Greathouse Schemes for Action All the Way

His friend Spider Duignan knew that the stakes were high. When the horse coasted past the wire in the GII Saratoga Special, Duignan turned and said, “You needed that bad, didn't you?”

Deuce Greathouse was candid in his reply. “It was not an option,” he said, “for that not to happen.”

Raised the way he was, Greathouse knows that there are never any guarantees with horses. Since taking his cue that day, indeed, Rhyme Schemes (Ghostzapper) has himself demonstrated as much by coming up with an ankle issue shortly before the GI Hopeful S. There will be no Derby trail for him, then, though he appears highly eligible to pick up the Triple Crown pieces as a fresh horse in the summer.

And at least he did what was required, that crucial day at Saratoga.

“It did not cross my mind,” he says of the idea that Rhyme Schemes might not follow up his stunning maiden success at Ellis Park. “I would not allow myself to imagine how bad a spot I was going to be in, if that horse didn't win the Saratoga Special. Because that's just the way we play, that's the way we're in the game.”

Rhyme Schemes is a flagship for Pura Vida, a partnership Greathouse has put together over the past three years or so. As we'll hear, it's definitely a program tailored to the modern marketplace. At the same time, however, it adapts a precious legacy–and not just the horsemanship inherited by the whole clan, long associated with Glencrest Farm.

Greathouse remembers Rusty Arnold saying that his father David, lost at just 63 in 2013, was the only person who still “did everything.” He raced horses, gambled, bred and consigned, sold shares and seasons. In other words, it was action all the way; and it was all about the action.

“A lot of the older guys have told me that I'm kind of the last of a dying breed, as far as the real gambling side of the racing,” Greathouse remarks. “Now a lot of my good friends are pinhookers, and they've got their farms and everything. But you don't really see the guys that just live gambling, just buying and trading horses like we used to.”

And that's why he suspected that there might be a niche for something like Pura Vida. Too many partnerships, he felt, were too woolly and discouraging in their aspirations. He wanted players who would tease out the odds: hedge here, roll the dice there, try to offset the investment as they went along.

“It's like all these people that are getting in are basically being told, 'Hey, you got to love the game so much that you're willing to burn $50,000, or whatever,'” Greathouse says. “And I just thought that was B.S. I mean, most of us that make a living in the horse business never start racing partnerships. You'll see a good guy try it once in a while, buy a few with a couple of buddies. They either have luck or they don't. But I grew up with gamblers. I mean, real gamblers. And a lot of the horses that we did well with, and sold, it was like I said: not doing well was not an option. Because if they didn't pan out, I was gone.”

That approach is bound to bring the odd bump in the road, but it also meant that Greathouse could fire up his resume with early involvement in names as illustrious as Tepin (Bernstein) and Shedaresthedevil (Daredevil).

In a way it was picking out the latter, when she failed to sell at Keeneland September, that satisfied Greathouse that he could and should make something like Pura Vida happen.

“I knew that the reserve was $20,000,” he explains. “So I stood next to WinStar and made sure nobody was going to bid that, let them haw and hem, and tried to get her for $15,000. But they wouldn't, so I took the $20,000. I was just trying to be cheap! But I was not going to leave without the filly. And when she broke her maiden, we sold [a majority share] based on $600,000.”

As a GI Kentucky Oaks winner, of course, she would bring $5 million at Fasig-Tipton on her retirement and Greathouse had, by then, long sold his remaining stake.

“But I'd do it again,” he insists. “I'd do it five times in a row. I had to, to make a living. And listen, I was proud to have done so. Of course, it would have been cool, to have still owned a piece of an Oaks winner. But when someone asked whether that was a little bittersweet, I could truthfully say no. What it did do, was make me decide that I needed to raise more money, and do this properly, if I wanted my partners to be able to keep pieces of their great horses.

“And that's what it's all about. You sell. I'm always going to sell, to prove to those guys we can keep it going. But now I can sell a minority piece instead. When I was doing it myself, I always had to lose any control. You make your money, but then you might have to watch horses railroaded by the wrong people, in how they handle them.”

Shedaresthedevil was trained to break her maiden by Norm Casse, who also handles Rhyme Schemes as Pura Vida's principal trainer. (Also on the roster are Mike Maker and Bruce Levine.) Greathouse and Casse got to know each other in the slipstream of Tepin, trained by Casse's father Mark. When Casse went solo, Greathouse promised him support–albeit he now questions quite how helpful he was being.

“I think Norm had 20 horses in training, and 10 were mine,” he says. “But I was trying to survive, and he had to deal with horses that I tended to have only because they didn't sell. They usually had some vet things, and you knew they'd be limited before they ever got going. So it was a tough job for him, starting out.

“I had tried to buy way too cheap: most were 10 to 20 grand. And that really helped change my opinion on exactly how to do it. You still have to be very sharp about what you pay, but you don't want to force yourself to buy at too low a level. It can work, but it's not going to work every year. And, to keep going, this needed to come up with a good horse every year.”

They now seem to be managing just that. Bankrolled initially by Brett Setzer, Cindy Hutson and Greathouse, with some back-up from Tom Romano and Alan Usher, the budget was upgraded to around $370,000 on seven horses. In the buyer's market of the pandemic year, Greathouse “was really just looking for nice fillies in the back ring and letting it all kind of fall together.”

Ontheonesandtwos (Jimmy Creed) was one of those, sent to Casse as a $37,000 Keeneland September yearling.

“She was out of a Malibu Moon mare that could run some but didn't have a lot of page,” Greathouse recalls. “After she broke her maiden, we sold a third for $200,000. We had another filly that ran second at Saratoga on debut. We'd paid $42,000 for her, and sold a quarter for $75,000. So they kind of got it going, showed people what could be done if somebody's picking them out that knows what they're doing.”

To secure which advantage, partners in Pura Vida commit to leaving decision-making to its founder.

“It's for their own protection,” Greathouse explains. “I still talk to everybody, see what they're thinking, and try to make decisions–when I can–based on what the group wants. But it protects them from me making a mistake, and letting somebody into the partnership that proves a real pain in the ass! I grew it very slow on purpose, because I knew the group really enjoyed each other. Obviously that helps you strengthen and build. If I tried to build too quick, let a bunch of people in, it could ruin the whole culture.”

Greathouse and his father had always been amazed by the presumption of successful people who enter this arcane and challenging environment expecting to nail it overnight.

“My dad always used to laugh about these guys,” Greathouse says. “They come in and they have a plan. And they know nothing. Men and women who made a fortune doing other things on sound business principles, they get into this, they get in front of the lights and throw everything out the window. And then a few years down the road they're bitching about bills, and wanting to blame you!”

Both funding and discipline were in place, then, by the time Greathouse came across a Ghostzapper colt in the Paramount Sales consignment at last year's Keeneland September Sale.

“I believe he was the very end of Book 2,” he recalls. “That's kind of where my price range started in that sale: everything I bought came between there and Book 3. This time round, it took until the very end of Book 3 to buy one or two, and then we bought everything in Book 4! So you just have to deal with what the market gives you.

“Anyway he's a gorgeous horse. In all my years, pinhooking and everything else, somehow I don't think I've ever owned a Ghostzapper. And, as I said, our focus is always on fillies. But I had a little more money to spend, so wanted to add a couple colts. You never know, you might come up with a Derby horse in the package without trying to buy 10 colts a year on a feast-or-famine deal.

“He was my kind of horse: medium-sized, pretty head, extremely well balanced. That hind leg, which I learned from Ciaran and Amy Dunne, that we all look for when buying for the 2-year-old sales. And not too heavy. I've stopped trying to buy heavier colts. They just don't hold up. You trick yourself into these big, gorgeous colts–but they're just not sound. Certainly they can't have a heavy neck because, to me, that's just all weight on the knees. I mean, $210,000 was a lot of money for me, so he had everything I liked in a horse.”

As usual, Geoff Mulcahy was entrusted with the colt's education.

“As far as I'm concerned, the earliest any of them will ever run is April or May,” Greathouse declares. “So I don't want to pay to ship them all to Florida and ship them all back here. Geoff does a great job. I'm out there three or four mornings a week in the winter watching them train. That allows me to see how they're doing–which need to be turned out, which we go on with, which trainer might suit them best.”

The Ghostzapper colt was always obliging, equal to anything he was asked.

“Didn't matter if you breezed him with a really good horse, or a mediocre one,” Greathouse says. “He never let them get ahead of him. At the same time, he never blew you away. He did everything evenly. With Geoff, we do a lot of two-minute licks, a lot of slow three-eighths. We just build them up and then let them gallop out. So you build a lot of stamina in the babies.”

Sitting down with Casse in the spring, they agreed that a horse of this kind of cost and profile shouldn't be cranked up to explode into the shop window on debut. So Rhyme Schemes was left space to learn from his first experience at Churchill in May.

“He was fit enough to run, but by no means sharp,” Greathouse recalls. “And when he didn't break, and that stuff hit him in the face for the first time, he just kind of ran around there. You didn't necessarily know what to make of it. But he came back a little stronger, we put blinkers on him. And I will say that Ricardo [Santana Jr., jockey], when he breezed him after that first race, said that nobody was going to beat him next time.”

They went to the windows, sure enough, but nobody was expecting to see something quite so electric.

“He just flapped the reins on his neck, and all of a sudden he's gone,” Greathouse marvels.

And it was exactly the same at Saratoga, when even the winning margin was identical: 9 1/2 lengths.

To recuperate from his setback, Rhyme Schemes has gone “home” to Duignan's Springhouse Farm. (Duignan not only helped to consign the horse as a yearling but is nowadays a syndicate partner). The team was never going to take risks simply for the sake of a little Derby fever.

“We're going to go take our time with him and hopefully have a good 3-year-old,” Greathouse promises. “Knock wood, he's been a great patient. He has an incredible mind, and that has been so helpful. When they're high-strung and stupid, they just hurt themselves again.”

In the meantime, there's much else to keep the Pura Vida team excited.

“We've four or five fillies we really like that haven't run yet,” Greathouse says. “There'll always be a couple that won't work out. But that's kind of the point. My job is not to have any pride, to identify those that need to come off the payroll so that the good ones aren't covering them.”

Whatever happens, a runaway Saratoga Special winner is quite a find among no more than 10 recruits.

“I don't analyze the crosses so much,” Greathouse says of his catalogue work. “We should all know, just from doing it our whole lives, which ones work. Really I just try to look at a pedigree and say, 'Would it shock me if this page produced a racehorse?' Whether there's two dams there that are basically blank, but it's an incredible family below; or whether a family is pretty weak on the bottom, but the mare could really run herself.

“My dad also always told me that a mare can make her own pedigree. A stallion can't. You don't see stallions with no page making it. But he said, 'You see fillies all the time that were just freaky racehorses, out of nowhere, and that's basically the bottom of the family tree.'”

The one thing any Greathouse will always have, of course, is a great pedigree of his own.

“Dad's friends would tell you that it was almost weird how close he and I were,” this one recalls. “I mean, we were together 24/7. So in the amount of time I had with him, I guess I absorbed everything I could. I'll never have his personality. I'm more of an introvert. But yeah, everything about the horsemanship side, and dealing with people, I learned from Dad. He was a legend, and his word was good. It's now 10 years since he passed away and even today, anywhere I am, I have people coming up to me saying, 'I still miss your father.'”

His Uncle John was a significant mentor, too, especially in the selection of young stock.

Overall Greathouse's orientation was always towards the racetrack, meaning that it worked out ideally when his cousin, the younger John, found himself drawn to farm life.

“So I kind of branched away [from Glencrest],” Greathouse explains. “John had gone to the Irish National Stud, he'd really learned a lot in a short period, and he loved foaling, which I never did. What I loved was getting them from weaning, prepping them for the sales, and then breaking them: just anything going towards the racetrack.”

The Pura Vida brand, which borrows Costa Rica's catch-all salutation, was chosen for its upbeat vibe. Because this is a program that likes to get on the front foot, trying to force gaps in the market.

“You're constantly having to buy new horses with money you make,” Greathouse says. “And the expenses that come with them are getting more and more insurmountable. But from the time I was little, you don't buy racehorses to win a maiden race. You're trying to hit a home run. And there's got to be something about that horse, whether you buy it for $20,000 or $500,000, that makes you really believe; that makes you feel there's a something in there that could turn out to be a little bit special.”

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Saratoga Special Winner Rhyme Schemes Aiming for Late Spring/Early Summer Return

Rhyme Schemes (c, 3, Ghostzapper–Katherine, by Distorted Humor), sidelined since posting a jaw-dropping, 9 1/2-length victory for trainer Norm Casse in last summer's GII Saratoga Special S. Aug. 12, is being aimed at a late spring/early summer return to the races.

The Pura Vida Investments LLC colorbearer is currently laid up with Gabriel “Spider” Duignan at Springhouse Farm in Kentucky and could resume light training in March.

“He's doing great,” Pura Vida's managing partner Deuce Greathouse said. “He wasn't going to make the Derby preps, so we decided to give him some extra time. We'll have him ready by late spring/early summer if we have no hiccups.”

He added, “He needed plenty of time, but it wasn't something that should hinder him going forward. He's got a really good mind on him, so he's been a good patient. Knock wood, everything has gone to plan to this point. I don't want to jinx anything, but he's on schedule.”

A well-beaten sixth in a live maiden special weight on debut at Churchill Downs May 18, Rhyme Schemes won his next two starts with the addition of blinkers by a combined margin of 19 lengths. He was a daylight, front-running winner with a gaudy 94 Beyer Speed Figure at second asking at Ellis June 15, then showed a different dimension by rallying powerfully from fourth after bumping with a rival at the start in the 6 1/2-furlong Saratoga Special.

“We'll let him tell us when he's ready,” Greathouse said. “We'll probably just give him an a-other-than (allowance), and if that goes to plan, then look at stakes.”

Rhyme Schemes, one of 54 graded stakes winners worldwide for Ghostzapper, brought $210,000 as a Keeneland September yearling. He is the second foal out of the winning Distorted Humor mare and $575,000 OBS April breezer Katherine, who hails from the extended female family of GISWs Dream Rush (Wild Rush), Dreaming of Julia (A. P. Indy), Malathaat (Curlin), et al. The Ghostzapper x Distorted Humor cross is also responsible for GISWs Guarana and Molly Morgan. Rhyme Schemes was bred in Kentucky by Parks Investment Group, LLC.

“He's such a cool horse,” Greathouse said. “With his pedigree to go long, and as deep as that family is, we couldn't be more excited. Now, we just gotta keep our fingers crossed and hope that he comes back the same horse that he was. Physically, there's no reason for me to think that he's one of those early 2-year-olds that won't develop into a 3-year-old.”

Greathouse concluded, “It was obviously heartbreaking not getting to go to those big races at the end of his 2-year-old-year. Hopefully, it's for bigger and better things down the road.”

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Uncle Mo, Bellafina Daughter Brings Big Money at Fasig

A weanling daughter of Uncle Mo out of MGISW Bellafina (Quality Road) was the first to break the seven-figure threshold–which will no doubt be eclipsed many times once the mare portion starts–at Fasig-Tipton November Sunday, fetching $1.35 million on a winning bid from Gabriel Duignan, who signed as Paramount Bloodstock. Consigned by Eaton Sales as hip 128, the Feb. 11 foal was bred by the Coolmore-connected entities of Orpendale, Chelston and Wynatt and Kaleem Shah. Shah acquired Bellafina for $800,000 at the 2018 Fasig-Tipton Florida sale, and saw her take the GI Del Mar Debutante and GI Chandelier S. later that season. She added the GI Santa Anita Oaks as a sophomore and was second in that year's GI Breeders' Cup F/M Sprint. Coolmore's Mrs. John Magnier, Michael Tabor and Derrick Smith bought in after that, and she'd subsequently add another graded stakes win and two more Grade I placings en route to $1,617,975 in career earnings. This is the first foal out of the full-sister MSW/MGSP Diamond King. Bellafina herself will sell as hip 264 later in the evening. Click here for more.

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‘We Were Willing To Work – And To Take A Risk’

Year after year, the thread of his horsemanship snags another big prize in the web of his many different interests. And this spring Gabriel Duignan is back on the GI Kentucky Derby trail—this time as breeder, his Springhouse Farm near Lexington having started Forbidden Kingdom (American Pharoah) along the road that has already taken in two of the big Californian trials, latterly the GII San Felipe S. at Santa Anita last weekend. 

Before you ask: disappointingly, there's no real story behind the nickname. When he started as a kid at Airlie Stud, his predecessor had for some reason been known as “Spider”, and the guy in charge just couldn't keep his real name in his head. On the third day he gave up, and announced that Duignan might as well be Spider too. “Though I was a skinny, leggy young guy, so it suited a bit as well,” notes Duignan.

But if that particular line of inquiry turns out to be something of a wild goose chase, then at least we can now formally acclaim Duignan and his wife Aisling as the ultimate such quarry.

Last week they were profoundly touched to return to their native land to be jointly saluted by the Irish Thoroughbred Breeders' Association with the “Wild Geese” Award, made to compatriots who fly the tricolour in exemplary fashion on foreign fields.

They were amused, too, by some of the themes of a video tribute. Repeated reference was made by friends and colleagues, with an air of perplexity, to Duignan's roots in rural Co. Leitrim. (“Okay, so there wasn't a huge horse culture,” he concedes. “But surprisingly enough, there were always a few horses around.”) Paramount's Lesley Campion noted how well the couple complemented each other: “Aisling's smart, hard-working, astute; just a lovely, decent, kind, welcoming person. And, um, Spider is a good dancer. And is tall. And is from Leitrim.”

But the real cornerstone was a contribution from John Magnier, who employs Aisling as Director of Bloodstock at Ashford Stud.

“Spider, I knew you were clever from the time you were working for Tony Ryan and did so well for him,” the Coolmore boss said. “But when you got married to Aisling that confirmed how clever you were.”

Magnier recalled Aisling leading the mares out “as a kid” in all weathers: “Dressed up in rain gear so you could hardly find her. But she always stood out, really, and it's not a surprise to me that she's reached the heights that she has.”

“Those were lovely words he said,” her husband says. “To be fair, I think they've always had a great relationship. Look, it was a beautiful award to receive, the ITBA did a great job putting on the whole night, and the whole thing is very gratifying really. It's always nice to be recognised by your peers.”

Over the years, of course, Kentucky has become something close to a 33rd Irish county. But when Duignan first arrived in 1985, recommended to Bill O'Neill at Circle O Farm, he was only just behind a pioneering wave of migrants led by the likes of the late Gerry Dilger, himself winner of the Wild Geese Award in 2018. It's fitting, as such, that the bursary fund collected in Dilger's memory should be devoted to fresh cycles in that ongoing, transatlantic exchange of enthusiasm and experience, with two young women from Ireland set to arrive for their belated stint at Springhouse.

“Because of lockdown, unfortunately we weren't able to bring them over as planned last year but we're looking forward to the two girls coming over in the spring and that'll kick it off,” Duignan says. “An American student is also being sent to the Irish National Stud. It's a great thing to give young people the kind of experience that we had. Gerry was such a super guy, kind of the godfather to us all over here, and I'd like to think his fund will be around a long time into the future.”

Opportunities like this, and of course the Godolphin Flying Start, were not available when this wild gosling first took wing, and the Irish expatriate community in the Bluegrass duly owes a great deal to the informal impetus provided by John Hughes, in Duignan's own case, and Michael Osborne, in so many others.

“I'll forever be indebted to John Hughes,” Duignan stresses. “He was head vet at Airlie while I was there, and took a personal interest in sending me over here and setting me up with a job at Circle O. He was a great guy. Himself and Dr. Osborne were the two that looked after a lot of young Irish people at the time, and sent us on our way.

“None of us had very many dollars in our back pockets when we got here. But I guess Ireland was in pretty bad shape at the time. We arrived with very little expectations, but we were willing to work and grateful for any opportunities we got. And then there was a little of that entrepreneurial spirit as well. When we did make a few dollars, we were prepared to take a risk and invest in a horse. It's a fantastic community: a great bunch of people, very close, almost like family really. Everybody pulls for each other.”

For all the banter about his upbringing in a relative backwater of the Turf, Duignan came from a farming family and, like so many compatriots, exported an engrained, instinctive stockmanship.

“I was just one of those kids born with a love of horses,” he says. “My brother Cahill was the same, and we were sent to a local guy who broke horses. I started with the ponies and gymkhanas, but figured out pretty early on I wasn't good enough to make a living out of that. So I transferred over to Thoroughbreds at Airlie Stud. I do think a stockman is a stockman, absolutely: if you've an eye for a horse, you'll have an eye for cattle, for any animal really. And that love for the land is very closely related too. You can learn, you can help yourself, but I see American kids that grew up on a farm, and it's just the same: it gives you a little edge.”

That raw material couldn't have been better shaped than by O'Neill, who had managed Bwamazon Farm for Millard Waldheim before taking on Circle O.

“He was a great mentor to me,” Duignan recalls. “He was a proper, old-fashioned Kentucky hardboot. It was hard work, no messing around, but I learned a lot off him. And actually I've just been lucky through life, working with a lot of good people. Like David Garvin, who gave me the opportunity to start buying horses for him at Ironwood, a beautiful farm I managed for him at Bowling Green. And then Dr. Ryan took me on [as president of Castleton-Lyons]. Another great man: he pushed you, he had great foresight. I learned a lot of the business part of things through him.”

And that element would be critical to Duignan's development of such a diverse portfolio: farm owner, breeder, pinhooker and, in 2001, founding partner of Paramount with Pat Costello. They had already been the core investors, along with Ted Campion, in a pinhooking partnership they called The Lads.

“I've always been lucky to have great partners,” Duignan says. “Gerry. Ted and Pat. Charlie O'Connor. Back then, I guess a good bit of it was trial and error. But we all learned a lot from each other. And our timing was good. The market had been a bit more closed before, but as things became more commercial you had more opportunities for striking out and selling on your own.”

His association with Costello now goes back some 30 years. He suspects that they first met in a pub.

“Believe it or not!” he says with a chuckle. “Yeah, we met shortly after coming here and just hit it off and have been friends ever since. Obviously we think a lot alike, as far as a horse is concerned. You do need to have give and take, if you're going to do partnerships, but to be honest we've never had any differences.”

The ultimate partnership, however, is naturally that with Aisling herself. Duignan submits willingly to all the facetious inferences of their friends in the ITBA video.

“She's been huge help,” he says. “It's lovely to have somebody you can bounce things off that's smarter than yourself. She has unbelievable energy, has to juggle lot of balls in the air, and I don't know how she does it: she's a very sharp businesswoman, but also a wonderful mother and just a fantastic person.”

All ribbing aside, however, everyone acknowledges Duignan himself as an outstanding horseman. Wearing his various hats, he has processed too many good horses for there to be any doubt about that. During his time at Castleton-Lyons, Duignan assisted in the rise of Malibu Moon, while young stallions No Nay Never and Gormley are among the graduates of the Paramount consignment. If forced to identify one dimension of his portfolio that gives him most pride, however, it would probably be the mares that have found their way to various farms under his supervision.

When Point Given (Thunder Gulch) was a weanling, for instance, Duignan brought his dam to Ironwood for $160,000; she was sold for $2 million in the same ring five years later. He bought the dam of Gio Ponti (Tale of the Cat) for Castleton Lyons. Then there was dual Grade I winner Brody's Cause, co-bred with William Arvin Jr. and Petaluma Bloodstock after the $130,000 acquisition of his dam.

Just last year two juveniles to have been through Duignan's hands scored at the elite level: GI Starlet S. winner Eda (Munnings) was sold by Paramount as a Keeneland September yearling for $240,000, while GI Breeders' Futurity S. winner Rattle N Roll (Connect), pinhooked as a $55,000 weanling via Rexy Bloodstock, was sold in the same consignment for $210,000. And now, from the same crop, Forbidden Kingdom is advertising the alert recruitment of his dam Just Louise (Five Star Day) for just $150,000, despite her GIII Debutante S. success in a light career.

“That's what it's all about, at the end of the day,” Duignan says. “The buzz of good horses. I think the biggest thing, looking back, was the day I started investing in the game rather than just working in it. In life, you always need luck and thank God I've had my share of that too. But there are always risks involved, so you do need the mentality to take the ups and downs. If things go wrong, you have to be able to take it and move on; you don't look back, only forward.”

In raising a horse, equally, he feels you have to let things flow; to expose horses to the challenges that help them mature into fighters on the track—very much, he suggests, part of a culture shared by his fellow “wild geese”.

“I do think we try to let them be horses,” he says. “They're kept outdoors as much as possible, kept in the herd as much as possible. I think it's very important you don't hothouse horses, because I think it's been proven through the years that you just make a softer individual that way. I think probably all the Irish guys are a bit like that.”

Duignan rejects the pessimism expressed by many for the American industry. Purses in some states are very strong, he notes, while that even the pandemic yielded reasons to be cheerful in increased handle, and a remarkably robust bloodstock market.

“No doubt the business has shrunk over the last 20 years,” he admits. “But it's very resilient. At the end of the day, there is that bond between humans and horses. It's a great game, and I often say that I probably never worked a day in my life. If you love what you do, there's no better way to go through life. So long as you're able to take a few knocks along the way, it's a lovely way to make a living.”

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