Expensive Horseplay : Keeneland Yearling Sale Is Not Just for the Bluebloods of Bluegrass

In 1983, when a yearling colt sold at Keeneland’s horse auction for $10.2 million, obliterating the world record by $5.95 million, there wasn’t room on the seven-digit electronic toteboard to show the price.

Keeneland officials were thinking about expanding the toteboard to eight numbers even before the unnamed son of 1964 Kentucky Derby winner Northern Dancer was led out of the sales arena by his handler, but Donald Johnson didn’t think that would be necessary. Johnson, the breeder of the $10.2 million yearling, was a Kentucky coal miner who had taken some of his profits and converted an old pig farm into a thoroughbred operation in the mid-1970s.

“I think this record will last a while,” Johnson said after Mohammed bin al Maktoum, an Arab sheik then 34 years old, had bought his horse. “I think this has given ‘em something to shoot at for a long time.”

Keeneland installed an eight-digit toteboard, anyway, and the Lexington race track-sales company needed the extra number on July 23, when Great Britain’s Robert Sangster and four international partners, who had been underbidders to the Arabs for the Northern Dancer colt, broke the record by paying $13.1 million for a bay son of 1970 English Triple Crown champion Nijinsky II.

Keeneland holds five horse auctions throughout the year, but when it runs what it calls its selected yearling sale for two days in late July, stinters need not apply.

At this year’s major Keeneland sale, 24 horses sold for $1 million or more, and 256 handsome, well-bred, unraced yearlings were auctioned for an average price of $537,129. The $13.1 million price was a record, but the other figures were not. Last year, with the top horse selling for $8.25 million (to Sangster and friends), a record 33 yearlings each brought bids of $1 million or more. The $601,467 average was another high.

Despite a drop of close to 11% in this year’s average, Keeneland officials and the breeders who consign the horses are not publicly wringing their hands over a possible downward trend.

“Last year,” says Will Farish, “what was spent at the Monday night session (an average of $858,800 for 75 horses) made the whole sale catastrophic. I said to myself this year that even a 25% correction in the market would be more in line than to be considered a negative factor.”

Farish, a Houston oil man who owns Lane’s End Farm in Versailles, Ky., bought My Charmer for a reported $300,000 the week after her 2-year-old son, Seattle Slew, won the Champagne Stakes in 1976. Seattle Slew won the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes the following year and that’s what made this year’s $13.1 million yearling so coveted--he was sired by the last English Triple Crown champion and was out of a mare who had already produced a winner of the American Triple.

Farish, who owns My Charmer in partnership with Bill Kilroy of Houston and Kentucky breeder Warner Jones, stood next to barn 14 at Keeneland the morning of the $13.1 million sale. He appeared to be nervous. Sangster’s people, who include trainer Vincent O’Brien of Ireland and experts on horses’ legs, genealogy and overall conformation, had been visible for days, eyeballing the colt. So had California trainer Wayne Lukas, whose prosperous partners would turn out to be the underbidders on the horse at an even $13 million. Also prominent were the four Maktoum brothers from oil-rich Dubai and Allen Paulson, the well-heeled aircraft manufacturer from Encino and Savannah, Ga. Paulson had been the underbidder on last year’s $8.25 million sales topper.

These were the big spenders at Keeneland in recent years. White-coated waiters circulated in the area, taking orders for complimentary drinks, but they weren’t doing much business outside barn 14. Visitors’ interests were consumed by hip No. 215, as the Nijinsky colt was designated in the sales catalogue. Farish knew he had a horse who would command a big price, but he just wasn’t sure how big. Someone said the apprehensive Farish reminded him of a Super Bowl coach on the day of the game.

Tom Gentry is another Kentucky breeder who gets nervous at the sale. This year, Keeneland auctioned 16 of Gentry’s yearlings for more than $12 million, including another Nijinsky colt, the third-last horse offered, who was bought by the Maktoums for $7 million.

Gentry, however, tries to hide his anxieties with an uneven mix of grandeur and hokum. He and his wife, Kathy, usually throw a party a couple of nights before the sale, and this year they managed to outdo themselves, which takes some doing since in the past they’ve used Bob Hope, Ferris wheels and other amusement-park rides for entertainment.

This year, however, the Gentrys went black-tie and spent an estimated $100,000 on more than 800 guests who dined on everything from pizza to Maine lobster to $75-a-bottle champagne. Wolfgang Puck, of Spago fame, was hired just to do the d’oeuvres. Peter Duchin was there, but the headliner was Paul Anka.

Before the night was over, guests were given the staples of the Gentry trade--cigarette lighters, umbrellas, stopwatches and yardsticks promoting Tom Gentry. Gentry has never been bashful about his billing: “No. 1 Commercial Breeder in all of North America,” reads one of his brochures, which pictures the 48-year-old ex-jockey’s son in caricature, standing on top of the planet.

The bluebloods in the bluegrass cringe at Gentry’s modus operandi, but they don’t boycott his parties. “No man is going to spend $4 million for a horse just because you give him a pin and a free bag of popcorn,” says one. Gentry says his methods have been copied around sale time and adds that Nelson Bunker Hunt, the millionaire Texan, has never turned down a free cigarette lighter.

Gentry is just as cheeky around the sales barns. Each one of his consigned yearlings comes with a placard over the stall. For hip No. 131 this year there was the claim: “There’s no filly quite like this filly, so this must be the filly!”

She sold for $575,000. For hip No. 304, the sign read: “Most outstanding colt in the sale!” That was the $7 million yearling.

There seems to be room for both the buttoned-down style of a Will Farish and the outlandishness of a Tom Gentry at the sales. Of course, a microcosm of U.S. racing it is not. It is not even faintly typical of U.S. horse sales, which last year accounted for the purchase of more than 9,000 yearlings at an average price of $41,000, about the same as the year before.

In Kentucky, it may still be a breeders’ game, but here, just as in many sectors of the country, operating a race track and providing a showcase for the horses that are sold is not a thriving business. National wagering is up, but in the last 25 years daily-average track attendance has declined 17%. Despite hosting the Kentucky Derby, Churchill Downs, 70 miles to the west, is a struggling operation and Keeneland, without its lucrative sales, is not a prosperous track. Running a typical six weeks of racing last year, Keeneland showed a profit of less than $3,000.

The sales, however, have left Keeneland with assets exceeding $41 million. The track receives a 5% commission for each horse sold and with revenues of $23.7 million and expenses of only $2.23 million for fiscal 1984, Keeneland is in the midst of an $8.7 million remodeling and renovating program. The eight-figure toteboard in the sales pavilion is expected to be good for several more years.

Without the foreign spending at the sales, however, one wonders how even Keeneland would have fared in recent years. And one wonders about the long-range effect of so many of the million-dollar yearlings going abroad to race.

This year, Sangster’s group and the Maktoums led a foreign outlay that accounted for 52% of Keeneland’s $137.5 million in gross sales. Two years ago, foreign buyers made up 65% of the gross. Although trainer Max Hirsch once told Bernard Baruch that anybody who goes racing “checks his brains at the gate,” Sangster has not let his ego take him to the point of diminishing returns. The 48-year-old soccer-pools operator now has Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos as a partner instead of a rival bidder, and there has been a rapprochement with even the sheiks, who, it was learned long after the sale, are partners with Sangster in the $8.25 million colt that he bought here last year.

“We are concerned about the market, but it’s not a drastic concern and certainly not a panic,” says Ted Bassett, Keeneland president. “There are still advantages to racing these sales horses in the U.S.--the purse structure is better here, the racing season is not short like it is in Europe, and horses that like to run on the dirt don’t have that chance over there.”

Is Sangster’s master plan to control most of the world’s best stallions, then hold his own annual selected yearling sales on the Isle of Man, his tax haven in the Irish Sea?

Sangster isn’t saying, and Bassett doesn’t think so. “Look at the farms these foreign buyers have bought in Kentucky,” Bassett says. “The Maktoums have two, Niarchos has one and so do Sangster and Vincent O’Brien. This shows that the horses they’re buying will in all likelihood come back here when they’re ready to go to stud.”

Kentucky breeders have been pleased in recent years to see Lukas arrive here with Gene Klein, former owner of the San Diego Chargers, Texas oil man Bob French and Oklahoma rancher Mel Hatley on his arm. They were the largest American buyers this year, spending more than $9 million on 14 yearlings at Keeneland and buying $5 million worth of horses at other sales before they left Kentucky.

Saratoga Six, a $2.2 million colt who was syndicated for breeding for $16 million after an injury at the end of an undefeated 2-year-old season, is an exception, but actually some of Lukas’ best buys have been in what’s called the middle range--from $300,000 to $900,000. Tank’s Prospect, winner of this year’s Preakness, cost $625,000 and Life’s Magic, last year’s 3-year-old filly champion, was a $310,000 purchase at Keeneland’s lesser September sale.

A study by The Thoroughbred Record showed this year that of the 115 yearlings sold for $1 million or more, none has earned his purchase price on the track. The $10.2 million colt from 1983, who was named Snaafi Dancer, is a 3-year-old in England, but yet to run his first race. Residual value--breeding--is the key. Kent Hollingsworth of The Blood-Horse magazine says Sangster “established a world record for irrationality” by paying $13.1 million for the Nijinsky colt, but Lukas says the horse is worth $10 million at stud even if he never wins a race. Shareef Dancer, bought here by the Maktoums for $3.3 million in ‘81, won the Irish Derby and has been syndicated for a record $40 million.

Literally volumes have been written about what makes a thoroughbred symmetrically pleasing. Besides obvious attributes like well-formed legs, even brain pans--the distance between the eyes--are discussed. Lukas believes that a good horse picker has a feel, a gift, for knowing. “I have friends in the cattle business who can tell me what to look for in the best heifers, and I can’t see it,” Lukas says. “But I can look at 40 weanlings or yearlings and pick out the best in five minutes.”

It took only 10 minutes for Sangster to outbid Lukas and spend $13.1 million with one drop of the auctioneer’s gavel a couple of weeks ago. No breeder would call them extravagant. John Gaines, of Gainesway Farm, doesn’t even call the big horse spenders businessmen. “They’re sportsmen, not investors,” Gaines says. “This is their hobby. Some people buy paintings for big prices in New York. What’s wrong with being a horse lover?”