Chris McGrath | Horse Racing Free Tips

This Side Up: Where the Ice of Fashion Melts

What do these stallions have in common: Competitive Edge, First Samurai, Include, First Dude, Majesticperfection, Midnight Lute and Noble Mission (GB)? Okay, so you could also add A.P. Indy, Into Mischief, Lope de Vega (Ire), Medaglia d'Oro and Quality Road to the mix. But you would hope so, too, if you happen to be one of those highly paid advisors who tell their patrons that the only way to start a breeding program is with most expensive covers around.

Because these are the dozen sires responsible for mares that made seven figures at the Keeneland November Sale. And their overall complexion suggests a curious disconnect between this auction, and the one staged in the same ring back in September.

You can judge as much from a couple who have been through both sales. Proud Emma (Include) made $9,000 as a yearling, while sale-topper Midnight Bisou (Midnight Lute) notoriously failed to reach her reserve at $19,000. That's hardly typical, obviously, in that most of the yearlings trading for that kind of money struggle to pay their way; but we all know how few of the most expensive ones fare any better.

Admittedly we have just seen Flightline (Tapit) and Malathaat (Curlin) standing up for the seven-figure yearling. And the whole viability of our business hinges on enough of those investments working out, to keep the rich guy in the game, in equilibrium with enough stories like Rich Strike (Keen Ice) to give everyone else a chance.

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In the case of these valuable broodmare prospects, they have generally disclosed something–not blatant in their pedigree and conformation as adolescents–to secure elite caliber as runners. But while performance is demonstrably a critical indicator for their recruitment, their purchasers will often have contrived some retrospective discovery of genetic depth.

To be fair, we're all guilty of that. Once a horse demands attention on the racetrack, we will generally turn up some satisfactory, latent distinction in its family tree, especially one that flatters our prejudices. Rich Strike is a good example. His dam had been discarded for $1,700, and his half-sister was claimed for $5,000 the month before he won the Derby. Yet he turned out to have such an interesting background–by a grandson of Smart Strike out of a Smart Strike mare, for instance, and a third dam by a forgotten full-brother to Smart Strike's sire–that people like me could rationalize his emergence as a wholesome rebuke to the flimsiness of many commercial pedigrees.

We could hail his sire, similarly, as just the type that “should” be siring Derby winners–even if his only other stakes winner, at that stage, had come in Puerto Rico. Keen Ice's pedigree is saturated by old-fashioned influences, which sustained him to be better than ever in his fourth campaign. He soaked up nine races as a sophomore, rounding off with a strong-finishing fourth in the GI Clark H., and I'm duly delighted to see that Rich Strike is himself likely to make his own ninth appearance of the year in the same race. And don't forget that his campaign really began in the Gun Runner S., in the last week of 2021.

That race was won by Epicenter (Not This Time), who remained at Fair Grounds for all three of the local Derby rehearsals. In the process he emulated Mandaloun (Into Mischief) the previous year, when other local protagonists included Hot Rod Charlie (Oxbow) and the lamented Midnight Bourbon (Tiznow).

New Orleans appears to be an increasingly important staging post on the Triple Crown trail since its trials were extended. I suspect that's because the extra distance redresses a loss of conditioning opportunity in the lighter schedule nowadays favored by so many trainers. As a result, the opening of the meet this weekend feels very much like the start of the next cycle in our community narrative. It will be interesting to see whether the traditional winter haven of Florida can respond to this squeeze.

Be all that as it may, producing a Kentucky Derby winner at the first attempt did not rescue Keen Ice's latest yearlings from neglect at the sales. But while he plainly owes fourth position in the second-crop table to a single earner, the fact remains that his maturing stock has included 70 other winners, equating to 58% of starters. That handsomely outranks all relevant competition, including the three feted names above him: Gun Runner (40%), Arrogate (46%) and Practical Joke (50%).

Keen Ice | Sarah Andrew

So while some of his farm's strategies are hardly aligned with commercial convention, I certainly wouldn't mind a daughter of a stallion who carries Deputy Minister 3×3 and Chic Shirine (Mr. Prospector) as fourth dam. That's because I believe that all matings should aim at a saturation of genetic quality, three or four generations back, as the best insurance against the unpredictability of inheritance. If you can't even be certain what color your foal's coat will be, then you must surely strive to make it a matter of indifference which strand comes through, in terms of ability, simply because it's all good stuff.

Yet the yearling market seems to be massively predicated on sire power. This, to a degree, is self-fulfilling: in order to warrant an expensive cover, a mare needs to bring commensurate performance or pedigree into the equation. Naturally there are stallions that have had to earn their stripes, and come up the hard way. Yet even Into Mischief reiterates the folly of disregarding 50% of a horse's genetic contribution, his dam Leslie's Lady famously having then come up with Beholder (Henny Hughes) and Mendelssohn (Scat Daddy).

Leslie's Lady had been an $8,000 short yearling by Tricky Creek out of a Stop the Music mare. Interestingly, though he ended up standing in New Mexico for $2,500, Tricky Creek was a source of exactly the kind of soundness breeders can expect from Keen Ice (and Rich Strike, when his time comes). Late in his stud career, a survey ranked Tricky Creek fifth among active sires by percentage of starters-to-foals; and seventh, by starts-per-starter. (You really shouldn't overlook this, when reflecting on the way his daughter produced Beholder to win Grade I races every year from two through six.)

Moreover Tricky Creek's dam was a half-sister to the dam of Soaring Softly (Kris S.) and in all produced 15 winners, six at stakes level. At one stage, Sheikh Mohammed gave $5.3 million for a Kingmambo half-brother to Tricky Creek at the yearling sales. So while Tricky Creek himself couldn't even muster 20 stakes winners, there was ample quality percolating that might be stoked back to life by the right alchemy.

Into Mischief | Sarah Andrew

Without getting too bogged down, the mother of Leslie's Lady was out of a half-sister to a Grade I winner, and the next dam won races like the Alcibiades S. and Schuylerville S. The point is that Leslie's Lady had nearly seamless quality from top to bottom in her fourth generation. Yet that stuff, for your average yearling speculator, is quite literally off the page.

The best breeders, however, know that it's a long and winding road to the summit. That's why the market for broodmares is far less beholden to nervous fads than the one for their offspring.

So I want to finish off with a tribute to two horses who attest to the merit of the long game. One is Tempesti (Ity) (Albert Dock {Jpn}), co-owned by the Razza Dormello Olgiata synonymous with the breed-transforming partnership of Federico Tesio and Mario Incisa della Rocchetta. In Milan last Sunday he became the first horse carrying the iconic red crossbelts to win the Group 2 prize that honors Tesio's memory.

As a coincidental snapshot of an immeasurable legacy, Tricky Creek represented just one of countless sire lines tracing to Nearco (Ity); while his damsire His Majesty, whose legacy as a broodmare sire also includes Danehill, was by another Dormello graduate in Ribot (GB). But you can equally find those names on either side of the pedigrees of, say, Frankel (GB) or Flightline.

Less cheerfully, this week marked the end of the road for Cambiocorsa (Avenue of Flags), once feted as “queen of the hill” at Santa Anita; and subsequently dam of five stakes winners, and second dam of European champion Roaring Lion (Kitten's Joy). Tragically, she had outlived both her celebrated grandson, when barely embarked on a stud career, and his dam Vionnet (Street Sense), who was also prematurely cut down.

Jan Vandebos with Cambiocorsa and Vionnet | Courtesy Jan Vandebos

Nobody cares for her horses more lavishly than Jan Vandebos, and this loss will doubtless poignantly renew the memory of others. But she should be proud of Cambiocorsa's contribution to the remarkable legacy of her dam Ultrafleet (Alfeet)–who also produced millionaire sprinter California Flag (Avenue of Flags) and the dam of GI Preakness winner Rombauer (Twirling Candy).

Ultrafleet was a $10,500 yearling at the September Sale, and made that look expensive on the racetrack. But she then founded a dynasty so regal that even her unraced daughter by Cowboy Cal could produce a Classic winner.

That won't surprise those who have been scouting the breeding stock sales not just for the past couple of weeks, but for many decades. It had been a similar story to Keeneland at Fasig-Tipton, after all: sires with seven-figure mares there included Awesome Patriot, Brody's Cause, Daredevil, Flower Alley, Karakontie (Jpn), Mucho Macho Man, Street Boss, Tale of the Cat (twice) and Wilko.

In the end, I think the obsession with sire power is often little more than a gesture–whether a practical gesture, or a merely irritated one–against the overwhelming complexity of this game. With their huge modern books, sires invite the illusion that you can get all the answers by having a more sophisticated software program than the next guy. That's always going to appeal to investors who come into this business expecting it to behave as coherently as those in which they made their money. A mare, with one foal a year at most, is little or no help to that way of thinking. But good luck to you, if you only bother seriously with one face of the coin–and need it to land that side up, every single time.

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This Side Up: Billion Dollar Babies are Here

It's a long time now, some 40 years or so, since Nelson Bunker Hunt's notorious observation that “a billion dollars isn't what it used to be”. Which presumably means that today it's no longer even quite what it was, back when it wasn't what it used to be. After all, we've just seen the dispersal of a single art collection–assembled by the late Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft–realize $1.5 billion. Nonetheless it feels as though the transatlantic yearling market, in 2022, has reached a pretty historic landmark in tipping 10 figures for the first time.

Though a couple of minor catalogues remain to be processed in Europe, the overall value of yearling trade in North America and Europe has already advanced $63,996,667 (6.8%) on the 2021 tally of $937,533,161 to smash a symbolic barrier at $1,001,529,828.

Even in a marketplace currently inuring us to records, with one auction after another achieving new high-water marks, it's pretty staggering to register a first-ever crop of “billion dollar babies”.

This figure, moreover, crushes very strong internal growth in the European market under the weight of a dollar that has been leaning heavily on other currencies in general, and sterling in particular.

That's perfectly valid, in that the upper tier of the European market is dominated by international rather than domestic investment. For those who count their wealth in dollars–the kind of people buying Mr. Allen's Klimts and Cezannes–the quaint old “guinea” has proved an especially congenial means of conducting business this year.

So while turnover and averages at Tattersalls and elsewhere have been soaring giddily, year on year, dollar conversion actually confines the value of the European market to a degree that would astonish its indigenous participants. In those terms, it has actually shed 2.4% this year, down to $391,241,817 from $400,981,400 in 2021. While we naturally pass over the COVID-warped turnover of 2020 (weighed in at $328,852,326), the European market this year was virtually identical to 2019, at the prevailing dollar rate, and down 4.8% on $410,789,647 in 2018. That's a chastening correction of perspective, for any Europeans attributing a booming export market to the sheer quality of their product.

Consider Europe's premier yearling catalogue through the prism of a fluctuating exchange rate. In October 2014, when £1 would get you $1.59, the average Book I yearling at Tattersalls realized $393,893. After the Brexit referendum in 2016, sterling having slumped to $1.22, the same book averaged $292,168. And this year, with sterling bumping along the floor at $1.12, a “record” average for the sale converted to just $280,080. So while the average guinea cost of a Book I yearling has gained 26.6% since 2014, the average dollar cost has meanwhile come down by 28.9%. (Jolly well done, Brexit supporters!)

Of course, the pinhooker who buys and sells within the European market, or the breeder who pays a covering fee there, will also buy their bread and milk in the same currency. So their sense that business is booming is perfectly legitimate, and its suppression within these figures–unprecedented as they are–only goes to show how remarkably potent is the current bull run in international bloodstock.

The flattening of European growth by dollar conversion leaves the average cost of a 2022 yearling, either side of the Atlantic, virtually unchanged at $94,851. In North America, however, we have reached a landmark every bit as stunning as the $1-billion overall market. In 2022, the average American yearling broke six figures, up from $98,558 last year to $106,806.

Once again, then, we renew our perplexity about this market's peculiar immunity to rampant geopolitical and economic maladies out there in the real world. We know that its most affluent contributors were never asked to furl the cash umbrellas they were issued after the banking crisis, and many have now separated themselves altogether from the exposure being experienced by the rest of society. Yet after a decade of spending stimulus, interest rates have finally been dusted off to tackle such forgotten inflationary horrors as plague and invasion. And somehow this market is still humming along.

The demand is real. Forget aggregate turnover, look at the astounding clearance rate. This has historically been less robust in America, but whereas 75% of those entering the ring here in 2018 found a new home–and that was a better clip than in the three preceding years–in the last two years the tally has climbed to 83 and 82% respectively. In Europe, similarly, the 2018 clearance of 78% has been moved up to as high as 86 and 85%.

Fasig-Tipton photo

So how does this all hold together? The stallion farms certainly appear to be taking their cue. Some of their fees for next spring arguably (and understandably) claim a piece of the action. Several elite stallions are getting steep hikes, on both sides of the water, in some cases at a time of life when their quality has been long established. But the organic connection between yearling values and covering fees entitles farm accountants to seize the day.

Over the past week, moreover, we have also seen how some unusually glamorous new stallions are stimulating demand for the most eligible mares. And while the gentleman who gave $4.6 million for 2.5% of Flightline can comfort himself that the underbidders set standards in the astute calculation of bloodstock values, this horse has reminded us–despite the notorious brevity of his first career–of the economic potential of sheer fan power.

That's significant, because for now there's limited crossover between those spending at Keeneland this week, and those spending in the same ring back in September. It's heartening that so many people want to buy racehorses; and especially that many are doing so because viability on the track, in some parts of the country, feels increasingly feasible. But the circle still needs to be completed. If demand is so high, then why is supply diminishing? Why is the North American foal crop still to revive after its post-2008 collapse?

After the banking crisis, we soaked up four consecutive crop drops between 5.9 % and 12.7%. There followed three years of stability before numbers began to ebb again, down 4.4% in 2018 even as the market was booming. Obviously we've since had a big COVID-shaped punch to the belly, but the projected crop for 2023 is again down.

As we know, the racing program–notably its black-type tier–has not sufficiently matched that contraction to remain competitive, and therefore stimulating to handicappers. The legal wagering menu is expanding all the time, and our own demographic is ageing.

Demand is high, but foal crops are decreasing | Eclipse Sportswire

It is true that crop sizes little different from today (c.18,000) serviced the American sport adequately in the era when it still retained a mass following. And the huge leap in the Thoroughbred population actually came after that heyday, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, instead being driven by a revolution in the commercial breeding environment.

In this latest cycle of demand, however, we see no corresponding rise in supply. We've had a bull run for several years now, even riding out the pandemic with surprising resilience, yet the foal crop has meanwhile stagnated at best.

Doubtless there are many different reasons for that. But one big difference between now and the couple of decades leading to the peak of 1986 (over North American 50,000 foals) is the failure of the export market. Those years of revolution owed significant impetus to European stables. (And rightly so, as things turned out: the result was a game-changing regeneration of the European Thoroughbred.)

Now I'm not going bother with an umpteenth rebuke for the disastrous modern schism between the two gene pools, and therefore the two markets. Nowadays, after all, I consider that more of an opportunity than a problem: if I'm right, then those who share my views will cash in; and if I'm wrong, then there's no need to gnash any teeth.

Nonetheless one or two collective responsibilities do need to be embraced. How, for instance, to retrieve that European faith? Many of the prejudices that have stifled investment are actually thoroughly misguided. Nonetheless reconciliation could be a valuable incidental benefit from the earnest embrace of HISA.

In the domestic market, meanwhile, how do we excite all these people buying racehorses with the idea of breeding them? As things stand, this buoyancy at the sales ring does not yet fit any coherently virtuous circle of engagement.

You couldn't say that Californian racing is thriving simply because it has produced nearly all the recent champions most likely to engage new fans: Zenyatta, California Chrome, American Pharoah, Justify, Flightline. Yet while other local barometers remain dispiriting, notably purses and fields, at least its leaders have made the tough decisions necessary to secure a more sustainable footing for any other progress that can be made. They have started from the ground up, literally, with their racing surfaces–and have done such a good job that they might yet prove able to turn round some of their other issues.

By the same token, just because horsemen elsewhere are making plenty of dough, whether in the ring or on the track, that doesn't mean they can be complacent that everything else is in place. For a time, remember, the price of silver told Bunker Hunt that he had just about nailed his attempt to corner the market. Let's be cautious, then, before deciding that all the glister on our Thoroughbreds must be gold.

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This Side Up: Would this Really Be Such a Stupid Gamble?

“Now why did I do that?” For some of us, the more painful that question becomes, the easier the answer. It'll be right there in that empty bottle, greeting you on the table in the morning.

For those of you whose conduct has more complex influences, however, apparently there's a handy publication out there called The Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. And you thought horse pedigrees were a niche interest.

In a recent edition, researchers from the universities of East Finland and Liverpool crunched data from 15,000 Finnish men commencing national service. I hope we will be indulged for cutting to the chase, as they conveniently reduce all their analysis to a couple of sentences of conclusion.

“This paper,” they declare, “demonstrates that a person's IQ predicts his engagement with horse betting.”

Now you know where this is going, right? It's another example of wasting a lot of time and effort to demonstrate something we know to be quite obvious already.

But wait. “Our results show that IQ… is positively correlated with participation in and expenditure on horse betting.” In other the words, the smarter your Finn, the more likely he is to bet the ponies. The puzzles of horse racing, the researchers suggest, will appeal most to a sophisticated, inquiring mind.

Just think of all those generations of stern parents who have sat down errant sons (the survey did not include females) to rebuke their dissipation on the racetrack. Turns out that they should actually have been instructing them in exotics strategy, and how to turn Ragozins to riches. Go west, young man, but be sure you don't miss Arapahoe Park on the way.

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For many of us, a stake in the breeding, raising or trading of Thoroughbreds is gamble enough. But it is good to be reminded of the stimulation available in the constant variables of our business, and to consider the different factors that govern our decisions.

To what extent, after all, are those decisions truly our own? How much do we act according to our innate or inherited nature–the stuff, in other words that we bring into the world with us–and how much are we simply conditioned by learned experience; by patterns of conduct absorbed from the environment?

Why is it, for instance, that modern horsemen are so much more reluctant to ask questions of the Thoroughbred as demanding as those routinely set by their predecessors? Trainers today may think that they are simply making a rational judgement on a developing body of evidence; whether because they view the breed as less robust, or their own methods as more sensitive. But the chances are that they have, to a large degree, simply responded to the evolving habits of mentors and peers.

Take, for instance, nothing less than the two best horses in the world. One is set to bow out at Ascot on Saturday; the other will quite possibly do the same at Keeneland in three weeks' time. Both, it should be stressed, have had their talent drawn out with consummate skill. But while both are routinely compared with specters past, they won't actually explore their utmost capacities even against such horses as happen to be alive and well.

Okay, so the fact that they operate in different disciplines means that a direct showdown between Baaeed (GB) (Sea The Stars {Ire}) and Flightline (Tapit) would nearly always, even in bolder epochs, have been a bridge too far. But the fact is that Flightline has entered the pantheon in no more than 431 seconds; while Baaeed, though slower to blossom than Frankel (GB), has like that champion been confined to home soil and a pool of competition in which his supremacy has long been apparent.

To be fair, Flightline has tested the cramped parameters of his career with as much ambition as they permit: from Del Mar to Belmont, from six furlongs to 10. Baaeed, for his part, has followed precisely in the footsteps of Frankel at the age of four, running in the same five races and therefore only stepping up from a mile on his penultimate start. (Something that may well end up being true of Flightline.)

America's best, Flightline | Sarah Andrew

Baaeed's response to that new challenge hinted that he may only just have found his true metier. For a while, connections entertained the idea of probing a still deeper seam of stamina in Paris. In the event, they will have felt thoroughly vindicated, in having backed off, when the Arc was contested in such gruelling conditions. For some of us, however, even now there remains one stubborn question. If Baaeed were to win the G1 Qipco Champion S. with his customary leisure, then why on earth should he not proceed to the Breeders' Cup as well?

Remember that he began his career last year by winning four races between June 7 and July 30. Obviously he was a class apart, at that level, but he went about each assignment with equal gusto and has since often appeared the sort that keeps something in reserve. And this year, crucially, a three-week interval makes the Breeders' Cup far more feasible for any of the Ascot protagonists than when the card has been staged, with deplorable parochialism, just a fortnight beforehand.

Given the relative emphasis on speed between Keeneland and his race at York, the extra 300 yards of the GI Breeders' Cup Turf, if technically uncharted, would only play to Baaeed's strengths. There's obviously a degree of presumption, given that he has a serious job to do at Ascot, but I can only think of one reason why the question shouldn't at least be asked once safely making the winner's circle–and that's a reluctance to go looking for unnecessary trouble with so precious and cherished a champion.

But if that is indeed the case, then it just shows how inimical are the instincts of modern horsemen both to the genetic proving of the breed, and to the promotion of the sport. Baaeed wouldn't lose a cent in his stud value, if the gamble happened to backfire; and nor would he be remotely diminished in the estimation of posterity. He would have nothing to lose, and much to gain–in terms both of his own stature, and our communal hopes of reaching a wider audience.

In principle, exactly the same was true of Frankel. As it was, however, the Breeders' Cup was never a realistic option. For one thing, it was staged only two weeks after he ran on bad ground at Ascot; and his trainer, of course, then had heartbreaking mitigation for his conservative instincts. But I've always said he ran like a dirt horse, and would have lapped them in a GI Breeders' Cup Classic instead won by Fort Larned (E Dubai).

In both cases, then, we are left with the same suspicion: that an immaculate record increasingly becomes an impediment to maximum fulfilment. There's no need to reprise a list of the great champions, from Secretariat down, that ran (and risked) enough to forfeit the formal veneer of invincibility. But let's just remind ourselves that an unbeaten horse is very different from an unbeatable one.

As we've said, the kind of thinking that shapes decision-making–our priorities, our assumptions–will typically embed prevailing norms. And these do change, radically if gradually, from generation to generation. In its earliest days, the Thoroughbred was asked to run three heats of four miles in a single day. Nobody would suggest doing that now; and nor would anyone seriously expect Baaeed to take on Flightline at his own game.

Nobody? Actually, that's not quite true. But if he were mine, I guess that wouldn't be the only time I came down in the morning to find that bottle waiting reproachfully on the table.

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No Mistaking this Man’s ‘Forte’

Two Grade I winners inside an hour last Saturday: both sold as November weanlings at Keeneland, both through the same consignment. But while their shared provenance at least guarantees that you'll want to drop by the Bluegrass Thoroughbred Services draft this time round, as well, it is not as though Forte (Violence) and War Like Goddess (English Channel) can otherwise elucidate the vagaries of our business.

Because while one made respectable money, the other was more or less given away. War Like Goddess, swept up in the kind of cull essential to a program on the scale of Calumet, mustered a solitary bid beyond her reserve and was lost for $1,200.

“But the guy I sold her to, he couldn't get the grand with Taylor Made next fall!” notes John Stuart. “Which means I'm a better salesman than all those guys!”

His chuckle makes plain the levity of this claim. But there is a more serious point, which he can expand by recalling another filly sold for the same client. In 2013, Stuart topped the Saratoga sale for Brad Kelley with a daughter of Dynaformer at $1,225,000–and, to be fair, she did actually go on to make the podium in a couple of graded stakes for Three Chimneys. In the adjacent stall, however, a Virginia-bred Curlin filly had been almost entirely ignored while her neighbor was shown and vetted.

“Came from Peggy Augustus' Keswick Stud,” Stuart recalls. “And she ended up the lowest-price horse in the sale. Anybody could have played for her at $40,000. If you had enough money to buy lunch at Saratoga, which is expensive, you could probably have gotten in the group of four bidspotters that bought her. They pinhooked her back to Timonium that October and she brought $86,000.”

Not bad, for a flip of barely two months. But the next time this filly came under the hammer she made $6 million as six-time Grade I winner Stellar Wind.

So you never know. War Like Goddess (whose much lamented sire, incidentally, was acquired for Kelley by Stuart) was eventually found by Donato Lanni at the 2-year-old sales, for $30,000, and has so far banked over $1.6 million. Forte, for his part, realized $80,000 as a weanling pinhook, making moderate gains when sold to Repole Stable and St. Elias Stables for $110,000 the following September. But he has now added the GI Breeders' Futurity S. to the GI Hopeful S., and Amy Moore of South Gate Farm is prudently taking her chance to consolidate what remains a young operation. His half-brother by Uncle Mo made $850,000 to Mayberry Farm at the September Sale, while their young dam Queen Caroline (Blame), in foal to Not This Time, sells as Hip 222 at Fasig-Tipton next month.

Forte winning the Claiborne Breeders' Futurity Saturday | Coady

Though not strictly Virginia-bred like Stellar Wind, Forte is as close as you can get. “He was bred by a Virginia breeder–first horse she ever bred–and raised on a Virginia farm,” Stuart says. “And, incidentally, he was the lowest-price horse that the Repole crowd bought last year. Of all those expensive horses, he's the one that has hit.”

If there is a note of pride in his voice, that's fair enough. For Stuart himself was not only raised in Virginia, but on no less iconic a farm than Llangollen. His mother, Tessa (subsequently Dole), who had arrived from England after the war as an aspiring show rider, was taking schoolgirls from nearby Foxcroft out hunting when she met–and was hired by–the farm's celebrated owner.

“Liz Whitney Tippett had gotten the largest settlement in American history when she divorced Jock Whitney because he wouldn't make her Scarlett O'Hara in 'Gone with the Wind',” Stuart says. “And of course she had this 1,000-acre farm in Upperville that was her wedding present from him. So she had everything. And my mother, for 10 years, was the person who knew where all the horses were, what their names were, what they were doing.

“So we lived on the farm, mother did the horse stuff and my father had the evening duty. He would go to the Dulles airport and pick up some young trainer by the name of Whittingham and a rider, Arcaro, that mother had to mount in the fox hunt the next day! Whittingham was too smart for that. But they all came through there, the Aga Khan, everybody.”

Liz was actually Stuart's godmother, but she had evidently lost some of her sunshine by this stage of her life and his family, expanded to three sons, eventually moved on. They remained local in Clarke County, however, his father having been grandson of a Winchester doctor who had practised to 93. (On finally retiring, he received a citation from President Eisenhower in person.)

“We had a feed store in Berryville and sold a bunch of feed and hay to the horses at Charles Town,” Stuart recalls. “And we were lucky to get paid. My father wasn't interested in the horses, he just sold the feed, so it was my mother had to hustle the horses all her life.”

War Like Goddess took the Joe Hirsch Turf Classic over the boys Saturday | Sarah Andrew

Stuart wryly relates a pivotal chapter in family folklore that might have given them all an easier life. His maternal grandfather, a Manchester cotton man, had manufactured typewriter ribbon; but when he died, IBM having decided that they didn't need ribbon anymore, the far-sighted trustees decided to divert his stake to a sounder investment than this passing fad for computer screens.

“Unfortunately they instead decided to make disposable cotton underwear for Englishwomen,” Stuart says, shaking his head. “And that busted the company. But it made my mother work harder in life. She went into the bloodstock business in America, and I got to learn. So something good came out of it…”

Sure enough, his mother took a 20% stake when another Clarke County horseman, Tyson Gilpin, in 1958 founded what Stuart acclaims as the first bloodstock agency in America.

“Say Bull Hancock wouldn't give you a season,” he explains. “And he was tough to get a season off, for a good horse. Then a shareholder could sell it privately and the Stallion Service Bureau was the first to do that for you.”

Even today few would consider the situation adequately improved, but those were certainly tough times for a woman in the horse business. But Tessa made a success of her pioneering role in a pioneering venture for a dozen years or so.

“My mother was independent, really a go-getter in a quiet, English way,” Stuart reflects. “There was no money at the time, and we all had to work as kids. I had to work my way through college. I was 14 when I had my first job at Saratoga, showing for Tyson. That would have been 1964.

“And then I worked for all the Virginia places, because in that era there were still a dozen really good breeders out there. People from all over the world would come in June and start in Charlottesville at the Van Clief farm, work their way up to Middleburg, and look at all the yearlings. So I was lucky, because it's nearly all gone now.”

In the heyday of the Virginian Turf, the Gilpin family had been able to import horses like Teddy (Fr) to Kentmere, but now came serial migrations to Kentucky: the Hancocks left, the stallions left, and the mares followed them.

“State of Virginia didn't do much to help,” says Stuart with a shrug. “They have now, with the Virginia Certified Program, that was a great idea. But the breeding, it's gone everywhere except for Kentucky. I mean, there's breeding everywhere. But if you're not in Kentucky, you're not commercial.”

And, actually, Stuart himself contributed to that revolution.

“When I first came here and put my sign out with my partner Peter Bance from Richmond, Virginia in 1980, the business was evolving,” he explains. “Because, you know, those old hardboots didn't prepare their horses well; didn't show them right. And so a group of us came in. Billy Graves, Fred Seitz. I'd been taught how to groom and show, I'd won a National Pony Club championship. And we also had a little different ethical standard. Some of those hardboots, they were interested in the one-night stand–not a honeymoon!”

Stuart at work | Keeneland photo

Stuart had started in the Bluegrass with a couple of years selling and advertising seasons for Spendthrift, just about the time Seattle Slew arrived. With the commercial market just taking off, it was a promising time to be seeking out new angles and opportunities. For instance, here came the young guy who had bought Meadow Stud back in Virginia, asking Stuart to fill the paddocks that had introduced Secretariat to the world. It so happened that there was a Contagious Equine Metritis scare just then, so Stuart did a deal with a shipping company to take stock for their month of isolation. And this also happened to be the summer that Sheikh Mohammed was sending the market into the stratosphere.

“He came to the summer sale at Keeneland and bought the highest-price filly in history, and the highest-price colt,” Stuart recalls. “And next thing I knew I was meeting six Sallee vans full of horses, Wednesday morning at the Meadow Stud. And then, in September, he bought about 100 more. Well, out of that whole bunch they got one little sprinter, Ajdal.”

But later dealings would prove very fertile, both for the Sheikh's team and Stuart. For example, he sold them G1 1,000 Guineas winner Blue Bunting (another Dynaformer filly bred by Brad Kelley) for $200,000 at Saratoga. And when he sent an Argentinian mare for what proved the final foal-share to Dubai Millennium, the Sheikh asked to buy her after losing his cherished young stallion. Urged to return to the same talent pool, Stuart found another Argentinian mare to send to Rahy and the result was Godolphin stalwart Rio de La Plata.

The South American scouting avenue had first opened through Roy, the son of Fappiano he brought back to syndicate in Kentucky.

“I flew down, didn't have any money, and the horse walked out of the stall,” Stuart recalls. “And he had a look of eagles about him. They wanted $1 million and I said, 'I'll take him.' And though he didn't really work in America, every country I leased him to–Brazil, Argentina, Chile–he was leading sire.”

Then he helped to import Blue Prize (Arg) (Pure Prize) to win the GI Spinster S. twice and the GI Breeders' Cup Distaff for Merriebelle.

“They don't hothouse them like we do,” he says of the South American breed. “And remember that in Argentina they race more like the United States than any country in the world. They run on the dirt, they go around our way, they get after their 2-year-olds. They make horses tough. And so if you're buying the best of the crop, they'll have gone through a lot to get the special one.”

Eclipse champion Chief's Crown | Coglianese

But the turning point was perhaps when Carl Rosen's son Andrew revealed a precocious wisdom in sorting out his father's estate.

“I got really lucky,” Stuart admits. “I was running low on funds, a young, struggling bloodstock agent with two sons. And they had this Danzig colt out of Six Crowns, who was a Secretariat daughter of Chris Evert. And Andrew said, 'If the estate needs some money, I can move this 2-year-old.' This was in June, he was still unraced. By the end of the summer, he was the best 2-year-old in the country: Chief's Crown. And I sold a half-interest in him to Robert Clay for $10 million cash. A half-interest!

“So I had my commission and got myself out of jail, and the horse won the first Breeders' Cup race. And I get to know this 25-year-old, Andrew Rosen. Hell, we've talked about every day ever since.”

Stuart was asked to handle the dispersal of the rest of the Chris Evert family.

“There was one that seemed much the most unlikely to be of merit,” he recalls. “She'd never run, she was huge, she had a tube hanging out of chest. Nijinsky Star. I guess there's been 30 graded stakes winners come through her for Juddmonte.”

Few horsemen can compete with the influence of Stuart's draft at that auction, which also included another mighty matriarch, Toll Booth, sold for John M. Schiff. But perhaps there is one legacy, a very literal one, that means even more to this proud Virginian.

“One of my favorite things in my professional career is that I got to sell the last crop of yearlings for Paul Mellon,” Stuart says. “As a result, I got to know the trustees. And, in his will, he had said: 'If you ever run across a really good charity that takes care of retired horses, then you can support it.' Well, at the time, I was president of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation. And, in three different pops, I was able to get them $8 million from the Mellon estate. They gave $4 million to the Brits, too, because he was of course a great anglophile. But what was most important was not so much the money as the old guard saying to themselves, 'If Paul Mellon says we need to do this, then we need to do it.'”

Much of the change Stuart has observed in the business has nourished his own progress. Equally, however, he feels that some old principles are nowadays unduly overlooked.

“Okay, it's a lot more sophisticated now,” he concedes. “In the old days, you'd walk around with your trainer and buy your horses. Now you've got 30, 40 agents backed up with cardio, X-rays, DNA samples, and every other thing. The one thing they don't do much is study the pedigree. Back then, pedigree was the big thing.

“I do remember, as a young consignor, when James Delahooke came along with Guy Harwood, they'd make you walk and walk and walk. And of course he was very good at it. But now it's gone too far the other way. It's all about the physical–and they all follow the same horse.”

Stuart with his son, Sandy | Sue Finley photo

Needless to say, no less than his patrons with War Like Goddess, Stuart knows perfectly well what regret feels like. He sold Army Wife (Declaration of War) for $50,000 as a short yearling, and she has now earned close to seven figures. So none of us ever stops learning. Sure, now that he has tipped 70, Stuart is spending a little more time in Florida in winter and Maine in summer and is relying on his son, Sandy, to run the agency day to day. But it was only in recent years that he started, after due research, assembling a dozen mares of his own.

“And they've been spectacular,” he says. “I probably didn't give more than $50,000 for any of them, but I already have six silver cups for graded stakes. And no, I'm not going to tell you how I pick them!”

Stuart credits his wife, Douglas Wise Stuart, for her contributions to the team, as she painstakingly combs through the race records of every mare offered at the breeding stock sales.

One admitted ingredient, however, is that the mare could run. That, after all, is something he could have learned from his own pedigree.

“My mother died a couple years ago,” Stuart says. “She spent her last 20 years here in Lexington, said the country reminded her more of England than anywhere she'd been in America. Founded the Woodford Hounds here. Nothing fancy about her. Loved her dogs, loved her horses. But she was genuinely loved by those that knew her.”

Maybe she could have bought Llangollen itself, if only those trustees had stuck with IBM. But while Stuart would have been richer that way, the same could hardly be said of the life he has led.

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