Being mere laymen, you probably didn’t know this but people who race horses almost never get them from Santa at Christmastime. Nope, like everything else, it’s a process. You can, of course, buy some mares, breed them and with any kind of luck, eventually receive some nice healthy baby horses to raise into racehorses. Or you can actually buy or claim horses at the track, no fuss, no muss, no waiting. The other alternative is you go to one of the many horse sales that dot the land and buy one of the critters. You can start early—and cheaper—buying a weanling, a young horse anywhere from five or six months to a year old. The only trouble with that being that weanlings often grow in undesirable and unpredictable directions. If, on the other hand, you go out and buy yourself a yearling, you’ve got a pretty good idea of what the eventual product will look like. We at the esteemed Killeen-Ellison Racing Temple have done most of these things to varying levels of success. What we have not done, never ever, is to buy a horse at a two-year-old sale, working and ready to go. So when The Fastest Horse In The World, Cosmic Flash, recently incurred a pesky, if minor, injury necessitating his backing off hard training for awhile, we decided to go out and find us a racing replacement. You remind us of Hannah, known in some circles as Scarlet Siren, but so far Hannah has not been able to beat a fat man in a foot race, so there’s little excitement coming from that direction. Maybe we could do better at the Ocala Breeders June Sale of two-year-olds in training.
Just on the off chance you’ve never been to one of these things, here’s what happens: About seven hundred horses have been trained to run either an eighth or a quarter of a mile (consignor’s choice) as fast as they can possibly motor. For the former distance, that’s usually anywhere between ten and eleven-plus seconds. For the latter, twenty-one to twenty-two-plus seconds. The fastest horse, trained by Barry Eisaman, went in 9.5 seconds and sold for $150,000 even though her name was Puddifoot, for Christsakes. If I bought a horse for $150,000, I would like it to have a name like FLYING METEOR or something, certainly not Puddifoot, which sounds like a horse involved in a Sylvester The Cat cartoon. Puddifoot, indeed! Anyway, believe it or not, the people who gave their horse this name compounded their crime by buying back the filly! No kidding. Oh, a mere $150,000? Chickenfeed! I’m telling you Myrtle, she’s worth half a mil if she’s worth a nickel, let’s take her home and teach her to play the trombone. Did we mention that you have to pay the sales company a nice fat commission whether the horse sells or not? Maybe Puddifoot’s owners are rich. Maybe they own a large fleet of garbage scows or a Dunkin’ Donuts franchise in a gigantic police precinct. Maybe they just want to know what their horse is worth for the hell of it. Now, they do.
In addition to being fast, however, it also helps if a horse has a nice pedigree. If your sire is Storm Cat, you might sell for a little more than some nag by oh, say Jethro Clampett. If the dam could run and has turned out a couple of impressive winners, she will be taken more seriously than the mother who could not break her maiden at the Northhampton Fair and has produced children who are averaging 45 cents a start. A good work time and respectable parentage are not enough, however, if your legs are attached backwards or you are making noises like a whooping crane as you negotiate the track. In addition to the obvious problems, there are more subtle ones, obvious only to wizards of the arcane and mysterious. This is why we have Siobhan. Well. That’s not entirely true. We also have her because she has a tiny waist and we really like tiny waists on women. But I digress. It is sort of a mixed blessing to have Siobhan assess your prospects. On the one hand, she will not miss a blemish and you will not be stuck with a problem horse. On the other, Siobhan will eliminate 95% of the horses in the sale and you will be left with a piddling few, considering the work time and pedigree requirements. So buying a horse at one of these things is a big challenge, particularly in the times of economic renaissance in which we find ourselves. But we’re always up for a new challenge. What? Oh. Siobhan says we’re always up for a new challenge unless it involves hikes in excess of 14 miles, traveling on twisty, narrow roads with no guardrails or eating food which has been left in the refrigerator too long. Anything else, we’re ready to go.
The Consignors
Okay, what we’ve got here is everything from the Barry Eisamans and Nick De Merics of the world, who do an honest job and stand by their merchandise to a small array of murky bottom feeders who will say and do anything to market their wares. There are various levels of integrity in between. It is best to know the ways of this world and not to be the proverbial babe in the woods. If you are a rookie, get help. There’s plenty of help to be had and a good result can be obtained by people who avail themselves of it. The sale company protects the consumers on several levels. Horses who are x-rayed, scoped and drug-tested and found wanting before leaving the sales grounds can be returned to their consignors and the purchase price fully refunded. Occasionally, a lesser price can be negotiated by a customer willing to remove a chip, have throat surgery performed or the like. There is a veritable army of veterinarians with golf carts revved up, eagerly waiting to perform the required inspections. Beyond that, a prospective purchaser has to realize that these horses have been trained to meet a schedule. If you are breaking and training your own yearling, you are free to take as much time as you wish between workouts or when a small problem arises. The two-year-old consignor may not always have that luxury. Obviously, in a June sale the horses are more mature than in the early February or March sales and the consignors have more time to prepare them. Finally, in the old days, if you wanted to watch a horse work, you had to put in the hours standing out at the rail in the morning, spending a lot of time waiting for your particular horse to perform. Now, modern technology requires you to merely push a button and your horse’s work will appear as if by magic. Another useful tool to help in the analysis of should you or shouldn’t you take that leap. One of the great charms of the horse-racing business is that most of what happens is up to you. You can be careful or careless. You can use good sense and pick up a nice horse for a good price or spend a fortune on a poor one. There is always luck involved in such enterprises. Your job is to minimize chance, which is easier said than done.
The Buyers
Having been on both sides of the buyer-seller chasm, it is as easy to sympathize with the consignors as with the buyers. Horse purchasers come in all sizes, shapes and mentalities, from very serious sophisticates to inveterate tire-kickers. Over the course of a sale, the attractive horses are out of their stalls a lot, a tiring and boring exercise and one that wears on them as the days wind on. Consignors are more than happy to show a horse to a legitimate buyer with some knowledge of what he is looking at. Many buyers send their trainers to inspect the horses, the latter having looked at a passel of horses in their lifetimes and knowing a real problem from an impostor. Others bring along a vet or some other professional wise in the ways of horse conformation, people like our friend Bill Mauk, a horse dealer in Lexington. Still others, many of them rookies, bring only themselves, fussing over imagined problems, exaggerating the dangers of minor ones and being generally obnoxious whenever possible. During a brief period as a consignor, I was very short with these people and I try to keep that in mind when I am dealing with horse peddlers nowadays. A few hints to prospective buyers: This is not the best place to bring your girlfriends or children to impress them with your vast horse knowledge. Most everybody knows more than you. Ask a lot of questions and then shut up. This practice will serve you amazingly well. Second, if you notice a problem, discuss it quietly with the consignor rather than ranting about it loudly in front of other possible buyers. Chances are, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Why mess things up for everybody else? Third, if you are interested in a horse, leave your name and phone number with the consignor. You never can tell when a sale will fall through and the owners will consider taking a lesser amount.
A Day In The Life
Siobhan and I looked at a few Saturday morning and a batch more Sunday, reducing the prospects to about a dozen after viewing workouts. It was a stretch to think we could afford any of them but we hoped something might fall through the cracks. On Tuesday, the sale started and it became quickly apparent that the cracks would be narrow indeed. Nonetheless, I performed my due diligence, spending hours watching horses pass through the ring, checking information sheets to record the buybacks and doing the Gainesville Sun crossword puzzle. I talked to friends, got tips, watched tips fizzle. I even considered buying a three-year-old, a few of which always show up at the end of these sales and bring pennies. Unfortunately, the three-year-old I was interested in brought three million pennies. Some days are diamonds, some days are stones, like this Tuesday and then Wednesday. We came home with the same number of horses we left with, but we are not disheartened. It is, after all, only two months until the August yearling sale, plenty of needles in that haystack. They’ll be cheaper and they don’t even have to work. We bought a yearling once for $5500 and sold him a year later for $240,000. This sort of thing doesn’t happen very often but, then again, it doesn’t have to, does it?
Meanwhile, there’s Cosmic Flash to rehabilitate. We’ll be back out at Eisaman’s Saturday mornings, monitoring progress. We’re aiming for the grand finale of the Florida Stallion Stakes series, with a pot worth $400,000. If we win, we’ll be able to afford one of those two-year-olds next year. But not if his name is Puddifoot.
Just on the off chance you’ve never been to one of these things, here’s what happens: About seven hundred horses have been trained to run either an eighth or a quarter of a mile (consignor’s choice) as fast as they can possibly motor. For the former distance, that’s usually anywhere between ten and eleven-plus seconds. For the latter, twenty-one to twenty-two-plus seconds. The fastest horse, trained by Barry Eisaman, went in 9.5 seconds and sold for $150,000 even though her name was Puddifoot, for Christsakes. If I bought a horse for $150,000, I would like it to have a name like FLYING METEOR or something, certainly not Puddifoot, which sounds like a horse involved in a Sylvester The Cat cartoon. Puddifoot, indeed! Anyway, believe it or not, the people who gave their horse this name compounded their crime by buying back the filly! No kidding. Oh, a mere $150,000? Chickenfeed! I’m telling you Myrtle, she’s worth half a mil if she’s worth a nickel, let’s take her home and teach her to play the trombone. Did we mention that you have to pay the sales company a nice fat commission whether the horse sells or not? Maybe Puddifoot’s owners are rich. Maybe they own a large fleet of garbage scows or a Dunkin’ Donuts franchise in a gigantic police precinct. Maybe they just want to know what their horse is worth for the hell of it. Now, they do.
In addition to being fast, however, it also helps if a horse has a nice pedigree. If your sire is Storm Cat, you might sell for a little more than some nag by oh, say Jethro Clampett. If the dam could run and has turned out a couple of impressive winners, she will be taken more seriously than the mother who could not break her maiden at the Northhampton Fair and has produced children who are averaging 45 cents a start. A good work time and respectable parentage are not enough, however, if your legs are attached backwards or you are making noises like a whooping crane as you negotiate the track. In addition to the obvious problems, there are more subtle ones, obvious only to wizards of the arcane and mysterious. This is why we have Siobhan. Well. That’s not entirely true. We also have her because she has a tiny waist and we really like tiny waists on women. But I digress. It is sort of a mixed blessing to have Siobhan assess your prospects. On the one hand, she will not miss a blemish and you will not be stuck with a problem horse. On the other, Siobhan will eliminate 95% of the horses in the sale and you will be left with a piddling few, considering the work time and pedigree requirements. So buying a horse at one of these things is a big challenge, particularly in the times of economic renaissance in which we find ourselves. But we’re always up for a new challenge. What? Oh. Siobhan says we’re always up for a new challenge unless it involves hikes in excess of 14 miles, traveling on twisty, narrow roads with no guardrails or eating food which has been left in the refrigerator too long. Anything else, we’re ready to go.
The Consignors
Okay, what we’ve got here is everything from the Barry Eisamans and Nick De Merics of the world, who do an honest job and stand by their merchandise to a small array of murky bottom feeders who will say and do anything to market their wares. There are various levels of integrity in between. It is best to know the ways of this world and not to be the proverbial babe in the woods. If you are a rookie, get help. There’s plenty of help to be had and a good result can be obtained by people who avail themselves of it. The sale company protects the consumers on several levels. Horses who are x-rayed, scoped and drug-tested and found wanting before leaving the sales grounds can be returned to their consignors and the purchase price fully refunded. Occasionally, a lesser price can be negotiated by a customer willing to remove a chip, have throat surgery performed or the like. There is a veritable army of veterinarians with golf carts revved up, eagerly waiting to perform the required inspections. Beyond that, a prospective purchaser has to realize that these horses have been trained to meet a schedule. If you are breaking and training your own yearling, you are free to take as much time as you wish between workouts or when a small problem arises. The two-year-old consignor may not always have that luxury. Obviously, in a June sale the horses are more mature than in the early February or March sales and the consignors have more time to prepare them. Finally, in the old days, if you wanted to watch a horse work, you had to put in the hours standing out at the rail in the morning, spending a lot of time waiting for your particular horse to perform. Now, modern technology requires you to merely push a button and your horse’s work will appear as if by magic. Another useful tool to help in the analysis of should you or shouldn’t you take that leap. One of the great charms of the horse-racing business is that most of what happens is up to you. You can be careful or careless. You can use good sense and pick up a nice horse for a good price or spend a fortune on a poor one. There is always luck involved in such enterprises. Your job is to minimize chance, which is easier said than done.
The Buyers
Having been on both sides of the buyer-seller chasm, it is as easy to sympathize with the consignors as with the buyers. Horse purchasers come in all sizes, shapes and mentalities, from very serious sophisticates to inveterate tire-kickers. Over the course of a sale, the attractive horses are out of their stalls a lot, a tiring and boring exercise and one that wears on them as the days wind on. Consignors are more than happy to show a horse to a legitimate buyer with some knowledge of what he is looking at. Many buyers send their trainers to inspect the horses, the latter having looked at a passel of horses in their lifetimes and knowing a real problem from an impostor. Others bring along a vet or some other professional wise in the ways of horse conformation, people like our friend Bill Mauk, a horse dealer in Lexington. Still others, many of them rookies, bring only themselves, fussing over imagined problems, exaggerating the dangers of minor ones and being generally obnoxious whenever possible. During a brief period as a consignor, I was very short with these people and I try to keep that in mind when I am dealing with horse peddlers nowadays. A few hints to prospective buyers: This is not the best place to bring your girlfriends or children to impress them with your vast horse knowledge. Most everybody knows more than you. Ask a lot of questions and then shut up. This practice will serve you amazingly well. Second, if you notice a problem, discuss it quietly with the consignor rather than ranting about it loudly in front of other possible buyers. Chances are, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Why mess things up for everybody else? Third, if you are interested in a horse, leave your name and phone number with the consignor. You never can tell when a sale will fall through and the owners will consider taking a lesser amount.
A Day In The Life
Siobhan and I looked at a few Saturday morning and a batch more Sunday, reducing the prospects to about a dozen after viewing workouts. It was a stretch to think we could afford any of them but we hoped something might fall through the cracks. On Tuesday, the sale started and it became quickly apparent that the cracks would be narrow indeed. Nonetheless, I performed my due diligence, spending hours watching horses pass through the ring, checking information sheets to record the buybacks and doing the Gainesville Sun crossword puzzle. I talked to friends, got tips, watched tips fizzle. I even considered buying a three-year-old, a few of which always show up at the end of these sales and bring pennies. Unfortunately, the three-year-old I was interested in brought three million pennies. Some days are diamonds, some days are stones, like this Tuesday and then Wednesday. We came home with the same number of horses we left with, but we are not disheartened. It is, after all, only two months until the August yearling sale, plenty of needles in that haystack. They’ll be cheaper and they don’t even have to work. We bought a yearling once for $5500 and sold him a year later for $240,000. This sort of thing doesn’t happen very often but, then again, it doesn’t have to, does it?
Meanwhile, there’s Cosmic Flash to rehabilitate. We’ll be back out at Eisaman’s Saturday mornings, monitoring progress. We’re aiming for the grand finale of the Florida Stallion Stakes series, with a pot worth $400,000. If we win, we’ll be able to afford one of those two-year-olds next year. But not if his name is Puddifoot.
