so early in life, what I wanted to do with all my ensuing years.”

Through high school, Seitz worked vacations as a groom and exercise rider at Monmouth Park. To this day he treasures a photograph of a filly named Triple Brook, in the winner's circle at Atlantic City in 1964. He's holding the halter, 17 years old, and couldn't conceive that life might contain any greater satisfaction: he'd helped to break the filly at her owner's farm.

The trainer is not in the picture. Seitz says that was pretty common at the time, to cede the limelight to the owner, though on this occasion Ralph McIlvain might just have been busy at the windows.

“Mr. McIlvain was a gambler,” Seitz recalls. “And he'd tried to hide this filly in the mornings. He knew she was really nice, and he didn't even run her in a maiden special weight, but in a claimer. She won by six. Obviously the word had gotten out, she only paid $2.70. He'd wanted to make a real killing. I didn't know anything that was going on, I was just a kid. But the owner found out that he was gambling with her, and that he could have lost her for $5,000, so he sent her to New York to Ridgely White. After that, she won the Vagrancy, she ran second in the Beldame, third in the Regret—all graded races today. Obviously she was a very good filly.”

Whether in the Brookdale barns or at the track, Seitz was acquiring a diploma in old school horsemanship: not just from veteran Irish trainers like Tom Harraway and Mike Fogarty, but also from other grooms. Seitz was avid to learn, and his vocation seemed plain. But then came two intrusions: college in Western Pennsylvania and then, with his country at war, aviation with the Marine Corps. In Vietnam, they were shooting down pilots as fast as they could be trained. With corresponding urgency, two days out of Officer Candidate School, Seitz married his sweetheart Peppe who had attended a sister school to his own.

Leaving Peppe with her family, Seitz became a bus driver in the sky, flying 50 men at a time in giant H53 Sea Stallion helicopters, first from Okinawa and then off the Vietnam coast with the fleet they called Yankee Station.

“I spent my last two months flying in, flying out,” he says. “I have to be honest, I was very fortunate. I did see some of the results, and I transported some unfortunates, but I never spent a night 'in country', as they called it. I never had those situations to deal with, that were so hard on many people.”

On his return, he became an instructor at the Navy Flight School. It was a traumatic time for the nation, and no less so for a young serviceman who had seen friends maimed or killed. There was much hurt and confusion over the hostility of so many compatriots when his peers had shown such courage and sacrifice.

“It was difficult,” Seitz says. “The country was fed up, and rightfully so by '73, '74. But it was difficult to understand the reaction of some people, it felt like they were shooting the messengers. I grew my hair long as quickly as I could. Aviators have those leather jackets, just like you see in the movies, with the squadron patches and identification. Nowadays I realize how beautiful those are, really it's your history. But I took them off, gave away my uniforms to my children. So I was actually disrespectful myself, because it all just felt so wrong—the way we were treated. Eventually you get over something like that, but I do still remember it very keenly.”

But if Vietnam had proved a white-hot furnace, then immersion in the cooling waters of the Marine ethos had forged a character that would serve Seitz no less well in his civilian career. He never lost his sense of pride, fidelity and resolute humility. “You find out who you are,” he says. “It's a separate culture that very few Marines don't honor. Once a Marine, always a Marine. So many aspects are valuable: fortitude, discipline, camaraderie, excellence. They have a saying: adapt, improvise and overcome. Simple, but very true.”

All the same Seitz was decidedly at a crossroads, back in 1973, when he took that fateful flight to Kentucky. But while he had just one door to knock, that was enough. Peppe's father had encountered a Standardbred man, Francis McKinsey who had managed Walnut Hall and Almahurst, and asked him to look out for a chance for a hardworking ex-Marine.

“He was a very kind, generous man and along with Joe Taylor, who had a Standardbred background also, helped me find this job on a small farm belonging to Tom Collins,” Seitz recalls. “On The Rocks Farm, it was called. Doesn't exist anymore. I was very early to be a farm manager. To put it bluntly, I wasn't qualified. My experience had been with horses in training. But if I didn't know something, which was often, I'd call Francis in the evening and he'd tell me what to do. So if I was often learning by my mistakes, he helped me to learn quickly.”

After a couple of years Seitz extended his education to the rapidly evolving sales scene. First came a stint under Ted Bates at a new subsidiary to the New York firm of Fasig-Tipton, testing out Keeneland's local monopoly. (Today, of course, Seitz's daughter Anna is bringing things full circle as Fasig-Tipton's much esteemed Client Development and Public Relations Manager.)

“It was just Ted, and a secretary, and I was his assistant,” Seitz says. “I did everything from putting on the hip numbers to setting out the chairs, whatever it took. Ted was not just a wonderful horseman but a wonderful man, very open with his experience. The [1976] Derby winner Bold Forbes and Preakness winner Elocutionist had both just come out of their tent sale, for about $15,000 each. Soon after came Genuine Risk, Seattle Slew, and, bang bang bang, they just kept coming.”

Then came a turning point, Seitz stepping into the slipstream of agency pioneer Lee Eaton.

“In my opinion, Lee invented that business,” he says. “He was very good at it, he was selling lots of horses and back then you got five percent for everything, whether you sold or not, so that was very lucrative. I did a few sales for Lee, and then he gave me some of his overflow. And it was amazing, the quality even of his overflow.”

With the help of his former patron Collins, who introduced him to his banker and the concept of debt, Seitz leased a plot and experimented with half a dozen weanlings in a nascent pinhook market.

“I wanted to play the game, more than just board horses,” he remembers. “The weanling trade was fairly new. There was Stanley Petter, there was Lee, a few others. So the timing was very fortunate. We spent about $60,000 total on those six and they sold for almost double, November to July, which was outrageous good fortune. Two became New York stakes winners, in races that would now be graded; and a third was stakes-placed in California. So we couldn't have been any luckier, starting out.”

Steadily Seitz expanded his portfolio, while acquiring parcels of land piecemeal: just 10 acres, at first; then another 10, 32, 165. Today Brookdale encompasses over 400 acres on different tracts.

“Which I could never have imagined in a million years,” he says. “When I got off that plane, I'd thought to myself, 'If I work hard here, in a couple of years I might be able to manage a small farm.' But fortune has been amazing for me, especially with my help. Victor Espinoza has been here 35 years. People like him have just been a godsend.”

Another market that then remained usefully immature was the one for stallions. “There wasn't the competition then,” Seitz says. “So I took a shot on a horse called Greinton. Beautiful, beautiful horse. Correct. Mile speed. Good pedigree.” He pauses wryly. “And he was an abject failure, just a dud. But I was in the business.”

In 1988, therefore, his friends Ric Waldman and John Perotta, who managed Deputy Minister, approached Seitz to stand the horse when Windfields closed its Maryland division.

“I believe he had 3-year-olds coming,” Seitz recalls. “And the rest of the story everyone knows. He took off, immediately he came here, and the arrangement worked extremely well. He was a big strong horse, very virile. He was a handful, a strong personality. In fact, one of the first times Victor went in the stall with him, the horse grabbed him by the pectoral muscles, lifted him in the air and threw him down. From that day on, we treated him differently. But he became leading sire in North America twice. He was here until he died [aged 25, in 2004], and is buried up in our cemetery. So, another big strike of fortune.”

Seitz has presided over many changes in the business. He remembers Paul Mellon, as a shareholder in Greinton, ringing to caution against the reckless expansion of his book to 60-odd mares. But he has always moved with the times, always adapted like a good Marine.

By the early 2000s, when stallion recruitment had become prohibitive, Brookdale streamlined back to sales prep and boarding only. Sons Freddy Jr. and Joe, also Marines, were meanwhile progressively given responsibility, in management of the farm and sales divisions respectively. The one constant, throughout, has been results.

Brookdale graduates remarkably include not just I'll Have Another (Flower Alley), the result of a mating recommended by Freddy Jr. to long-time client Harvey Clarke, but also the horse he beat in the Derby, Bodemeister (Empire Maker). Tapit was foaled and raised here before being presented for sale as a $625,000 yearling; Serengeti Empress (Alternation) was pinhooked as a weanling; while the latest champion through this nursery is Vequist (Nyquist), raised for breeders Tom and Sue McGrath of Swilcan Stable.

Yet for all these moments of fulfilment, Seitz admits that nothing has ever gratified him, day to day, more than his six or seven years with a trainer's licence.

“By that stage I had this place running smoothly, with the right people, and my background as a teenager had primarily been with horses in training,” he explains. “I had five stakes winners, never from more than eight to a dozen horses. Keeping horses in training truly is a sport of kings but I loved every minute of it. If the fairy came up with a magic wand, that would be very easy for me. Other than a healthy family, the thing I'd most want is a really good horse.”

One way or another, at 75, Seitz has left very few stones unturned with Thoroughbreds. But his own versatility is matched by the object of his obsession: he sees no golden seam to separate the best from the rest.

“They come in all shapes and sizes,” he says with a shrug. “I like correct individuals, with size and some quality. But I used to go to the spit box at Keeneland to look at the winners cooling out, trying to figure out what makes a good one. And I never accomplished much that way at all!”

Seitz credits David Lambert as a mentor who gets closer than any to finding that elusive formula, and Sally Lockhart among many others for their contributions over the years. Above all, of course, there is the immense satisfaction of having three of his children follow him into the world of Thoroughbreds.

When he first came here, the Bluegrass establishment could still resent perceived interlopers. Seitz feels this to be no longer the case; that commercial breeding has made for a wholesome meritocracy. In the meantime, of course, he has himself created a family brand. Typically, this observation elicits a modest chuckle.

“That's right,” he says drily. “And I think about that. There's an old saying, 'shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations'! I could worry about that, but it's too far down the road. I have 16 grandchildren, no doubt some will stay in the business.

“I've done this so many years now. I'm still here just about every day, but I'm learning to slow down. I try to stay in my own lane. I'm having trouble figuring out where I belong. But I'll get there, because I still love it just like that 10-year-old kid.”

The post How Brookdale Farm’s Fred Seitz Made a Name For Himself appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Lesson Horses Presented By John Deere Equine Discount Program: Anna Seitz On Rags To Riches

You never forget the name of your first lesson horse – that horse who taught you what you need to know to work with every one that follows.

In this series, participants throughout the Thoroughbred industry share the names and stories of the horses that have taught them the most about life, revealing the limitless ways that horses can impact the people around them. Some came early on in their careers and helped them set a course for the rest of their lives, while others brought valuable lessons to veterans of the business.

Question: Which horse has taught you the most about life?

Anna Seitz, Fasig-Tipton: “I worked for Todd Pletcher when he had Rags to Riches and she won the Belmont Stakes. Somehow, she changed me…just because she was so amazing, beating the boys. I just remember she made me want to be better at what I do.

“She was a cool horse. She was mean and nasty in the stall, but then, when I got to pony her out on the track, she was a completely different horse. Just to be around something so great, and to be a part of that team, it was pretty special.

“When she won the Belmont Stakes, I started hyperventilating, and I'd never hyperventilated before. I didn't know what was going on. I just remember Todd's assistant being like, 'You've gotta breathe,' and I said, 'I can't.' I was just so overwhelmed. It was like a dream.

“I ponied and walked hots for Todd, but I also did a lot of office stuff. I took care of owners, and whatever Todd needed. I got to see everything, so it was cool to get to work with the horses, but also deal with the owners. It was a great experience, and now I have horses with Todd.”

Anna Seitz leads I'm Already Sexy into the winner's circle

About Rags to Riches
2004, m., A.P. Indy x Better Than Honour, by Deputy Minister

One of the great fillies of the 2000s, Rags to Riches established herself at the top of her division early in her 3-year-old campaign with wins in the G1 Las Virgenes Stakes and Santa Anita Oaks before taking the Kentucky Oaks by a dominant 4 1/4 lengths. She then became the first filly to win the Belmont Stakes in 102 years when she bested Preakness Stakes winner Curlin by a head in one of the most exciting renewals in the history of the classic race.

Rags to Riches finished the season with an Eclipse Award as champion 3-year-old filly of 2007. She retired with five wins in seven starts for earnings of $1,342,528.

Bred in Kentucky by Skara Glen Stables, Rags to Riches was a $1.9-million purchase by the Coolmore partnership at the 2005 Keeneland September Yearling Sale.

Now a broodmare, Rags to Riches is the dam of two winners from five foals to race. Her most notable runner to date is the Galileo colt Rhett Butler, who was a two-time champion in Hungary.

The post Lesson Horses Presented By John Deere Equine Discount Program: Anna Seitz On Rags To Riches appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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PR Back Ring Fasig-Tipton November: Fastest-Rising Stocks In The Stallion Market

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS ISSUE OF THE PR BACK RING

The latest issue of the PR Back Ring is now online, ahead of the Fasig-Tipton November Sale.

The PR Back Ring is the Paulick Report's bloodstock newsletter, released ahead of, and during, every major North American Thoroughbred auction. Seeking to expand beyond the usual pdf presentation, the Back Ring offers a dynamic experience for bloodstock content, heavy on visual elements and statistics to appeal to readers on all platforms, especially mobile devices.

Here is what's inside this issue…

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS ISSUE OF THE PR BACK RING

  • Lead Feature: Bloodstock editor Joe Nevills examines the leading stallions by year-to-year gain in mares bred, and how each horse in the top five took a unique path to get there.
  • Stallion Spotlight Presented By New York Thoroughbred Breeders Inc.: Molly Lightner on Honest Mischief, New York's most popular stallion of 2021 by mares bred.
  • Toast To Vino Rosso Presented By Spendthrift Farm: Taking a closer look at two first-crop Vino Rosso weanlings at the Fasig-Tipton November Sale.
  • Ask Your Veterinarian Presented By Kentucky Performance Products: Dr. Rolf Embertson of Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital discusses when and why a veterinarian might perform a C-section on a pregnant mare.
  • Lesson Horses Presented By John Deere Equine Discount Program: Anna Seitz of Fasig-Tipton explains what working with champion Rags to Riches taught her about life.
  • Ask Your Insurer Presented By Muirfield Insurance: Bryce Burton of Muirfield Insurance explains the options to insure an in-utero foal from a broodmare purchased at auction.
  • Pennsylvania Leaderboard Presented By Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association: Tracking the leading earners of Pennsylvania owner bonus incentive earnings heading into the fall.
  • First-Crop Sire Watch: First weanlings cataloged in the Fasig-Tipton November Sale.

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS ISSUE OF THE PR BACK RING

The post PR Back Ring Fasig-Tipton November: Fastest-Rising Stocks In The Stallion Market appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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