Horse Racing Notes : Rich Arabians Now Picky at Sales

When the huge Boeing 747 painted in Dubai’s national colors landed at Blue Grass Airport last month, the collective sigh of relief from the folks at the manicured horse farms around central Kentucky was nearly audible.

Sheik Mohammed al Maktoum and his brothers, the sons of the ruler of the oil rich Arabian nation, were back to buy horses. The best horses. Nearly $30 million of the finest Thoroughbred yearlings America can produce.

While the $29.6 million spent by the brothers is a significant amount of money--30.3% of the money spent by all buyers at the 1988 Keeneland July Selected Yearling Sale--it was still the lowest amount the Maktoums have spent since 1982.

In a rare interview, Sheik Mohammed said his family’s need to purchase a large number of top quality horses is declining. And that could spell trouble for the top of the industry.

Through the 1980s, with Sheik Mohammed’s Darley Stud Management, Sheik Hamdan al Maktoum’s Shadwell Estates and Sheik Maktoum al Maktoum’s Dubai Bloodstock and Gainesborough Stud, the three brothers mounted one of the best-financed quests for fine bloodstock ever attempted.

“Maybe in the past, we had to go stronger than we had to because we were building a base,” Sheik Mohammed told United Press International at the sales. “We are sort of more choosy now.”

With the base established, the Maktoums are looking more to the sales for additions to augment their already vast holdings. Sheik Mohammed owns about 160 mares, and Sheik Maktoum and Sheik Hamdan have about 200 between them.

“You always have to be in the market for the outstanding individual,” Sheik Mohammed said. “I think we will always be in the market for that outstanding individual.”

Sheik Mohammed and his brothers took 47 outstanding individual yearlings from the Keeneland sale to their farms in England, France, Ireland and Kentucky this year. The decline in the market helps $30 million go a lot farther than it would only three years ago, when the top price paid was $13.1 million compared with this year’s sale topper of $3.5 million.

Just as it was inevitable that the heady days of $10 million yearlings would come to an end -- first with the decline and then flattening out of the Thoroughbred market -- so too will come the summer when the Maktoums are no longer the biggest players at the sales.

The two-day stay by the 747 on the Kentucky tarmac might have relieved some. But by the end of the sales, other breeders were more concerned with the lack of new planes parked at Blue Grass Airport and their passengers who must make up the difference as the Maktoums get more and more choosy.

Raise A Native and Roberto, two of Kentucky’s finest stallions, died at their farms recently. Raise A Native, sire of leading North American sire Mr. Prospector and numerous other top race horses, was humanely destroyed at Spendthrift Farm in Lexington after suffering complications due to old age. He was 27.

Roberto, named by owner John Galbreath after one of his favorite Pittsburgh Pirate players, Roberto Clemente, died Tuesday at Darby Dan Farm in Lexington, just 13 days after the 90-year-old Galbreath died at his Ohio home. The winner of the 1972 English Derby and a 2-year-old Irish champion, Roberto was 19.

The first week of August was proclaimed “National Harness Horse Week” by a Congressional resolution backed by Rep. Jack Kemp, R-N.Y. “Harness racing contributions go back to the beginning of our country,” Kemp said. “In fact, President Washington had pacers and Paul Revere made his famous ride aboard a pacer.”

Notes

Kenneth Noe Jr., president and general manager of Calder Race Course and Tropical Park, has submitted his resignation as vice president of Thoroughbred Racing Associations and as a director of the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureua. The TRA is expected to act on the resignation at a Aug. 12 meeting at Saratoga. . . . A hearing officer has recommended suspensions for two trainers, Jerry Romans and his son Dale, and Churchill Downs entry clerk Leo Rehermann for their roles in the Blairwood-Briarwood mixup on Derby Day. Blairwood won the first race May 7 under the false name of Briarwood. The Kentucky Racing Commission hears the case Aug. 19.