Published articles

THOROUGHBRED YEARLING SALES

and the games, scams and half truths that attend them

The annual sales for thoroughbred yearlings in Australia and New Zealand are upon us again and as usual there are the attending trainers, bloodstock agents, and staff from the various studs and preparatory farms.

Also present will be the ever hopeful owners, some of them veterans of the great racing game, some of them total newcomers who are eagerly looking forward to becoming the proud owners of the next champion thoroughbred.

Horse racing often known as “ The Sport of Kings” is great fun, there is no greater thrill than watching a horse you own come first past the post unless you’re lucky enough to actually have an animal that wins one of the big Group races, that pretty well puts you into another league.

Thoroughbreds are fantastic animals, beautiful to watch, thrilling to race and unfortunately very expensive.

When you consider that traditionally it has been agreed that only about 2 % of catalogued yearlings will eventually pay their way during their racing careers you can see that you need to be extremely lucky or you need some really expert advice.

Well there are some lucky people, but the majority of prospective owners rely on so called “expert” advisors to buy them their champion.

Fair enough you might say but are these advisors really experts?

That’s a much better question and if you are looking to buy yourself a horse you should definitely have another look at the credentials and the associations of the particular “experts” you might seek advice from.

Ask yourself;

What association does the “expert” have with the vendors selling the yearlings.

In other words, are they getting a kick back from the vendor to buy

their yearlings, or do they own the animal themselves through dummy

vendors.

A good way to check the latter is to see if they owned the dam when it

was racing, if they did then it’s a real possibility that there’s still some

connection.

This is not a rare scenario, so much so that it is often an open

secret and those involved think it’s perfectly normal to take a

commission from both the buyer and the vendor because as they say

“everyone does it”.

If you stretch a few morals that might be alright providing the animals

concerned are sound, but sometimes it’s a good way for vendors to

get rid of yearlings with faults that would otherwise affect their sales

value dramatically.

Of course when the horse concerned breaks down in training, the

poor old owner is told “that’s the risk you take when you go racing”

and he has no idea that his very expensive investment was always

likely to break down.

What’s the true success rate of the “expert”?

Ask to be given a written record of the number of yearlings bought by

the “expert” and then ask to see their records of the performance of

those yearlings.

If you don’t do this all you’ll be going by is hearsay.

It’s a fact that a trainer only needs to have a handful of good

runners every season to keep getting good publicity, however over

the course of all the sales some trainers may well buy 200 yearlings

and with those numbers plus the ones handed to them to train by

breeders they ought to get at least some topliners.

The same goes for bloodstock agents, ask to see their records don’t

just listen to their success stories.

Remember sales records can be checked, hearsay is just much

repeated publicity.

If you are going to get breeding advice, don’t just listen to the usual rubbish of certain nicks and crosses having worked particularly well in the past.Ask the “expert” whether they have analysed all the failures bred along the same lines. It’s easy to take a champion and to say the horse has these particular crosses but that doesn’t mean hundreds of totally useless horses don’t have the same crosses. The sad reality is that very few so called breeding “experts” have ever done any work on failures.
If you are told that a particular stallion is a sensation, again ask how many mares did he serve and what quality were they?

Obviously the biggest studs have the biggest advertising budgets and get

the best performed mares, the progeny of those stallions should get far

more quality performers. Look at the stallion tables to see how many

mares, the stallion served, how many winners did he have and how many

of those were stakes winners.

Then look at the service fee and at how much a yearling by that stallion is

going to cost you.

Take statements on fantastic confirmation etc. with a grain of salt, an analysis done over a 25 year period showed that the world’s most expensive yearlings averaged more than US$2 million to buy and only averaged $200,000 in race earnings. It’s a pretty safe bet that all those yearling were supposedly bred in the purple and had superb confirmation.

Conversely some of the greatest performers were ugly as sin, small

and often had legs that were not totally correct.

When you’ve asked all these questions ( and a lot more that I’m sure you’ll think of as you go through the learning curve ) and you’re satisfied with the answers you’ll be ready to enjoy a wonderful sport in the knowledge that you have done everything possible and now it’s up to fate.

THE PITFALLS OF SELECTING AND RACING A THOROUGHBRED

Following on from my earlier article “Thoroughbred Yearling Sales and the Games, Scams and Half Truths that attend them” we are now going to be looking at some of the problems that can be encountered in buying tried stock and in selecting a trainer.

Presuming that you have read the earlier article you will by now be aware that I believe there is no greater sport than “The Sport of Kings” but also that racing a horse can be a very expensive and risky business fraught with frustrations which can often be avoided by a prospective owners just doing their homework.

We have already examined the problems of buying a yearling, now let’s have a look at buying a tried horse.

Be very careful when a bloodstock agent comes to you with a story of a fantastic trial. Take a good look at the official time the horse ran in the trial, if there’s no time published by the race club holding the trials, don’t buy. It doesn’t matter how great a distance the horse won by, trial results can be and are at times manipulated.

When you buy a horse to race in another area (such as buying a New Zealand or English horse to race in Hong Kong) take a good look at the differences between the two areas, look at the class of the horses the prospective purchase was racing against, look at the track conditions, did the horse race on soft tracks, did it race on dirt or sand tracks. Are the distances the horse showed it’s best form on compatible with those in the new area.

Ask yourself why is this horse being sold if it’s that good? There are certainly genuine sellers who make their living buying young horses, educating them and selling them on but they are usually young or very small operators with little cash. If the vendor is a well established trainer, even if the owner has run short of money, for a promising horse the trainer will have plenty of other willing buyers amongst his own clients.

Get an independent vets report with x-rays, an endoscope, an ultrasound and preferably a heart score to eliminate hidden problems.

Spend a little time talking to other trainers, jockeys etc. asking questions about what they have seen of the horse. What they tell you may not necessarily be right but if the horse is showing genuine promise you’ll get an impression of enthusiasm which they won’t be able to hide.

SELECTING A THOROUGHBRED TRAINER

If you want to give your horse the best possible chance to shine, this may well be the most important decision you make. Do not make this choice lightly.

The first thing to think about is that many trainers have just drifted into training because they were jockeys, stable hands, etc. They may well have no other qualification for being a trainer.

If you are going to be a race horse owner presumably you have earned the money needed by hard work and careful planning, why would you get into racing without utilizing the same methods that made you successful in the first place.

Employ a knowledgeable trainer not necessarily a high profile one.

Yet many times I have seen very successful people new to racing hand over all their decisions on selecting, buying and training their horses to a trainer whom they would never employ in any of their other ventures.

Often these people have worked very hard and now determined to pour money into their newfound hobby, they spend large sums of money confident that they will do just as well as they did in business.

Invariably, unless they are extremely lucky these people will be taken advantage of and will eventually wake up and realize they have spent a fortune for very little result. They end up feeling used and disappointed and will exit the sport just as quickly as they came into it.

Find out who are the thinking trainers, spend some time at the tracks and at sales, talk to other owners, vets, strappers ( some of them are well educated and do the job for the love of it ), join the local thoroughbred breeders club, but whatever you do don’t just give your precious purchase to a trainer just because they have a high profile.

Another thing to be very careful of is that there are quite a number of trainers who make an art form out of generating publicity, they are personable, exude confidence, make you feel like you’re going to be their greatest friend and that they will treat your horse like the champion it’s certainly going to be.

These trainers are always in the news, in fact if you look at the articles written by many of the racing journalists you’ll think that there’s just no other choice, your horse absolutely has to go to one of these people.

Well think again, if these trainers are so practiced at making their prospective clients feel good they are most certainly going to look after their free publicity generators at least as well and therefore a lot of what you read is just good PR.

Remember if trainers have 200 or more horses on their books (they will almost certainly not admit to more than around 100 but looking at their purchases over a year will give you a pretty good idea) then they should certainly get a fair share of good horses, particularly as these are the very trainers who can find the big spending owners.

However unless you are in racing just for the social standing, these are not the trainers I would recommend.

As mentioned previously, do some research and find out how many horses your prospective trainer has on his or her books and then compare that with the number of wins they achieve.

Some of the supposedly top trainers are at the top because they have large numbers of horses spelling, often to the detriment of the somewhat lesser lights in their stables. These average horses are treated like fillers who keep the fees coming in while all the attention is lavished on the big winners.

Take particular care to look at how many starts per campaign each horse in a trainer’s establishment has before a spell.

There is no reason why a sound horse can’t have 10 to 15 starts per campaign ( in Hong Kong they average 12 ) yet in Australia many horses only get 5 – 8 starts before they are put out for a spell, that could well be because the trainers has too many horses and has to rotate the lesser lights to keep the owners happy, in which case if your horse is not one of the stars you’re not getting the most out of your investment.

Having said all that, having the ability to win big races is a necessary attribute for any trainer. Find out how many important races they have won, if the trainer you’re looking at has been training for some time and has not had Group success with several horses, look elsewhere. The best trainers know how to get the most out of their horses.

Do not make the mistake that a number of very wealthy newcomers to racing have made and think that you automatically will be able to run things better yourself.

Such people usually start throwing money around for horses, studs, training establishments and nearly always employ a little known trainer to run things for them.

Almost without exception these ventures fail.

Unless you are willing to listen to good advice and to learn from it, thinking you can be successful in racing just because you have been successful in business is just as bad as employing the wrong trainer.

Another aspect to look at is the trainer’s stable environment and his or her knowledge of modern feeding methods.

Have a good look around the stables they should be clean and tidy, gear should look in good condition and there should be no bad smell.

Today’s high quality balanced horse feeds are infinitely better than the old self mixed feeds still used by some trainers, they are more expensive but you’re going to be paying the same fees no matter what feed the trainer uses. Ask the question regarding their feeding methods, if they don’t use a good feed and if they don’t feed at least 3 – 4 times a day, move on no matter what the trainer’s reputation.

Even some of the big trainers will insist their old feeding methods are better, they may have no reason other than they have always done it that way and as we have on occasion found, their stables may even reek of urea ( a sure sign of a poor feeding regime ) but there’s no way they will acknowledge that they may be able to learn something new.

Finally make sure you manage your horse.

There are still many trainers who believe that the owner should just pay the bills and leave the trainer to make the decisions but that’s just not good enough.

As an owner you will get much more enjoyment out of racing if you make yourself knowledgeable about feeding, injury prevention and the selecting of suitable races for your horse. If you are actively involved in planning the best racing program for your horse you will ensure that any possible clashes with other stable horses will not adversely affect your horse and if the trainer is any good he or she will welcome the chance to work with you to get the most out of your involvement.

To sum up, do your homework, select with your brain as well as your heart and you will be able to experience what to many people is one of the great joys of life, racing and winning in the most exciting sport imaginable.