by Helen Thomas
Jenny is quietly relieved to have sold her filly, especially to a trainer who will take her home to Cranbourne, where he trains. Just like his father and Robbie.
‘I was lucky, there were two people on her,’ Jenny says. ‘Two people who really wanted her.’
Jenny admits that she had steeled herself to accept the worst this morning; after watching the first 20 lots go under the hammer, she and her adviser saw the reality getting harsher and adjusted their reserve from $50,000 to $40,000 accordingly. As her filly went into the ring, she positioned herself behind the auctioneer’s box, and by the time she reached the reserve and he turned to ask if they were selling, she was ready to throw her hands in the air. Better to get out square, she was thinking, than take a serious financial hit. But then interest picked up, and the price steadily increased until the final bid.
‘It just took off in its own little way,’ she says. ‘It was good.’
Still, she’s only drinking soft drink. She has made it out ahead, but only just.
This brings the reality of dealing with racehorses back to the financial bottom line of buying, if not selling, yearlings. While it is easy enough to work out how much it costs on a monthly basis to keep a broodmare, get her in foal, wean and nurture the son or daughter to this point of sale—where profit or loss is very clear—it is much harder to work out the long-term costs of the yearlings sold. The higher their price, the more a youngster has to earn on the racetrack to balance the books. The simple truth is that not every horse can do that.
As Robbie Griffiths observed, there are a few too many horses that cost the odd million dollars galloping around provincial circuits for comfort, and this seems to suggest that paying excessively high amounts for young horses doesn’t guarantee success.
What is really astonishing, given the amount of money changing hands at these sales—and that some of Australia’s biggest business movers and shakers are actually driving a large part of the business—is that so few studies have been done looking into how horses perform as racehorses, in relation to what they have cost as yearlings.
Melbourne University’s Equine Centre did look into this recently, as part of a wider investigation into the pre-sale radiographs of yearlings, and its conclusions are instructive. ‘Purchasing a yearling as a potential future race horse is a high risk investment,’ the 2009 report says, somewhat ominously, in its introduction. It tracked 2773 horses that were sold at auction in the 2002/2003 season ‘to assess associations between (their) purchase price … and race performance in the first two years’.
‘Of the thoroughbreds included in this study, 79.6 per cent had at least one race start during their two and three year old years. Of this group, 61.5 per cent earned some prize money, with 11.2 per cent earning enough to cover the estimated costs of training during the two-year timeframe, while 14.4 per cent earned enough to cover their purchase price. Alarmingly, only 5.1 per cent won enough at the races to pay for their combined costs and purchase price.’
This report points out that the top-selling yearling of the study group ‘earned almost $600,000 from only seven starts’. Yet, the top money earner only cost $80,000 as a yearling and earned almost $3.5 million in only 16 starts. Now that’s a clear profit margin!
However, the study concludes that price does matter.
‘Purchase price had a significant effect on all measures of race performance and earnings. With increasing sale price category, the likelihood of starting in a race, the number of race starts at two and three years of age, the number of horses earning prize money and total prize money earned increased.
‘This may confirm buyers’ ability to select better horses, but other reasons are also possible … buyers paying higher prices could be more motivated to race their purchase, or more expensive horses may go to more proven trainers who have the ability to achieve maximum racing performance for a longer duration from the horse.’
But the real kicker comes a little later in this document, surely required reading for everyone in this industry.
‘As the sale price category increased, the chance of a buyer earning back the cost of the yearling decreased. Horses purchased within the $0 to $10,000 category were, on average, almost four times more likely to earn back their purchasing price than those purchased for more than $100,000.
‘The $50,001 to $100,000 category had the highest proportion of horses earning back the combined purchase price and estimated costs. However, only 7 per cent of horses within that category earned prize money in excess of the combined costs, so purchasers are still unlikely to make a return on their investment within the first two years.’
These statistics are sobering, and certainly cast a pall of doubt over the oft-repeated maxim that there’s so much prize money for two year olds to race for here in Australia, they will have no trouble paying back what they cost in the ring. But there’s a little wiggle room for hope here too. I realise that if you are working at the cheap end of the market and get it right, there is a chance of maybe breaking even. According to this report and applying it to my situation, unless I’m reading it wrong, the odds are better on Rosie returning her production costs than Makybe Diva’s $1.5 million son levelling the ledger.
As Jenny heads to the airport, I see Robbie engrossed in conversation with potential clients, so I wander back to the parade ring behind the main auditorium and watch the babies walk until he’s free. It is not such a hectic day for him as he has already done most of his inspections, personally checking nearly 500 of the 780 horses on offer. His energy and dedication to his job are inspiring.
He’s especially keen on Lot 320, the third of the God’s Own yearlings we were discussing yesterday. So we move back in to his favourite spot inside the auditorium, at the edge of the wall just in from one of the side doors. He leans around the wall whenever he wants to bid and pulls back behind it when he doesn’t want to engage—and he enters this particular fray around the $30,000 mark, staying on the horse until his final offer of $65,000 is passed. The brown colt eventually hits the $100,000 mark.
‘Did you see who bought him?’ he asks me.
In the crush of people around us, I don’t. But we both spot the young woman from Inglis with the sales docket all buyers have to sign after the hammer falls. Robbie follows her to congratulate the successful buyer. I wonder if he ever asks to train a horse he has been the under-bidder on.
No time to find out as Tony and Craig, two of the stable clients I met yesterday, are talking intently to Robbie about a couple of yearlings they are interested in and we wander down to Oakford Stud’s draft, where he organises to have a couple of colts pulled out of their stalls.
While we wait, Tony, Craig and I look in on another colt who is so exhausted by what he has gone through at the sale so far that he is actually stretched out on his bed of straw with his rug on, trying to sleep.
‘We’ve been here since Wednesday last week and we’ve had 600 inspections,’ his handler tells us. ‘I feel like lying down in there with him.’
It must be hard for these young animals to take part in this selling process. For a start, they are far from home, standing in boxes day and night for more than a week, surrounded by strangers staring in at them. Then there’s the physical exertion of walking in and out of their stalls each day, at the beck and call of prospective buyers, and the noise level of the PA broadcasting the sale around the grounds is a lot for these little ones to cope with. They are, after all, only a year old!
The heat alone out here this week is enough to slow everyone down.
Tony, Craig and I move to the shade of some trees to wait for Robbie to reappear. As we chat, it becomes apparent that I am not the only shadow Robbie has at this sale.
He has at least two others, and they have been trailing him for a while. Tony and his wife actually rang Robbie six months ago to ask if they could come and work with him, voluntarily, to learn the racing ropes.
‘We wanted to learn, so why not try for the best?’ Tony said with
a grin. With brother-in-law Craig, they have set up a farm on the Mornington Peninsula and have three of Robbie’s horses spelling there in between campaigns, so they must be getting the hang of it.
Of the trio, Craig seems the one most interested in being a racehorse owner, and is determined to take one of the God’s Owns Robbie bought yesterday to race himself. He sells luxury cars and, at this stage, the financial crisis hasn’t dented either his confidence or his buying power. Our small group reminds me, again, just how democratic racing can be. Perhaps the only industry where sheikhs do rub shoulders with taxi drivers, and who can say who will win? In this world it doesn’t necessarily follow that the most expensive yearling grows into the best horse. Still, I’m biding my time to see one of my favourite God’s Own so far, a filly from a terrific old mare called Espiare.
She was the smallest of the Yallambee group I inspected with Robbie the day before and she’s not much bigger than Rosie. ‘A little mushroom, a real athlete who’ll grow,’ was how Robbie described her. On the day she is up for sale, Robbie’s interest in her has waned because he’s worried that he’s buying up too many of God’s Own first season offspring. I’m disappointed, as I had hoped she would make it into Robbie’s Class of 2009.
But as the bidding on the little bay filly starts, Craig, Tony and I see Robbie roll around his favourite wall on the other side of the auditorium from where we are seated, and he makes a tentative early bid. We head over to Robbie just in time for his winning bid, a comparatively modest $35,000. He’s smiling, a little ruefully.
‘Bloody hell, mate—I hope they can run,’ Craig laughs once the sale is sealed.
‘Just call me God’s Own Pty Ltd,’ Robbie mutters, as he signs the sale receipt.
‘Happy now?’ he asks me as we walk back outside, and I have to admit I am.
He’s still not quite done for the day, admitting he is interested in the strong colt coming up in the next hour, another son of the same stallion, but expects he will go for more than $100,000, which is too steep for his budget.
He’s right. Trainer Mathew Ellerton gets him for $150,000. In the interim, and at Craig’s behest, Robbie buys another Flying Spur filly, a cousin of the good race mare Mnemosyne, for $40,000.
With today’s sale almost over, I assure Robbie I will be back in the morning, even though he won’t be there first thing. It will be a chance for me to have a look around on my own and test what I’ve learnt the last couple of days.
I know Robbie has his sights set on one more of God’s Own’s fillies today, out of a male called Fraarie, although she is slightly offset in the knees, a flaw that could hold her back in the racing stakes. Despite his misgivings, I learn later that he has snapped her up for $100,000.
Later that night, I drift off to sleep wondering how much a tenth share in the Espiare filly will cost. But even in the dream, the financial reality that is Rosie intrudes and I know the other little filly will have to run without me.
The third day of this long sale, the 24 hours of extreme weather everyone in Victoria has been warned about dawns overcast and muggy. Thankfully it’s nothing at all like the severe conditions predicted. I get to Oaklands about half an hour into the session and the crowd has trimmed down again to at least a quarter of what it was yesterday. Sitting inside, I watch a few horses go through the ring before wandering out to see if Robbie’s arrived.
No sign of him yet, so I take the opportunity to walk around the whole complex again, this time more slowly. I go to the new Barn H where a filly from Excited Angel’s family is stalled. I wonder what, if any, similarities she will have with Rosie, who also boasts the former top race mare in her family tree.
Excited Angel, winner of the VRC Bloodhorse Breeders’ Plate as a two year old and 11 other races through her career—including the Group 3 Coongy Handicap and the Queen of the Turf Stakes in Sydney—was a fantastic galloper. In 1993, when she ran in the Doncaster Handicap, one of Australia’s great races, friends and I made a banner that read ‘Go, Angel, Go!’ and hung it over a balcony in the grandstand, the crowd around and below us chanting her name as we unfurled it. She didn’t win that golden mile at Randwick Racecourse that year, but she ran bravely and has since proved to be a quality broodmare, producing four good winners, including Aquiver and more recently Tollemache. As far as I know, she is still at work as a 20 year old!
Surely this is a family that deserves selling in the select part of the sale, and yet this filly—Lot 706—has been relegated to the fourth and final day, the so-called second session. When I reach her stall, I quickly see why. She’s tiny! I think Rosie is actually much taller, although not quite as solid. I make a mental note to try and get Robbie to assess her, if he has time, and head back to the main ring, resisting the temptation of getting this young girl out of her box for a closer look. It will be interesting to see how much she brings tomorrow.
Still no sign of my trainer, which is a bit worrying as the filly he really loves—by Elvstroem, out of a mare called Luxapal, mother of a good horse he trains called Testalux—is now only 10 lots away. I call his mobile and he answers straightaway. He’s running late but the auctioneers have been instructed to call him as soon as the bidding starts.
The filly, Lot 491, is next to step into the ring. I dash back inside as the filly takes her place centre stage.
‘Looks like a filly who will get up and run for you,’ says auctioneer Jonathon D’Arcy, as she starts her walk around the large raised dais. And then he calls for the first bid. ‘$80,000 for her? $70,000? $60,000? $20,000? All right …’
And they’re off, quickly jumping in $5000 increments to $70,000.
D’Arcy holds the hammer up, a good dramatic pause for all bidders to consider their position one last time. And then he drops it. ‘$70,000 to the man on the phone. She’s a lovely filly.’
Within minutes, Robbie’s back on the phone to thank me for letting him know how close things were.
We discuss the colt he was the under-bidder on yesterday that was bought by prominent Brisbane trainer Gillian Heinrich’s husband. This gives me an insight into his approach to bidding in the ring, as well as working with horses in general. The more we talk, the more convinced I am that my filly is going to be in good hands. Robbie’s the right man for Rosie.
As Robbie continues to drive towards Oaklands, he focuses on the always contentious role X-rays play at these auctions. A decade ago, a buyer had to take a leap of faith about the horse they were bidding on, in terms of their overall soundness: what you saw, you hoped, was as good inside as out.
Now, most vendors have their yearlings X-rayed before the sales, so potential buyers can be sure how the youngsters look skeletally. Inside out, in other words. Fetlocks, knees, stifles, all the important parts come under scrutiny. This means even the tiniest imperfections are revealed, along with more major bone spurs, chips, OCDs and worse.
The X-rays are publicly available through an on-site data-bank at these sales, so anyone who is interested can view them before the auction. It’s certainly a service much appreciated by buyers expecting to pay big money for a horse. In fact, some vets swear by the scans and usually advise clients against buying if the results aren’t clear.
Others use it as just one more tool to help them make an overall assessment of a young horse. They argue that these young horses aren’t lame, or even sore in any part of their bodies, yet are being X-rayed as if they are. And even if a small irregularity is revealed, if it’s not actually worrying the horse, chances are they will grow out of it.
So many high-profile trainers are willing to back their overall sense of a horse, rather than losing heart because of a niggling problem an X-ray detects. And Robbie Griffiths is one of them. But even he prefers not to go against his senior vet’s advice, although he finds it odd that pictures are being taken of horses who appear to have nothing wrong with them.
It is an issue on his mind today, because he is mulling over what to do about a particular colt he likes, whose X-rays
have revealed something serious enough for the vet to fail him. In other words, buyer beware. But not the senior vet, at least not yet, and that’s who Robbie wants to get a final opinion from as quickly as possible. And if he fails the colt too?
‘If he says no, what’s the point of paying for advice and not following it? They’ve probably saved me more than they cost me.’
As we hang up it strikes me that it must be hard taking advice that your professional instinct says to ignore. And some of Australia’s great racehorses wouldn’t pass muster as yearlings these days: Might and Power, Caulfield/Melbourne Cup victor in 1997 and WS Cox Plate champion a year later, failed to reach his reserve of $40,000 when he was in the Easter Sale ring, because he had a funny way of flicking one of his legs out, a trait that looked even worse when he galloped.
Only Anthony Cummings had the foresight, and courage, to make an offer after the horse had left the ring and the big horse went on to win $5 million in prize money.
As I have an early sandwich for lunch, I wonder about where the horse called Mighty would end up if he was sold here this year. Probably still with Anthony, who would still have liked everything about him, and gambled on his leg being strong enough to withstand its eccentric action.
Robbie rings again; he’s just arrived and is out back of the ring, trying to duck the wind and have another look at the colt with the bad X-rays. The good news is the senior vet has cleared the youngster, so we move quickly to Robbie’s favourite corner and he buys the horse for $40,000.
At this point, he has almost finished his job, with only a couple left to bid on; one this afternoon, the other tomorrow. Not surprisingly he wants a breather and wanders off to have a beer and contemplate the best approach to secure the next horse on his list.
