Thoroughly Bred Now

Four days after the Preakness, late in the afternoon at Murmur Farm, the phone rang in Audrey and Allen Murray’s office. On the other end was a man with a mare in Georgia, wanting to breed her to Our Emblem.

A sire that had not even been a singles hitter for two years in Kentucky, Our Emblem became an overnight slugger with the victories by his son War Emblem in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, and the Murrays, who bought the then-unwanted stallion cheaply last November, were by mid-May accustomed to a deluge of calls. But this entreaty from Georgia was especially pushy.

Softly and politely, Audrey Murray told the man that Our Emblem was booked up for the rest of the current breeding season, which ends July 1. About five different ways, she told him that this was the case.

“How many mares will he wind up having?” said the man, making one more desperate try.

“Ninety-five,” Audrey Murray said.

“Well,” he said, “that’s an odd number, an unlucky number. Why don’t you make my mare No. 96?”

“Well, if I counted them again,” Murray said, “I’d probably find that I have 96 already. Look, I’m doing a [newspaper] interview and I have to get off. It’s just impossible to add one more mare. Just the other day, we had to turn down a mare from Kentucky, and she was a producer of a Grade I winner. The poor horse can only do so much. We have to protect him.”

While Murray was taking this call, her husband was with a contingent from Kentucky that included Doug Cauthen of WinStar Farm. They were watching Our Emblem breed to his third mare of the day. Less than a week later, WinStar and its partner, Taylor Made Farm, announced that they had bought Our Emblem for $10.1 million. The 11-year-old stallion’s next breeding season, which begins Feb. 15, 2003, will be back in Kentucky, where he flopped the first time around.

“We were probably going to sell,” Allen Murray said, “but unless a very good offer came along, we were going to wait until after the Belmont. But this was a very good offer, an offer we couldn’t refuse.”

War Emblem, one of four stakes winners by Our Emblem this year after the sire had accounted for only one minor stakes winner from his first crops, can become the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978 if he wins the Belmont Stakes on Saturday.

“Selling the horse is not going to change our lives,” said 69-year-old Allen Murray, a retired electrical engineer who designed tank armor for the U.S. government. “Five months out of the year, we work very hard, seven days a week. The rest of the year, we back off, and while still caring for the farm we’re only really working hard about one day a week. We take time off to go on vacations, like a cruise to Spain a year ago. Selling this horse is not going to change all that.”

The Murrays are believed to have paid $200,000 last year for Our Emblem, who raced for Ogden Phipps--winning five of 27 starts, no stakes and earning $366,013--and first stood at aristocratic Claiborne Farm near Paris, Ky. Estimates of what the Phipps family got for the stallion have ranged from $40,000 upward, and the Murrays will say only that they bought him for a six-figure sum.

“I’m surprised Claiborne gave up on him so soon,” a Kentucky breeder said. “Usually you wait at least three crops to get the feel of what a stallion can do.”

Claiborne, where Derby winners Johnstown (1939) and Swale (1984) were bred, is doing no second-guessing.

“At the time, we thought it was a good move,” said Gus Koch, assistant manager of the farm. “We still do.”

Our Emblem’s first 31 foals, from the 1998 breeding season, earned only $498,808 and the only stakes winner was Uncle Punk, who won an added-money race at Arapahoe Park near Denver. At auction, Our Emblem’s progeny averaged only $9,000 a horse in 2000. Until this year, Our Emblem’s second crop was also undistinguished. At Claiborne, his stud fee was only going down.

The Murrays, high-school sweethearts who have been married for 47 years, usually keep six or seven stallions at Murmur Farm, a well-kept 133-acre spread that from one rise affords a magnificent view of the Susquehanna River. They had owned a farm about 10 miles from here, and in 1988, looking for a larger property, they bought and renamed (repeating the first three letters of their last name) the old Ardmore Farm. It had been owned by the estate of Thomas Barry, who trained Belmont Stakes winners Cavan in 1958 and Celtic Ash in 1960.

The Murrays, who breed to race and sell, hadn’t added a new stallion since Crypto Star, the 1997 Arkansas and Louisiana Derby winner, and last fall they visited several Kentucky farms.

“We were looking for something that we might be able to re-syndicate,” Audrey Murray said. “Then when we looked at Our Emblem, we saw that he had no soundness problems and had bloodlines that might be attractive to Marylanders.”

Ben Taylor, one of the owners of Taylor Made Farm in Nicholasville, Ky., says that Our Emblem “is probably the best-bred horse currently at stud.” Bred by Ogden Phipps, who died in April, Our Emblem is a son of the late Mr. Prospector, who was a hallmark sire, and Personal Ensign, undefeated in her 13 races and producer of three Grade I stakes winners.

Having closed the deal in Kentucky, the Murrays brought Our Emblem to Maryland, where he was largely received with indifference. At $7,500 a share--a share being the right to breed to a stallion once a year for life--only 15 shares were sold, mostly to longtime friends and clients of the Murrays. The Murrays retained 25 shares and a majority ownership in the stallion.

Our Emblem began his second career at stud for a fee of $4,000, which is the amount a non-shareholder would have to pay for a one-time breeding. The Murrays had sold 40 of these breedings before War Emblem’s breakout win, in the Illinois Derby on April 6. The next week, three things happened: Ahmed Salman, the Saudi Arabian prince, bought a 90% interest in War Emblem for $900,000; Our Emblem’s stud fee was raised to $7,500; and the phone at Murmur Farm started ringing ... and ringing. By the time War Emblem won the Kentucky Derby, most of the 95 breeding slots had been sold. But 100 calls a day to Murmur was not uncommon.

On Derby day, many of the 15 original shareholders gathered at Murmur Farm, in the 150-year-old stone house where the Murrays live. When War Emblem protected his lead to win by four lengths, the crowd jumped up and down. Champagne corks popped.

“It’s an unbelievable thing,” Audrey Murray said. “It’s just a phenomenal thing. It’s been something that’s helped all of Maryland racing, and it’s a romantic story that can be an inspiration to others in the business.”

War Emblem, the result of a mating between Our Emblem and Sweetest Lady, a Lord At War mare, was bred by Charles Nuckols Jr. and his two sons, who operate Nuckols Farm in Midway, Ky., about 60 miles east of Churchill Downs.

Midway is a one-stoplight, one-main-drag town of about 1,600, but in horse circles its reputation is well-served. Three of the last four Kentucky Derby winners--Charismatic, Monarchos and now War Emblem--have Midway ties. John Oxley, who owns a farm just across the road from Nuckols Farm, raced Monarchos, last year’s Derby winner.

The day of the Illinois Derby, Charles “Nucks” Nuckols III, his father’s older son, was standing next to Oxley as they watched on TV from the Keeneland track. After War Emblem cantered home by more than six lengths, Oxley said to Nuckols:

“Refresh my memory, Nucks. Did I buy 50% of that colt, or the whole horse? I can’t remember.”

Oxley was chiding himself. He and his trainer, John Ward Jr., had turned down War Emblem, because of ankle and knee chips, before Prince Salman came along.

War Emblem was foaled at 6 p.m. on Feb . 20, 1999.

Russell Reineman, a Chicago businessman whose relationship with Charlie Nuckols goes back more than 40 years, leases his broodmares to Nuckols Farm. On behalf of Reineman, War Emblem was consigned to a yearling sale at Keeneland in September of 2000.

“He looked plain and immature,” Nucks Nuckols said. The bidding never took off, and Reineman bought the colt back for $20,000. War Emblem ran seven times, winning four, for Reineman before he was sold.

The well-known story by now is that Reineman, Nuckols Farm’s major client, has been left with only 10% of War Emblem, and the Derby winner’s dam, Sweetest Lady, is no longer around. In foal to Distorted Humor, she died from massive hemorrhaging after foaling a colt last year. A month later, the foal also died. Sweetest Lady, who was 11, had produced only four foals.

“This is the business,” Nucks Nuckols said last Friday. “Today we had a 3-month-old foal, one of Mr. Reineman’s, drop dead. We found another foal with an abscess on the lung. These are the things that happen. They bring you back to reality real quick.”