Veteran bloodstock agent Alistair Roden has found success buying for clients at all ranges of the market. Among his stakes-winning acquisitions already this year are Riley Allison Derby winner Lucky Jeremy (Lookin at Lucky) and Turfway Prevue S. winner Vote No (Divisidero), both of whom were purchased for $50,000 at last year's OBS June 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale. He was also responsible for the acquisition of subsequent graded stakes winners Abeliefinthislivin (Arrogate) and Anothertwistafate (Scat Daddy), as well as multiple graded stakes placed Tobys Heart (Jack Milton) and Ajourneytofreedom (Hard Spun). All were purchased at the 2-year-old sales.

“Some of the soundest horses I have bought in my career and who have gone on to race as 5-, 6-, 7-year-olds have come from the 2-year-old sales,” Roden said.

Asked what he looks for in potential juvenile purchases, Roden has a simple answer.

“You want an athlete, obviously,” he said. “Sometimes at the 2-year-old sales we are inclined to give up on conformation a little bit, whereas at the yearling sales we are not because we get the advantage of seeing them come down the lane and seeing how they perform going fast.”

Speed has become the name of the game at the 2-year-old sales and Roden said it is difficult to take the clock out of the buying equation.

“It's gotten to be these times are unbelievable,” he said. “I bought Lucky Jeremy last year and he went in :21 1/5. But if they go in :24 or :11, it's kind of hard to get your head around it. If you call a guy up and say, 'Listen, I found this lovely horse. I really like him.' The first thing they are going to ask you when you are at the 2-year-old sale is, 'What did he work in?' If you say :11 or :22, you can feel the enthusiasm just dying in the conversation. Am I a big proponent of the speed? Probably not. But at the end of the day, that's what sells horses. That's why they are doing it. If they could sell them for $1 million and go :11 and change, they would probably do that. But obviously, they can't.”

Having a vet whose work you trust is another big component of buying at the sales.

“I usually find the horse and then part of the process of buying the horse is doing the vetting,” Roden said. “Sometimes I will have a little sneak at the vet report at the barn just to see if there is anything significant. I don't want to call a guy up and say I have a really nice horse and then we vet them and he flunks the vet. I have a look at the vet report just to see that there is nothing major there, or from what I can interpret, there is nothing major. And then we go through the vetting.”

Lucky Jeremy | Coady Photography

Roden continued, “At the end of the day, I put a lot of faith in the vets. The one vet I use, I've been using him for probably close to 20 years. You have to have faith in them, you know. And if he sends something back and says, well this horse is OK or something in the throat, but otherwise ok, or something in the knee, but he's ok with it, I will call him up and question it. That spur in the knee, do we need to worry about that? Rather than just going by what he said. I question things. I have faith in him. He has maybe been wrong a couple of times, I am sure I have been wrong a couple of times, numerous times, but that's the horse business. But I am not going to go buy a horse that has a major vet issue. I am not going to argue with the vet. Because if you're going to argue with the vet, why are you hiring him in the first place?”

With three decades of experience in the industry, Roden agreed he has developed trusted relationships with many sellers, but a consignor's say-so at the sales only goes so far.

“I know most of those guys down there and you always ask, 'Is this horse ok? Have you had any issues? Does he train OK?' I have that trust factor, but I am not just going to buy the horse because of that,” he explained. “I am going to do my homework. They may be friends, but they are still there to sell horses. They have to make a living selling horses and they've had those horses since last fall and they have been around them a long time. They know what's what. If they send you a horse that has a major issue, as far as training or doesn't want to train, or has a major issue and they pull the wool over your eyes, it's obviously going to come back on them. I am not going to keep it to myself. If someone is screwing me, there will be other people knowing about it. You can have it go the wrong way, it can always happen. But if someone blatantly screws you, it's a small world.”

It is a buyer's prerogative to have his newest acquisition drug tested at the sale and, while he hasn't done that in the past, Roden said he is considering doing it in the future in the wake of increased scrutiny with the implementation of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority's Anti-Doping and Medication rules.

“I haven't done testing because you always think, 'Will I open a whole can of worms?' The guy gave the horse two grams of bute and it's going to beat you,” Roden said. “From an agent's perspective, now, I think you almost have to do it. You have to cover yourself. If you go out and spend a couple hundred thousand dollars on a horse and he ends up testing for Clenbuterol or something, the guys on the track–like in the case off Jeff Englehart and they are going to rule the trainer off–well who is the trainer going to blame? Who is the idiot who bought the horse?”

Anothertwistafate | Benoit

Roden said it seemed like there was increased testing at the OBS March sale, but he questions when such testing should start.

“The 2-year-old guys will say, 'Well, I didn't give the horse anything.' Maybe it came from the yearling sale. What do you do? Do you do it when the horse first goes through a sale? I am not saying that it is the right thing to do. I don't know, but you think the sales company will want to take care of buyers as well. I think [additional testing] is probably a good thing because if there is anybody doing anything at the sale, it makes them a little wary of it, maybe make them think twice.”

Finding a trusted agent is important for any buyer thinking of entering the sales arena, according to Roden.

“You have got to have an agent you can trust who is going to guide you in the right direction and not just go out and buy a horse just for the sake of making a commission,” he said. “You have to have somebody that you trust to start with and if you have somebody you trust, you are hoping that he has a team around him that he trusts.”

To read the first installment of the 2024 X-Files season with David Scanlon, click here. To search the 2023 season, click here.

The post The X-Files, Season 2: Alistair Roden appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Ocala horseman David Scanlon is not just a leading 2-year-old consignor, but he has also built an impressive list of training graduates for leading owners like Godolphin, Coolmore, Don Alberto, and Calumet Farm. In both capacities, Scanlon's operation is well represented on this year's GI Kentucky Derby trail. He was in charge of the early training of leading Derby contender Sierra Leone (Gun Runner) and his Scanlon Training & Sales pinhooked GIII Gotham S. runner-up Just a Touch (Justify).

Whether he is training a horse for a client to race or one of his own destined for resale, Scanlon said they all start with the same training regimen.

“When we go through the breaking and basic training, pretty much everyone is on the same schedule,” Scanlon said. “Everybody goes through getting acquainted with the rider, getting ridden, from small round pens to paddocks, to big fields, to the racetrack. So that's usually our technique that we use and that's pretty much standard for all of our horses.”

Eventually the sales calendar forces the two groups to diverge in their training.

“With a lot of these racehorses, especially for my higher-end clients, these horses who are going to be late summer or Saratoga classic horses, we will plan their work schedules to start much later. Whereas, with the 2-year-olds, I will look at a sales date and then I start to work backwards from the breeze show dates. I want to start a couple of months away and say I am going to start my light schedules here and at this point, we need to be doing this with him and going this fast.”

Sierra Leone | Hodges Photography / Lou Hodges, Jr.

But plotting out a course for his pinhook prospects necessarily begins in the fall when Scanlon and his team are shopping at the yearling sales. Without the seemingly limitless budget of some of those high-end clients, he has learned what corners he can cut while still finding success the following spring in the sales ring.

“It's really hard to get everything for us,” Scanlon said. “The old saying, checking all the boxes, if they have a real high-end fancy pedigree, and they also have a great body and conformation, that's usually going to be hard for a pinhooker to buy. You are usually going to get beat by an end-user.”

Buying on a budget over the years has led Scanlon to accept certain conformational flaws, but always in the context of the entire horse.

“The one thing we always look for, say a horse's conformation isn't perfect, they may toe in, they may toe out or they are a little offset in the knees, you still want them to have a big, athletic walk and see how they walk through it,” Scanlon said. “Maybe we are going to buy a horse that is a little bit off-set in the knees, but he ends up walking through it really well. If I am looking at a horse and he is toed in, but he walks really well through it, I may forgive that horse. But if he comes at me and he has a lot of action in his walk–like a wing, as they say–that's not good. That horse may not be a good mover or a galloper, too. If they don't walk through it well, then they don't move as well.”

That winnowing process that pinhookers are forced to use at the yearling sales in the fall makes for outstanding offerings at the 2-year-old sales, according to Scanlon.

“Some of the best horse people I know have basically gone through and already short-listed horses,” he said of the pinhookers. “We look at thousands of yearlings all year and go ahead with what we've discovered as athletes. Year in and year out, you always see at the top of the standings, horses that the top 10 pinhookers have picked out. I don't think it's a coincidence that they are, every year, some of the best 2-year-olds in the country. It's our job and what we've done for a long time. We have done this so many times, we know what really works and what doesn't. Sometimes when you just have an open check book, maybe it means a little bit more to us, it's how we make our living. It's very important to know what works and what doesn't.”

Scanlon-trained colt by Constitution sells for $800,000 at last week's OBS March sale | Photos by Z

While innuendo and speculation continue to swirl around the 2-year-old sales, Scanlon said he thinks the sales companies have made impressive progress in regulating both the horses and their sellers.

“I think the sales companies are really doing a good job, especially in the last two years,” he said. “I don't think people are actually highlighting enough how far the sales companies have come with their medication rules. It was really a little more open a few years ago, but in the last two years, they have really tried to adopt rules that come along a little bit more in line with what HISA is trying to tell the racing public. Can you always do a little bit more? I am sure you can. And I think that is what they are working on. I do believe there is a lot of disclosure in the sale.

“With some of the stuff they've been talking about, like Clenbuterol, I just feel like that is something that doesn't have a place anymore. We don't even keep that on the farm anymore, for any use. It's one of those things that, with the way the world is now, it's just something we don't need to have around here knowing it's frowned upon and the penalties.”

Asked if there were any changes he would like to see, Scanlon said, “I think the sales companies not being so lenient on some of the guys who do have violations. Enough slaps on the wrist, if you have this many, that's it. You're not going to be able to sell. I do feel like some of the rules with people who have multiple violations will need to be more stringent in the future, just to give people a little more confidence going forward.”

And what advice would he give to potential buyers at the juvenile sales?

“I think the buyers need to educate themselves,” he said. “I think buyers need to realize, when they come to these sales, they need to do a little bit of homework, too, on the people they are doing business with. Spend some time, go through the results. To me, when you go ahead and open the TDN, or if you see guys who are selling multiple winners, guys who have been around for a long time and have sold a lot of winners, they have been established. Ask around and know who you are dealing with. Those are the kind of people I think you want to do business with. I'm not saying everybody doesn't deserve a shot to start a business, but some of these guys can be fly by night. You want to take your time with that.”

Despite the issues that still need to be confronted, Scanlon stressed it was important to appreciate the gains that have already been made.

“I think sometimes in this sport, we are facing a lot of challenges right now, but I don't think we always stop to look at how far we've actually come in the last few years,” he said. “I do think the 2-year-old sales companies are really trying to work together to improve the sport as far as medication and how it all comes together.”

To view the entire 2023 X-Ray Files series, click here.

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The Oak Tree Farm of retired National Hunt jockey Norman Williamson and his wife Janet is responsible for Classic-winning graduates on both sides of the Atlantic. The operation sold future 2019 GI Preakness S. winner War of Will (War Front) and 2022 Irish 2000 Guineas winner Native Trail (GB) (Oasis Dream {GB}) at Arqana Breeze-Up Sales. The Williamsons' search for pinhooking prospects encompasses the international stage, as well.

“The world has become a smaller place,” Norman Williamson said. “I've been doing this for 19 years or so and when I first went to America, there were a huge amount of horses that you wouldn't bother looking at, especially the dirt-bred horses. But now, your list tends to be a lot longer. The past couple of years, we've had a sale in Dubai. We are selling horses around the world basically, to Saudi and back to America. I suppose the best example was War of Will. He was pinhooked by an Irishman, he sold in France and he gets back to America to run in the Kentucky Derby and win the Preakness. That wouldn't have happened 20 years ago, I don't think, because people were thinking, 'We will go to America and just buy the turf-bred horses.' Now I think we can look at most horses.”

For Williamson, the vet report goes hand-in-hand with consideration of a yearling's potential price tag.

“We go through the full vetting,” he said. “Sometimes it will depend on the price range, as in what you can forgive and what you can't forgive. I can't forgive bad knees or if the X-rays of his knees aren't great. For breezing, it tends not to work. They get knee pain and you're in trouble from an early stage. So there are certain things that you can put up with, but the price also has to come into account. If you are going to give what we call good money for a horse, well you need to have a clean set of X-rays because it's very important at the other end.”

Williamson said buying horses to resell automatically eliminates some horses with vetting issues.

“I would have put up with plenty of things, only when I am re-selling, those people won't,” he said. “I have a horse that is breezing well and he's 100% sound, but if his X-rays aren't clean they are going to say, 'Well he's going to go lame at some point.' Most of the breeze-up people know if you get a horse to a breeze and he's very sound, whatever his issues are, they are probably not going to come against him if he can take all of that early. We put up with a bit, but because of the other end–for instance, if you are selling to Hong Kong, they have to be absolutely squeaky clean and also if it's a big-money horse, they have to be clean. But it's not necessarily the answer to soundness, in my opinion.”

He continued, “There are quite a few things that wouldn't bother me in the slightest. Sesamoiditis, for me, is just a bit of time. I have never had any trouble with it. And every single horse seems to have had sesamoiditis. Everyone mentions sesamoiditis, but if the joints and legs handle well and they are tight and they look good, I don't tend to have any problems with them. You can't just go galloping tomorrow morning. You've got to take your time. But I haven't had any trouble with it.”

And vet issues are always subjective.

“As we all know, some vets are more critical than others,” Williamson said. “It is the same process, but you tend to find the racehorse vets, as in people who are going in and out of trainers' yards every morning, tend to accept a lot more because they are seeing it every day. If you just have a vet who is sent there to make the horse squeaky clean, well he won't pass much. But the guys that really see these 2-year-olds and see what they can put up with and they don't tend to go lame on things, they will pass them. You'll be passed with a comment. So it does depend quite a bit on the vet. But again going back to it, if you're looking for a big result and big money, you need to have them pretty good.”

When he returns to sell juveniles in the spring, Williamson acknowledged there are some buyers who will take his assessment of his horses into consideration, in addition to the vet report.

“You can certainly talk to trainers and to some of the agents,” he said of discussing the impact, or non-impact, of perceived vet issues in horses he has been training all winter. “But you've also got to realize that some of these agents are employed by some wealthy businessmen and if the horse does go wrong, they have to go back and say whatever. So you do build up a rapport with your trainers and with your customers. And yes, they do start to believe you, because if you don't tell the truth, you're not going to be in business for very long. The trainers can put up with a certain amount, and will say, 'that doesn't bother me' or 'that doesn't bother me.' But it's a tricky one, the agent might understand you and might totally believe you, but he's got to go to a businessman who is investing his money. So I can see where they are coming from as well. They want everything squeaky clean from their point of view. If you stand there and tell somebody we think this is a good horse and he has probably breezed five times and he hasn't been made to go very fast and I really like him, in time, if the horse is a good horse, they will be back to you.”

The all-important clock dominates the under-tack shows at 2-year-old sales in the U.S. and, while a :9 3/5 furlong work might turn heads in Ocala, there is no official timing at the European breeze-up sales. The difference reflects the different nature of racing in Europe versus America, according to Williamson.

“I think, from a horseman's point of view–and I used to ride myself–European racing is very different from American racing,” Williamson said. “They tend to start off slow and they tend to quicken up–American turf racing is now like it, they quicken off the bend. But dirt racing looks to me like it's the horses that go the fastest for the longest. They break from the gate and they go very quick. Breezing probably doesn't make much difference to that type of horse, but if you have a horse here and you want him to go a mile or a mile and a quarter, and you train him to be a clock horse like America, you'd end up with nothing. You'd spend the next 12 months trying to get him to settle. You can't jump off in a turf race here and have the horse run keen with you because he's not going to finish out. So we tend to do it a bit slower and a bit more gradual. But of course there are unofficial timings now and we still have to do a certain time. You won't get away with a slow horse. But I don't think official times will ever work in Europe.”

Without the reliance on the clock, nuance becomes more important at European breeze-up sales.

“There are people who read it very different,” Williamson said. “Some people say, 'Oh, he did a good time,' and some people will say, 'I didn't like his stride.' Whereas in America, it seems to be the fastest is the best, the fastest makes the most money. I don't think any of us breeze-up people in Europe want a professional clock because we tend to train them like that. And you have a huge amount of horses in America breezing in blinkers. I don't think any horse has ever breezed in blinkers in Europe. Straight away, it would be like a red rag, they'd say 'What's wrong with him?' Which tells you the difference. They don't need to see them go that fast here, but once they have nice action and they do it well at a nice dial, I think it's better than trying to break the clock.”

Not trying to beat the clock also allows European pinhookers added time to allow yearlings to overcome issues that their American counterparts might not have the luxury of waiting out.

“I suppose the one thing you can take out of it, you can slightly, as a pinhooker, buy a horse that's a little more backward maybe as a yearling,” Williamson said. “I don't mean necessarily backward, but maybe a big horse. And you can gradually take your time and then if he has natural ability, well he's going to breeze well anyway. In America, they seem to be the big strong horses with big backsides that people buy for breezing. But here, you can buy a horse that looks like a 1 1/4-mile horse to go breezing and give him that little bit of time. I don't really know anything about the American set-up, but here you can [give them extra time]. You still put them into the routine and get them going into the system, but they don't have to be galloping to break a clock. So you can actually give them a week off here or there and a few days off and maybe have a trot out tomorrow rather than go off cantering or galloping again. So you can forgive a little.”

Asked what changes he might like to see in the yearling sales in America, Williamson said, “You need to keep the horsemanship in it. There are certain things–like every single vendor in America mentions sesamoiditis. Well, it's up to yourself to take a chance. We've all bought horses over the years that had moderate X-rays and have been perfect through their racing careers. So, it's not the end of the world, but you are taking a risk.”

Check out previous installments of The X-Ray Files: with Tom McCrocklin, David Ingordo, Liz Crow, Ciaran Dunne, Bill Heiligbrodt, Wesley Ward, and Elliott Walden.

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Bill and Corinne Heiligbrodt have been in the racing game some 30 years and have enjoyed top-level success with Yaupon (Uncle Mo), winner of the 2021 GI Forego S., as well as Eclipse champion sprinter Mitole (Eskendereya). Both Grade I winners were purchased at the 2-year-olds in training sales, a venue which Bill Heiligbrodt said allows him to add another layer of information to the standard vet report.

“When you buy 2-year-olds in training, you have some indication of their ability,” Heiligbrodt said. “I'm not saying it's perfect by any means, but you get a pretty good indication and you eliminate some horses that may not ever run or might run limited in terms of their ability. When we talk about vetting, I think vetting is probably the most important tool that you have out there to use, after you pass conformation on the horse, especially on the weanlings and the yearlings. But on 2-year-olds, I am a little more lenient on the vetting and then I look more at price. I have tended, over the years, to take chances on really fast horses in the 2-year-old sales.”

Heiligbrodt points to both Mitole and Yaupon to prove his point. Mitole was purchased for $140,000 at the 2017 OBS Spring sale and was a four-time Grade I winner who earned over $3 million on the track. Yaupon was purchased for $255,000 at the 2019 OBS June sale and was a three-time graded winner who earned over $700,000.

“With the 2-year-olds, the vetting is just as important, but in the last five years, the two main horses that I have had, Mitole and Yaupon, both had vetting issues and they were mostly known to the public,” he said. “I looked at them and thought, how can I get a horse that fast–what they worked in and what they could do–so I overlooked things. I was willing to take a chance on issues that could possibly not affect the horse in the long run. Maybe it was a longshot, but with management and time and direct attention to those kind of things, you are sometimes able to overcome it. I wouldn't want to tell people to take too many chances. But you are looking at what kind of talent you are dealing with versus price, versus vetting, that comes into play especially on the 2-year-olds. It's a risk assessment according to what you have to pay versus what the vetting actually is versus their talent.”

He continued, “There is no question that a horse like Mitole didn't vet in most people's minds. But in my mind, it was things that were worth the risk and that you can handle. Had Mitole been a $500,000 horse or a $750,000 horse? Then maybe I take it differently, but for a value, to get a horse that can do what he did that fast, I overlooked some of the issues and thought maybe that we could work through them. When you do that, though, you always risk that staying with the horse.”

While he hit it out of the park with Mitole, there have surely been some strike outs along the way?

“That's correct,” Heiligbrodt said. “I have missed, but I haven't missed a lot on that. I tell you, the 2-year-olds are just a different thing to me because I have some assessment of the talent and of the possibility. The vetting is still just as important.”

Heiligbrodt has built up a relationship with his vets, who over the years, have become aware of what issues the owner is comfortable with and what he is not.

“I use two vets,” he explained. “One in Kentucky helps me with weanlings and yearlings and he knows what I look for and what's important. The other one is in Florida where the 2-year-old sales are and it's almost the same. He knows what I've allowed in the past, so we have a good relationship. In terms of vetting, I take it in the whole grain of the complete horse. You have to be cognizant of things like, for me, OCDs in certain places, mainly stifles, anywhere in the knees or front joints, I am very careful of. Cysts are very hard to overcome anywhere. If I had a horse that had problems with knees, for example, that is never going to go away. You have to be more careful with that, if that's what you're dealing with, but if it's other things involved in the horse, sometimes it's worth it.”

In addition to his success buying at auction, Heiligbrodt has also enjoyed success as a breeder, particularly in the regional markets.

“The issues are the same,” he said when asked to compare buying versus breeding runners. “I vet them all before either we sell them or start breaking them, to make sure what I am dealing with. I approach the issues that they have the same way I approach a decision I made on buying a horse.”

Over the years, Heiligbrodt has learned that a vet issue today may not be a vet issue tomorrow and everything needs to be considered within the context of the complete horse.

“I have a horse today for example, I know he failed the scope test as a weanling,” he said. “I talked to my vet in Kentucky and we went over it because it was a Mitole baby that I liked that somebody else owned and that horse was very young–maybe four or five months old–and by the time the horse was seven months old, the horse had a Grade I throat. So babies tend to change a little bit on things like throats and stuff like that, or at least they have for me.”

Still, the Texan acknowledged how valuable the information available on the vet report can be.

“I think vetting is the most important thing you can do,” he said. “I think you have to do it. I really recognize the vets. I do think there are a lot of issues on vet reports that I won't even look at, but anything involving chips, fractures, OCDs or cysts or scope, I take into measure.”

He concluded, “If you are trying to find athletes in today's racing industry, you are coming up against more competition in these races. If you are up in Saratoga, you are up against the better horses in the market. And the market for the really top horses is a lot. So it's a situation where you have to balance all of those balls at one time; vetting, talent and price.”

Check out previous installments of The X-Ray Files: with Tom McCrocklin, David Ingordo, Liz Crow, and Ciaran Dunne.

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Bloodstock agent Liz Crow, who has an ever-expanding list of accomplished sales purchases, as well as a burgeoning book of pinhook successes with partner Paul Sharp, admits there are subtle distinctions between buying to race versus buying for resale.

“There are several different findings for a horse that you can live with to race, but you can't buy to pinhook,” Crow said. “Some of those things, for example, are the moderate to severe sesamoiditis and juvenile tendonitis. Those horses will be perfectly fine and perfectly normal if you give them time, but you can't put them right into a 2-year-old sales cycle because you can't give them that time. They have to get ready and start breezing. Moderate to severe sesamoiditis requires 60 to 90 days before you break them. Obviously, you just don't have 60 to 90 days [for a pinhook prospect]. You've got to start breaking them when they get to your farm and they need to be breezing by January. And that just doesn't give you enough time. So it's all about timing.”

Whether it's searching for a racing prospect or a potential pinhook, Crow said the biggest part of her job may be determining what is consequential and what isn't on the vet report.

“I think your relationship with your vet is very important,” she said. “Not trusting just the vet report or what the vet reports say, but actually forming a relationship with the vet and having that line of communication where you can have a discussion. You as the agent, and with your client, you have to take that information and make that decision based on what you're given.”

Crow has been shopping the sales for over a decade and has learned to value just that type of relationship she has developed with Dr. Jeff Berk.

“I've been doing this for quite a while now and I've used the same vet my entire career,” Crow said. “I have listened to Dr. Berk read vet reports to me and talk to me about this for 12+ years at this point. We vet 400-500 horses in September alone. Oftentimes, Jeff will say to me in September–we are obviously all moving so fast–he will say, 'Call me on this one, let's talk about it.' And that means this is not a black-and-white thing. I honestly think it's a toss-up for what's more important for my job, whether it's picking out and finding a horse that has talent or is it really deciphering these vet reports.”

She continued, “Vet reports to me are very subjective. They are not black and white. If you get three different vets that give you three different opinions–and that happens more often than not–they are giving you their opinion. They cannot tell you if this horse can or cannot make the races. They are using their experience to tell you what they think based on what they found in the X-rays. But these are not facts. So the most important thing for me, as an agent, is to decipher what that means and if it fits for what my client is trying to do with that horse.”

Crow has built a career on finding horses on a budget who go on to do great things on the racetrack. She purchased future champion Monomoy Girl for $100,000 at the 2016 Keeneland September sale and was able to acquire subsequent Grade I winner Jack Christopher for $135,000 at the 2020 Fasig-Tipton October sale.

“Sometimes the best thing you can do for your client is find that horse that doesn't vet perfectly, but may be very athletic,” Crow said. “I've had a lot of success doing that and I think it's a great way to approach it, as long as your client is clear and understands the risk.”

After purchasing Monomoy Girl in 2016, the filly went on to win the 2018 GI Kentucky Oaks and twice won the GI Breeders' Cup Distaff. The two-time Eclipse champion provided Crow a case-in-point.

“Monomoy Girl had moderate sesamoiditis behind in both hind ankles and she had an OCD removed behind as well,” Crow said. “Dr. Berk and I had a discussion about it and I was completely comfortable with bidding on her based on what he had told me. And I think it did bother a few people, from my understanding. But that's the thing, when you get three or four different vets, they all have different opinions. I think that's part of the problem, all of the opinions.”

Over the years, Crow has developed an understanding of what are significant issues and what issues she can deal with.

“If your vet says the horse has this, this, this and this, I sort of go through it and immediately think, a P1 plantar fragment behind, a lucency in the upper joint, mild sharpening in the upper joint of the right knee, those things are all fine. I know those three findings. Like a sharpening in the knee, any finding in the upper joint of the knee, mild to moderate sesamoiditis that scans well, a fragment in the back of the ankle, these things don't mean anything really. They are just comments, a differentiation of normal. I think that there are a lot of findings that are just that, a differentiation of normal. And deciphering what is acceptable and what isn't is not as easy as just looking at the vet sheet. Monomoy Girl is a great example of a horse that, if you read her vet sheet without any sort of context or discussion, you could think she could have problem, but she didn't and none of those things bothered her throughout her entire race career.”

Advancements in veterinary scans provide potential buyers with a treasure trove of information to work through. That's not a bad thing, according to Crow.

“You can never go wrong with more information,” she said. “I am not going to say it's a bad thing that we have better information. I am just going to say that every horse has  something and it's very rare that you vet a horse that is perfectly clean. You have to learn what you can live with. Most good horses have something. It would be great to continue to inform these buyers that horses don't have to be NSA [no significant abnormalities] to be able to be purchased.”

Click to read previous The X-Ray Files: with Tom McCrocklin,  David Ingordo or Ciaran Dunne.

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“We started buying yearlings before the repository,” Ciaran Dunne said. “Back in those days, you had to shorten down your vet list because of the costs involved. There was very little that we couldn't live with because we might vet, at the very most, four horses a day. So if you were very picky, you didn't get anything. Back in those days, sesamoiditis wasn't as big a deal, there was no such thing as ultrasounds and soft tissue scans. So very early on we learned to live with a lot of things. And because of that, we trained horses who had various issues. We saw a lot of what horses can live with and what horses can't live with.”

Dunne said his decisions at the yearling sales are generally based more on the individual in front of him than on the expansive vet reports available today.

“Some years, I will say I'm not going to buy any horse that has any degree of sesamoiditis above mild,” he explained. “But if I find a horse I really, really like and he's got moderate or severe sesamoiditis and I still like him, I'll probably still buy him. I think if we allow the veterinary findings to dictate what we buy, then a lot of times you end up buying horses you are just OK on physically and you walk away from the ones you love because they have some little issue that might never have been a problem. I take the tact that I would much rather buy one that I love that has a little this or a little that than buy one that I'm just so-so on because he has a clean set of X-rays.”

The Wavertree team doesn't adjust its process just because they are predominately shopping for pinhooking prospects, rather than racehorse prospects.

“I have people tell me, 'He'll be OK to race, but not to pinhook,'” Dunne said. “Ultimately, they are all going to have to be racehorses. And I can't be a future purchaser's veterinarian. I can't say what they will like and what they won't like. There are plenty of horses that come with veterinary findings that are of no consequence to me, but the buyers run away from and hide. And then there are horses that, when we get the X-ray report back after the breeze show, I think we are in trouble here and nobody else seems to have a problem with it.”

Buyers relying solely on a vet report while neglecting to consider the individual may be missing the bigger picture, according to Dunne.

“I'm not going to say that everything with bad X-rays or a bad ultrasound will go on and run,” he said. “I think everything is relative. Some horses who have issues, if they have a lighter frame they can maybe live with them, whereas with a heavier-bodied type, you'd be less inclined to give them a chance. I think people use the vet reports to weed horses out, but I don't think you can look at a vet report and say this horse is no good.”

He continued, “In the same way, when people read X-rays or  read soft-tissue findings and aren't physically there to look at the horse, I don't think they can give a fair judgement on whether this is representative of what the horse actually is. Trying to evaluate a horse off a piece of paper in terms of radiographic findings or trying to evaluate a horse digitally from 500 miles away, I don't think that works. I think there has to be a little common sense. Context matters.”

When Dunne switches from buying yearlings to selling juveniles, he sees a difference in how potential buyers utilize vet reports.

“I think they are harder on the 2-year-olds than they are on the yearlings with the vetting,” Dunne said. “We've seen a lot of yearlings sell for a lot of money with radiographic findings that really raised our eyebrows. Whereas the slightest thing in the 2-year-olds chases them away. Which seems to me to be backwards. Maybe it's that people [buying yearlings] think they have enough time to fix anything. I think they are looking for ghosts.”

Watching horses perform on the racetrack at a 2-year-old sale should provide buyers with more confidence than it generally seems to, according to Dunne.

“It amuses me when a horse goes up and works well enough and gallops out well enough to make them come down to see him and he comes out and he shows himself well and then they are going to come up with this huge problem that he might have,” Dunne said. “I don't know what they think we are that we would be able to mask something like that. At the end of the day, if you look at the scratch rate at 2-year-old sales, the ones that have problems are eliminated before they get to see them. And usually the ones that work good are the ones that end up being good horses. Again, you have to put the whole thing into context. How considerable can it be if they just performed at that level?”

Dunne stressed what he sees as the importance of potential buyers making decisions based on the findings of–and consultations with–their own veterinarians.

“I hate the vet reports,” Dunne said. “I hate showing the vet report because I feel like people, when they ask to see the vet report, are just looking for a reason not to go vet them. Whereas if they just go vet them, their veterinarian may not have an issue with the ink that's on the page. When we buy yearlings, I don't look at vet reports. If I like the horse well enough, I look at my vet's interpretation and I live or die by his opinion. I think everybody should do their own homework.”

Click to read previous The X-Ray Files: with Tom McCrocklin and David Ingordo.

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Bloodstock agent David Ingordo, whose resume includes such superstars as Zenyatta and Flightline, has a stockpile of experience and a team of trusted veterinarians to work with when he travels the sales grounds looking for his next future champion. For Ingordo the all-important vet work is just one part of the puzzle and utilizing it properly helps him to determine when he's getting a bargain and when it's time to walk away.

“The radiographs are one of many tools that we use once we are deciding if we are going to buy a horse or not,” Ingordo said. “Obviously, we inspect them on physical, and then we look at the pedigrees and then we decide if they make the short list. If they make the short list and they jump through a couple other hoops–do they fit whatever trainer or owner I'm working with–then we make that decision to move forward and turn the vetting in to the vet we use.”

Over the years, Ingordo has developed trusting relationships with vets like Dr. Keith Latson, Dr. Nathan Chaney and Dr. Jeff Berk.

“They are all really practical veterinarians,” Ingordo said. “They understand what these horses are going to do. One of the strengths, I feel, with our vets looking at radiographs and interpreting what they tell us is we tend to be forgiving from a practical standpoint. You have to remember, it's a very subjective game. I try to use people that I find their observation and subjectivity is in line with mine and the clientele that I represent and what our goals are.”

At the end of the day, the vet report represents a risk-reward quotient for Ingordo and his clients.

“The X-rays are just part of the puzzle,” he explained. “You have to know how that piece fits when you are buying a horse. If people want a perfectly clean horse, that's fine, that's their prerogative. They're going to pay for that because, if it's a good-looking horse with pedigree and clean X-rays, they top the sales a lot of time. That doesn't mean it's a bad thing, but if you are willing to be a little more forgiving, which we try to be, and you have experience with certain issues–Dr. Latson was great. He would say, 'David, on the racetrack, I've seen this issue 100 times. And my question would be, 'How many times was it limiting in the horse's soundness or their performance?' And he would say, 'Never.' 'Great. I'm in. I'll buy that one.' Or he would say, 'This is one we saw a lot of unsoundness with.' I would ask what is my percentile. He said, '60-40 to be unsound and then once we do the surgery, you have a worse chance of it recurring.' Ok. That's not for me. That's what I need to know.”

Knowing what he can and cannot accept on a vet report has often allowed Ingordo to buy horses at a bargain price.

“We take a lot of chips out,” he said. “At the 2-year-old sales, let's say, they work well and they chip an ankle. It's a garden variety P1 and they are clinical, they have a little pressure in there, and the horse should bring $300,000-$400,000, but because people don't want to give it the time, I can get it for half-price. And the horse is never going to have any residual issue there, best I can tell going into it. For a $2,000 surgery and 60 days stall rest and turn out, which the horse probably needs anyway. What the heck? That's not a bad thing for me.”

On other issues he deals with, Ingordo said, “A lot of sesamoiditis makes me want to scan a horse. If I scan them and that sesamoiditis isn't causing any tears or strain or there are no problems where the ligaments and the suspensory branches attach into the sesamoid, I will probably give that horse 60 or 90 days off and have a perfectly sound horse. And I will probably get a discount. That's ok for me. But if I scan that horse and I find tears, I am out. Because I have had bad luck with that.”

Knowing what issues are acceptable risks with a racehorse prospect should, theoretically, be the same criteria used for pinhooking prospects, right?

“One of my greatest pet peeves in this business is when a vet tells me this horse is OK race, but not to pinhook,” Ingordo said. “I understand what people mean by that, but it isn't a good way to describe it. Every horse is ultimately meant to be a racehorse. I don't care if you buy it for $1,000 or $1 million, the goal is to get these horses to a racetrack, run them around in a circle, bet on them and hopefully get your picture taken because your horse is faster than your competitors. So when I hear that, I understand what they mean and I will call it shorthand. If you are racing this horse and there is no more scrutiny on it from potential future buyers, then these little–I call them jewelry on their X-rays–they have a little old chip that is rounded off, they have some sclerosis here that looks like it's healing, they have an OCD that they didn't take out, but it's not on a weight-bearing part of the joint or doesn't communicate, or they have an OCD somewhere that isn't articular–the horse has a good chance of being racing sound and he's going to be ok. If you have to take this horse and resell it and it performs with a fast time at the 2-year-old sales or grows up to be some Adonis and everybody is going to come vet the horse, people could have differing opinions if this horse is 'clean.' I joke when you pinhook you have to find a horse that the most inexperienced person that has money can approve, so you get the most buyers on that horse.”

He continued, “I love a homebred that is a really good individual that you know he won't pass the commercial market standards on X-rays. What's wrong with him? Little B.S. stuff, but he's never been lame a day in his life, his joints have never blown up. He's been sound, he trains every day, he eats every day, he does everything right. Those horses usually stand up and they would have gotten killed by the scrutiny of the commercial market. Everything needs to be a racehorse and I think we need to remember that, as an industry. That's the ultimate goal.”

For the best way to back up the accumulated experience of what issues hinder performance on the track and the anecdotal evidence of racetrack success stories who had 'failed the vet,' Ingordo envisioned a quixotic research project.

“We have an amazing opportunity to get all this data,” he said. “If you just took the September sale–it's a huge population, it's an annual event–there are 5,000 every year and if you did a 10-year study, just on September yearlings, that's 50,000 horses that go from the most expensive horses sold in the world down to $1,000 or one bid horses and you would see all up and down the ladder. You could rate them, almost say these have a good chance of making the races, these ones we would say have super limiting X-ray findings and then follow those and classify them, these are stifle issues, these are ankle issues, these are hock issues, these are knee issues. I think you could start to draw some really good conclusions. If someone wanted to do that. But that's a massive, massive undertaking.”

Click to read last week's The X-Ray Files with Tom McCrocklin.

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Tom McCrocklin, who was represented this spring by graduates in both the GI Kentucky Derby and the GI Kentucky Oaks, as well as by a pair of million-dollar juveniles in the sales ring, admitted his approach to vet work varies greatly whether he is shopping for a racehorse prospect or for a potential pinhook prospect.

“It's a very clear distinction when I buy a racehorse for myself or I buy a prospective pinhook horse,” the Ocala horseman said. “With the racehorses, I have a pretty good feel of what I can and cannot live with anymore. I feel like I've got my brain wrapped around what young horses can live with and move on with and be racehorses. And then I have the other category of pinhook horses where I know I will have to make buyers and buyers' vets on the other end happy. Then it doesn't matter what I think and what I feel like I know. It matters what they think and what they want.”

McCrocklin said veterinarian scrutiny of the horses in his 2-year-old consignments has only become more stringent in recent years.

“The diagnostics done on the sales grounds pre-purchase are off the charts,” he said. “I will give you a perfect example. The genie is out of the bottle now with ultra-sounding and ultra-sounding so many structures. These vets are all on a kick now where they want to ultrasound eight suspensory branches and four tendons and four proximal suspensories, which is a lot of soft tissue structure. The long and the short of it is this, in this age group, 2-year-olds in training, under pressure, breezing, very few are going to have pristine ultrasounds. They are almost all going to have some commentary; all ranges of everything from swelling to fiber disruption to actual tears. And they are learning as they go–just like me as a consignor–that we are going to get to where we can't sell many horses if the vets are going to expect perfection.”

McCrocklin purchased Kingsbarns (Uncle Mo) for $250,000 at the 2021 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sale and sold the future GII Louisiana Derby winner and Kentucky Derby runner for $800,000 at the 2022 Fasig-Tipton Gulfstream sale. And he is co-owner of GIII Gazelle S. winner and Kentucky Oaks runner Promiseher America (American Pharoah). He said the proof of the vet report lies in the performance of horses like those on the racetrack.

“I compare the ultrasounds to their race records,” McCrocklin said. “I personally had a filly in the Oaks this year and I personally sold a horse that ran in the Derby this year and they both had soft tissue pathology at the 2-year-olds in training sale. They were both given 30-60 days after the sale and they both wound up being fine. A lot of very good, sound racehorses have significant radiographic and ultrasound pathology. They have it at the 2-year-old sale and they have it throughout their racing careers and a lot of them are very sound horses.”

He continued, “I had this conversation with Bob Baffert. 'I tell you what, you pick the 10 soundest horses in your barn–not the 10 best, but the 10 horses that you perceive to be the soundest ones. And you go through those 10 horses and you X-ray everything and you ultrasound everything and do everything these guys are doing at the 2-year-old sales and it will blow your mind what those horses have on radiographs and ultrasounds. You will not believe what you find. And the first thing you are going to say to me is the same thing I am going to say to you at my consignment. I don't know what to tell you, I've been training this horse for six months and he's never had a bad day and he's never had a gram of bute, he's never taken a bad step, he's never worn a bandage. And here you come with all of your machines and when you are done, I want to start crying.'”

Once McCrocklin buys a yearling in the fall, he will spend the rest of the year and early spring working with the youngster. That experience gives him a unique perspective on both the horse's potential and his limitations.

“So many of these horses on all ends are being bought by agents,” he said. “These guys are really bright and they are good horse buyers. I am in no way criticizing them for the decisions they make, but one distinction between us is that I am in my horse laboratory every day in my barn. I put my hands on horses and I am training horses and I am putting young horses under significant pressure to buy them in September or October and make a 2-year-old in training sale in March. They show up in September, October and August and they are on the buying end. And they come back in March, April, June and they are on the buying end again. What gets lost along the way is everything that happens on a daily basis in the six to eight months in between. And there is a significant amount of knowledge and education that comes with that process.”

Asked for specific examples of issues with yearlings that will knock them out of his pinhooking portfolio, but not necessarily his racing stable, McCrocklin said, “Subcondylar cysts in cannon bones–basically a hole in the cannon bone that you are never going to be able to sell as a 2-year-old–subcondylar cysts in a stifle, which would basically be a femur. I can live with those horses because I've trained so many of them that they are fine. But you take that horse to a 2-year-old sale and you are dead, you're absolutely dead. So I can't buy them anymore.”

McCrocklin's biggest vexation, he said, was the variance of opinions on throats.

“When we're looking in a horse's throat with a scope, everyone has a different opinion,” McCrocklin said. “Some people like this, some people like that. On these real popular horses, you can have 10 to 20 scopes and I can have 10 guys come in and say, perfect, perfect, perfect and then the 11th vet comes in, a really reputable vet, and says this horse flunks miserably. It is not black and white, it's far from it.

“But here's what I can tell you, again, as a horse trainer, not as a buyer, not as a seller, I have a lot of horses that scope fine and they can't breathe and I have horses that scope like shit and they breeze great, never made a noise, they get their air, they don't make noise when they are breezing. Again it's very mysterious because we keep those vet books at our consignment and it says Grade I, everybody loves it, and I'm thinking I've been training this horse for eight months, this horse can't breathe. The only way to identify those horses that scope great at the barn, but can't breathe is what we call a dynamic scope where we put it on them and we actually view what's happening in their throat while they gallop and or breeze. And we see a lot of crazy things happen in these throats that are good at rest and the horse can't tolerate training. And then we have horses that can't fully abduct, they can't open their arytenoids all the way to clear their airway, but they've never made a noise and they don't have exercise intolerance. And they breeze great.”

McCrocklin's advice to shoppers is to find a vet who knows what's a deal-breaker and what might not hinder a horse's performance on the track.

“The big-picture message is that there are definitely not parallel lines between racing performance and vet work,” he said. “There is a lot of gray in there. What I tell people is get yourself a very experienced–not just a good vet–but an experienced vet that has a body of work and says, 'Look, I've seen a lot of these horses and they can live with this,' and he also has a body of work and he says, 'Look, I've had a lot of these and none of them make it.'”

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