Posts Tagged ‘Lane’s End’

WinStar Farm put its home-court advantage to good use Wednesday night, beating a team from Darley and Fasig-Tipton 55-48 to win the first annual WinStar Charity Basketball Tournament and raise more than $10,000 in college scholarship funds for Dara and Chase Mullins, whose father, David Mullins (pictured below), died earlier this year from pancreatic cancer at the age of 51. Mullins, an Irish native who came to the United States in the mid-1970s, operated Doninga Bloodstock.

The eight-team tournament, held in the indoor gymnasium at WinStar over the last week, was the brainchild of the farm’s president and CEO, Doug Cauthen, and Elliott Walden, WinStar’s vice president. Funds raised for Dara and Chase Mullins are being administered by the Race for Education, a 501(c)3 organization created in 2002 to help children of equine industry families realize their dream of a college education. It also supports students wishing to study in pursuit of equine or agricultural careers.

“It’s amazing the amount of support we’ve received for this event,” said Elisabeth Jensen, president and executive director of the Race for Education. “Each of the teams put up $500 to enter, and we raised another $7,000 this week.”

It’s not too late to contribute to the fund. Click here to make a donation to support the Dara and Chase Mullins scholarship fund.

Dara Mullins, 20, is attending Miami  (Ohio) University, although she took the fall semester off after her father’s death in August to carry on the Doninga consignment at the Keeneland November breeding stock sale. Her 13-year-old brother, Chase, also worked the sale. The two Mullins children had the assistance of some of her late father’s many friends in the industry.

The eight teams participating in the WinStar Charity Tournament came from Hagyard Equine Medical Institute, Claiborne Farm, Lane’s End, Pin Oak, Taylor Made, Three Chimneys, along with the two squads that played in the finals. Jensen hopes to attract 16 teams to the tournament next year, and also has plans to create a soccer tournament for area horse farm workers. Both events will benefit the Race for Education’s general scholarship fund.

WinStar jumped off to a big early lead over a fatigued Darley/Fasig-Tipton team, which only a few minutes earlier had completed a remarkable come-from-behind overtime victory over Taylor Made to make the finals.  WinStar won their semi-final game earlier in the evening over Hagyard.

The Darley/Fasig-Tipton team never gave up, however, putting in a torrid third-quarter rally to tie the game, but WinStar shut them down in the final quarter and pulled away down the stretch for a comfortable win.

Trinity Davis, an assistant resident manager for WinStar, led all scorers with 19 points. Walden scored 18, showing a good touch from the outside and using his muscle to dominate in the paint.

None of the players will ever make the top 10 highlights on ESPN’s SportsCenter, but everyone who participated in the WinStar Charity Tournament is a superstar for his (or her) efforts on behalf of Dara and Chase Mullins.

Among those on hand for the action was Joe B. Hall, the legendary longtime coach of the University of Kentucky Wildcats. Hall is one of three men to have both played on and coached an NCAA championship team.

“I’m here scoutin’ for Billy Clyde,” Hall quipped during one of the semi-final games, a reference to Kentucky’s current basketball coach, Billy Clyde Gillispie. “By the looks of these fellas, though, they might be better suited playing for Coach Brooks (Kentucky’s football coach).”

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“How do you corral 30,000 horses, having taken them off the range where they lived, and just say ‘night night’?” asked Madeleine Pickens, the animal-loving wife of billionaire T. Boone Pickens and better known in Thoroughbred racing circles as the former Madeleine Paulson, who with her late husband, Allen Paulson, developed one of the most successful Thoroughbred breeding and racing operations of the 1980s and ‘90s. Allen Paulson died in 2000, and she remarried in 2005.

In recent years, Madeleine Pickens has spent sleepless nights agonizing over the plight of the American West’s wild mustangs, which have been rounded up and held in pens in increasing numbers over the last eight years by cowboys hired by the federal government’s Bureau of Land Management after complaints from cattlemen that the horses were depleting grazing areas. As federal funding for the wild horses was squeezed and the number of people interested in adopting them declined, BLM officials were faced with an unpleasant option: allow the horses to be sent to slaughterhouses or perform mass euthanasia.

The story of these wild horses – “America’s animal” she calls them – hit Madeleine Pickens’ radar screen at a time when she was putting considerable personal resources of time and money into efforts to end the slaughter of all horses. She studied the issue, then hired a polling company to gauge public opinion on the slaughter of horses for human consumption, finding out that seven in 10 Americans oppose the practice. She then paid for anti-slaughter advertisements in the New York Times, lobbied members of Congress and worked with other groups and individuals. Ultimately, however, those efforts ended in frustration because, she said, the pro-slaughter lobby, assisted by the cattle industry, was simply too entrenched with Washington, D.C., powerbrokers. Anti-slaughter bills passed by the U.S House of Representatives were stopped in the Senate. And she was outraged that so many Thoroughbred industry leaders failed to help.

“I would lay in bed, crying, and say, ‘How can we stop this? What can I do?” she told the Paulick Report. “I’m not a religious person, but a spiritual one, and I swear to God that I prayed for an answer.”

One night, she said, the answer came to her. “Why not buy a ranch and give every horse a home?”

Pickens’ plan for a horse sanctuary would be similar to how cattlemen got access to millions of acres of federal land, she said. “This is how the cattlemen got going,” she said. “They got the BLM land attached to their ranches with sweetheart deals. They pay a very low lease for it, and most aren’t even using the land now.”

Pickens has a private foundation in the formative stages, a key to which will be tax credits for donors, she told the Washington Post. She met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, where half of the wild horses are held. Pickens isn’t prepared to say how much she needs to raise for an endowment to make the plan work, but she is confident she will be able to make it happen. She envisions corporate sponsors, campgrounds and cabins for tourists to come and observe the horses. “There is so much support for this right now,” she said. “It’s amazing the number of calls and emails I’ve received from people who want to help or go to work there.” (Click here to see the official Madeleine Pickens Web site.)

She estimated that she will need upwards of a million acres, and is currently in negotiations on three different properties. She took her plan to BLM officials, who leaked the story to the Washington Post, prematurely, in her opinion. “The story got out way too early while I’m working on the land deal,” she said. “The land people may suddenly say, ‘Ohhh, deep pockets,’ and become unreasonable. I’m trying to  be responsible and do the right thing here. I’m very confident that next year this whole thing will be in place.”

Pickens said she felt like someone who’s been trying to walk through quicksand the last couple of years and can’t seem to get out of it. “Nothing was happening, and you can’t believe the idiocy of it all,” she said. “Why do people not get it?”

She grew weary of trying to work for a solution in Congress. “The people in the racehorse industry weren’t on board and we had all those cattlemen against us,” Pickens said. “We really couldn’t win. I give the people who have been fighting this for so long a lot of credit.

“I think this will work because I came up with a private-sector solution rather than trying to put a bill through Washington where politicians could have their way and destroy it. When the bureaucrats do it, it costs too much and doesn’t work. With private individuals, you’re not indebted to every group or compromised by lobbyists.”

Her proposal has been widely applauded, within the BLM and the general public. While her husband, a well-known corporate raider, oilman and philanthropist, has been a highly visible proponent for a plan to make America energy independent, Madeleine Pickens became an overnight celebrity because of her desire to save the horses. The week her plan went public, ABC’s World News Tonight named her “Person of the Week.” Some outside of the horse business remembered her as the heroine (pictured, left) who rescued hundreds of abandoned cats and dogs in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

“I knew people cared, but I was somewhat stunned at the way this story took off like a wildfire,” she said. “It surprised me, but it really shouldn’t have."

A PLACE FOR EX-RACEHORSES, TOO
Pickens said the ranch will not just be a refuge for wild horses. She wants it to be all inclusive for different breeds, and especially ex-Thoroughbred racehorses that often end up unwanted or sold to killer-buyers who send them off for slaughter in Canada or Mexico. There are no remaining horse slaughterhouses in the United States.

“We’re going to have enough land where I don’t know how we can say no to anything,” she said. “It won’t happen overnight. But I want to give the Thoroughbred industry an opportunity to do something here, and to make people feel that they are being responsible for the animals in their sport. I’m going to ask the industry for their support. It’s going to be difficult for the racing industry to change their way of thinking. With this, I hope they can say they have an exit strategy for their horses.”

Pickens is still angry over the National Thoroughbred Racing Association’s refusal to support recent anti-slaughter legislation in Congress. She was one of a large number of major industry participants to sign a letter written by owner-breeder Josephine Abercrombie to members of Congress stating their support of anti-slaughter legislation and their disapproval of the NTRA’s position. “The NTRA had to compromise themselves with Goodlatte (Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte, former chairman of the House Agriculture Committee and now ranking member), who has helped them with gambling legislation but has close ties to the cattle industry,” she said. “By getting behind my proposal, they won’t have to worry about the threat of someone like Goodlatte.”

The Jockey Club is another group that has disappointed Pickens. “They register 35,000 horses a year and they say those horses are worth millions and millions of dollars,” she said. “And they come up with some plan where people can give a few dollars when they register a foal and the Jockey Club says they’ll match up to $200,000 a year. This is the same old b.s. — $200,000 is a peanut. How dare they say this is all they’re going to put into a retirement fund for all the horses who don’t make it. It’s all part of what makes the system not work.

“In every business it’s leadership, and we’ve had horrible leadership in racing. Will Farish (vice chairman of the Jockey Club and owner of Lane’s End Farm, where Pickens retired Grade I winner Rock Hard Ten to stud) can be a good guy. He’s head of this and head of that, and people look up to him. But here’s a man who won’t go against slaughter. Why? Is it because he’s from Houston, where so many of the cattlemen are from?”

Pickens, who said she has withdrawn from the racing business largely because of its inaction on this issue, said she thinks the Thoroughbred industry can learn a great deal from how her proposal has been embraced by the public.

“Racing people can learn that they have a chance to endear the public to them,” she said. “They get a few gamblers here and there, but they are in trouble because they seem to have lost sight of the animal who is the athlete. They have too many fatalities and too many injuries that happen in public on national television. When that happens, it exposes the fact they have no exit strategy for the horses.

“Again, there is no leadership. Those who have been in it for a long time have done nothing to endear people to the business. Now they have an opportunity like the BLM has to try and resolve one of their problems.”

I asked Pickens why she is doing all this, what is driving her to take on a project so big?

She told me of how she emigrated to the United States from Iraq in 1969 because she wanted “to come to a new world and do something with my new country.”

But then she confessed to another reason, something that haunted her when she first learned about the horrors of slaughter: “Maybe it’s because I’m ashamed that I was in the industry for years and never knew there was a slaughterhouse for so many horses at the end of the day. I’m so ashamed I never knew. And people who know about it and aren’t doing anything, they should be ashamed, too.”

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The retirement of reigning Horse of the Year Curlin to Lane’s End Farm may be one of the more unusual stallion contracts with which the Versailles, Ky., farm’s owner, William S. Farish, has been involved. Farish said as much in an interview with the Paulick Report, although he would not go into details of the deal that was announced on Nov. 21.

Farish confirmed that Lane’s End did not purchase any interest in the Smart Strike 4-year-old colt, who will stand for $75,000 live foal as the property of Jess Jackson and the Midnight Cry Stable – at least until Midnight Cry’s 20% ownership interest is resolved in a legal battle that goes back to a 2001 diet-drug class-action settlement. The case revolved around the legal fees charged by plaintiff attorneys William Gallion and Shirley Cunningham, among others. The two men, who raced under the Midnight Cry stable and bought Curlin as a yearling for $57,000 in 2005, lost a $42 million judgment in a civil suit and face retrial on criminal charges of mail fraud after a previous trial ended in a hung jury. A third defendant was acquitted.

A court-ordered receiver has been charged with selling Midnight Cry’s 20% interest in Curlin, but the fair market value of the horse is in dispute. At a recent hearing, bloodstock consultant Ric Waldman estimated Curlin’s total value at $20 million, meaning Midnight Cry’s interest is worth $4 million – the amount Jackson and his wife, Barbara Banke, offered to buy it. Andre Regard, an attorney for Midnight Cry, said the figure is too low.

Because of the legal complications, it’s believed Jackson was unable to convey any breeding rights to Lane’s End, a standard part of most stallion contracts that gives the farm standing a horse a minimum of four to six annual breeding rights. In lieu of those rights, the assumption is that Jackson is paying Lane’s End an annual management fee, in addition to standard marketing and board fees. Unless the management fees are linked to Curlin’s stud fee (i.e., they increase if his stud fee increases), Lane’s End will not enjoy the potential upside it would if the farm owned shares or a percentage of the horse, or if the farm received a specific number of annual breeding rights.

Regard said he has requested a copy of the stallion contract from Jackson but has yet to receive it. He suggested the details of the contract could help establish Curlin’s true value. Regard contends that the $20-million appraised value is too low, based on the multiple of 267 times the initial $75,000 stud fee. Some stallions are valued based on a multiple of 400 (or even as high as 500) times the initial stud fee, Regard said.

Farish admitted the negotiations over Curlin were “difficult” because of the legal challenges. That Jackson and Farish ended up business partners on the horse is viewed by some as ironic, in light of Jackson’s crusade to reform the Thoroughbred auction business and his push to have bloodstock agents licensed. It is widely believed the politically-connected Farish used his clout in Kentucky’s legislative circles to restrict reforms and block the mandated licensing of agents.

Curlin was retired following his fourth-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, the only time in 16 career starts he finished worse than third. North America’s all-time leading earner, with $10,501,800 won in the United States and Dubai, will make a final public appearance this Saturday at Churchill Downs before joining his sire, Smart Strike, at Lane’s End.

Copyright © 2008, The Paulick Report

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Two years ago, leading buyer John Ferguson bought 25 yearlings during the two select sessions of the Keeneland September yearling sale for $56,885,000, an average price of $2,275,400. This year, Sheikh Mohammed’s chief bloodstock adviser signed tickets for 19 yearlings, but only spent $15,655,000, an average price of $823,947.

Sheikh Mohammed’s commitment to buying what he and his advisers think are the best yearlings hasn’t changed in two years. The competition has changed, however, leaving a very short list of people to bid against the sheikh once yearling prices get to a certain point, with $1 million seemingly the magic mark. As a result of the absence of high-pitched battles that drive prices sky-high, gross receipts and average declined during Monday and Tuesday’s select sessions, but the middle-market median price has remained the same. The high-end bubble burst also created a spike in horses bought back by consignors who seem to be clinging to the expectations set two or three years ago at this sale.

Absent from those high-pitched battles was Demi O’B yrne, representing Ireland’s Coolmore operation, which two years ago spent $8,825,000 for eight yearlings and in 2007 bought 11 for $16,850,000. Coolmore did more watching than bidding this year during the select sessions, buying only five yearlings for $2,865,000. But that might be more a product of the perceived quality of the high-end yearlings that were invited into the select session by a Keeneland inspection team that some buyers have quietly said is not doing as good a job as it used to do. We’ll see how active Coolmore is over the next two days during the Wednesday and Thursday sessions that historically have proven to provide good value to buyers and a high percentage of stakes winners that rivals the select sessions.

There were 300 horses sold Monday and Tuesday for $113,357,000, an average price of $377,857 and median of $300,000. In 2007, there were 337 yearlings sold for $145,377,000, an average of $431,386 and the same $300,000 median. Thus, the gross dropped by 22% in one year, and the average declined by 12.4%. There were 132 horses through the ring that failed to sell, a buy-back rate of 30.6%, an all-time high for the Keeneland September select sessions.

This year’s select sale gross is the lowest since the $100,576,000 achieved in 2002 and the second-worst since 1999. That’s especially bad news for breeders whose product is produced for the high-end buyer in the Thoroughbred market. But it’s also bad news for Keeneland, a sale company that has had a dominant market share position on its chief rival, Fasig-Tipton, which was purchased earlier this year by an associate of Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed.

The purchase of Fasig-Tipton, combined with a commitment by its new owner to recapitalize the company and turn loose its newly crafted management team will pose a serious challenge to Keeneland moving forward, and begs the question: Can anyone teach the elephant to dance?

Tuesday’s sessions yielded more $1-million yearlings than Monday’s (11 to 5, as reported by the sale company), but the total is far below the 30 sold last year. The session totals were: 146 sold for $57,310,000, an average of $392,534 and median of $300,000. The Tuesday session in 2007 sold 166 for $77,982,000, an average of $469,771.

Over the first two sessions, Ferguson, representing Sheikh Mohammed, and Rick Nichols, buying in the name of Sheikh Hamdan’s Shadwell Estate Co. Ltd., combined to spend more money in 2008 than they did in 2007: $25,375,000 vs. $22,380,000. Their combined purchases accounted for 22.4% of the select session gross receipts.

The 2008 declines would have been far worse were it not for a new operation, Legends Racing, a partnership formed by Gaines-Gentry Thoroughbreds, that was the third leading buyer behind Ferguson and Shadwell with 10 yearlings bought for $6,655,000. Another significant domestic buyer was Peter Wittmann’s Maverick Racing, which spent $3,100,000 on five yearlings to rank fourth among select session buyers.

The top-price of the select sessions was the $3.1 million Storm Cat filly sold Monday and purchased by Ferguson for Sheikh Mohammed.

Though Storm Cat produced the top price, A.P. Indy was the leading sire by average, with 21 sold for an average of $647,142. Here is Keeneland’s list of leading sires.

Taylor Made Sales Agency was the leading consignor by gross revenue, with 74 yearlings bringing $25,690,000, followed by Lane’s End, which sold 24 for $14,520,000. Here is Keeneland’s list of leading consignors by gross and by average.

One horse Lane’s End didn’t sell was a colt by Storm Cat out of the multiple Grade 1 winner Tranquility Lake, who produced Grade 1-winning grass star After Market for breeders Marty and Pam Wygod. The colt was part of the Lane’s End consignment and was widely believed to be a potential sale topper when it was announced he had been withdrawn about an hour before he was scheduled to be sold on Tuesday.

As the action was winding down late Tuesday afternoon, Marty Wygod and Russell Drake, farm manager for the Wygods, were puffing on what looked like victory cigars behind the Keeneland sale pavilion. After seeing the results of the first two days, Wygod said he was happy with the decision to keep the Storm Cat colt and race him rather than offer him in a shaky market, saying: “There’s just not enough money out there right now for this kind of horse.”

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By Ray Paulick

Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed struck again Tuesday morning to purchase the first seven-figure yearling of the Keeneland September sale’s second session when he stood in the back-ring area with bloodstock adviser John Ferguson and bought an A.P. Indy filly out of the Grade 1 winning Smart Strike mare Shadow Cast for $1 million. It was the third purchase of the morning for the ruler of Dubai, who paced all buyers in Monday’s opening session with $8,835,000 in expenditures. He has now spent nearly $11 million, and there are many top lots left to sell. The A.P. Indy filly was consigned by Lane’s End, agent

12:05…TDN reports that Hip 329, a Storm Cat colt out of multiple Grade 1 winner Tranquility Lake, by Rahy, and one of the leading prospects to top the sale, has been withdrawn by Marty Wygod, who raced the mare and one of her foals, Grade 1 winner After Market (also by Storm Cat). After Market stands at Lane’s End, which also had the Storm Cat yearling in its Keeneland consignment.

12:30…There’s the buzz that’s been lacking for most of the sale. In just a few minutes, three horses reach seven figures, beginning with Hip 317, an El Prado colt out of the Clever Trick mare Swift and Classy, that Tom Evans’ Trackside Farm, agent for Liberation Farm and partners, sold for $1 million to Legends Racing, Monday’s leading domestic buyer. The next horse through the ring, an A.P. Indy colt out of Taegu, by Halo, brings $1.5 million from Sheikh Hamdan’s Shadwell Farm chief Rick Nichols, A few minutes after that, Hip 323 also reached $1 million. That colt, by Mr. Greeley out of stakes winner and stakes producer Tempest Dancer, by Storm Cat, is sold by Gainesway, agent, and is also picked up by Legends Racing, whose bidding is being done by Olin Gentry of Gaines-Gentry Thoroughbreds, which put the partnership together. Legends Racing is no named because it is being advised by three Throughbred training "legends," Hall of Famers D. Wayne Lukas, Nick Zito and future Hall of Famer Bob Baffert. The Legends horses will be divided among those three trainers.

3:00 update…A little lunch, a little nap, and I’m back. Ready for some numbers?

Today’s session is going much better from the standpoint of horses getting sold. The RNA or buyback rate is a more palatable 25% through the first 121 horses through the ring, and there have been at least eight million-dollar yearlings, including four from the Legends Racing Partnership, which ranks as the day’s leading buyer with about 90 more to be offered after spending $4,350,000.

Legends purchased four so far: Hip 317 (colt by El Prado) for $1,000,000; Hip 323 (colt by Mr. Greeley) for $1,000,000; Hip 331 (colt by Storm Cat) for $1.2 million; and Hip 355 (colt by Unbridled’s Song) for $1.15 million. The partnership has made no secret that it hopes to compete in the Triple Crown races using Lukas, Zito and Baffert as trainers.

First-day leading buyer Ferguson, spending Sheikh Mohammed’s money, signed five tickets for $3,495,000, and Darley Stud was listed as buyer of two more for $600,000, for a grand total of $4,095,000 with 90 left o sell. Ferguson’s purchases were Hip 272 (Elusive Quality colt) for $350,000; Hip 274 (Kingmambo colt) for $775,000; Hip 288 (A.P. Indy filly) for $1,000,000; Hip 345 (Kingmambo colt) for $1,000,000; and Hip 384 (Elusive Quality colt) for $370,000. The two Darley purchases were Hip 332 (Mr. Greeley filly) for $400,000; and Hip 373 (Street Cry filly) for $200,000.

Sheikh Hamdan’s Shadwell Estate Co. Ltd. spent $2,000,000 on three yearlings (with 90 hips left to go), and Demi O’Byrne of Coolmore bought three for $1,490,000. The Shadwell purchases included the day’s highest price (so far), Hipe 318 (A.P. Indy colt) for $1.5 million; Hipe 387 (Awesome Again filly) for $200,000; and Hip 388 (Dynaformer filly) for $300,000.

O’Byrne’s buys were Hipe 279 (Arch filly) for $500,000; Hip 320 (Giant’s Causeway filly) for $400,000; and Hip 352 (Giant’s Causeway colt) for $590,000.

Two other $1,000,000-plus yearlings sold went to Troy Steve Bloodstock (Hip 360, Giant’s Causeway filly) for $1,250,000; and Charlotte Weber’s Live Oak Plantation (Hip 340, Giant’s Causeway filly) for $1,150,000. I’m not very familiar with England-based Troy Steve Bloodstock, but here is Web site.

3:35 update…Maybe I spoke too soon about the reduced buyback rate. From Hip 390 to 409, there were nine yearlings not sold from 19 through the ring, which moved the RNA needle upwards to 27.9%, very close to Monday’s final percentage of 29.0%. Shadwell bought another one, Hip 395 (Distorted Humor colt), for $850,000, bringing its total to 16 purchases in two days.

Final numbers to be posted in a separate story.

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What you won’t hear in the report is how the tentacles of the Jockey Club and some of its individual members strategically reach into various organizations and businesses in an effort to exert control throughout the Thoroughbred industry.

To quote from the book, “The Right Blood: America’s Aristocrats in Thoroughbred Racing,” by Carole Case: “This is a story about money and power, and about a particular group of rich and powerful Americans—the men (and a very few women) of the Jockey Club. With its founding in New York City at the turn of the twentieth century, the Club took the reins of Thoroughbred racing in the United States, and it has never entirely let them go. For more than a century, then, the Jockey Club has dominated horseracing in this country.”

For better or worse, the Jockey Club, which has been ruled since 1982 by chairman Dinny Phipps and vice chairman William S. Farish, has considerable power over the Breeders’ Cup, Keeneland, National Thoroughbred Racing Association, the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association and its American Graded Stakes Committee, Bloodhorse magazine, and the New York Racing Association, among others.

Here’s a quick rundown.

– William Farish’s son, Bill, is the board chairman of the Breeders’ Cup, which before its governance was changed a few years ago, had been tightly controlled by the senior Farish and his longtime friend and horse business partner G. Watts Humphrey. The battle over control of the Breeders’ Cup board has been detailed by previous articles in the Paulick Report..

– The senior Farish replaced Ted Bassett in 2006 as one of the three trustees who oversees Keeneland’s operations. Keeeland’s president, Nick Nicholson, is a former executive with the Jockey Club. There is some speculation that one of the senior Farish’s goals is to expand Keeneland to the point where it can bid to become a permanent host for the Breeders’ Cup, making it the Augusta National of the racing industry.. An expansion is on the drawing board now, with Keeneland making a possible Breeders’ Cup bid as early as 2011.

– The NTRA board is populated by several Jockey Club members, including Humphrey and Robert Clay, plus Jockey Club president Marzelli, and three racetrack executives — Nicholson of Keeneland, Bob Elliston of Turfway Park (owned in part by Keeneland), and Charles Hayward of the New York Racing Association, which has been controlled by Phipps for more than 30 years. At one point, the NTRA and Jockey Club shared office space in New York.

– The Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association has had some semblance of independence from the Jockey Club in recent years, through its chairman, Bill Casner, who is not a Jockey Club member but has been asked to speak at Sunday’s Round Table. Casner was recently succeeded by Reynolds Bell, currently a steward of the Jockey Club and a bloodstock agent whose major client is Farish’s Lane’s End Farm. Dell Hancock, whose family’s Claiborne Farm boards the Phipps family mares, served as chair of the American Graded Stakes Committee until recently being succeeded by Peter Willmot. Steve Duncker, currently the board chairman of NYRA, was a previous Graded Stakes Commiteee chair.

– Stuart Janney is chairman of Bloodhorse magazine, whose board also includes Bill Farish, G. Watts Humphrey, D.G. Van Clief, and Antony Beck—all Jockey Club members with the exception of Beck, who is very close friends with Bill Farish. Janney is a Jockey Club steward, a cousin of Dinny Phipps, and chairman of Bessemer Trust, the company founded by Phipps’ great-grandfather. He succeeded Humphrey as chairman, who in turn succeeded Bayard Sharp, Farish’s late father-in-law.

– The New York Racing Association’s close relationship with the Jockey Club is no secret. Its tracks serve as playgrounds for many Jockey Club members, most notably Dinny Phipps, who has the most desired finish line boxes at the NYRA tracks. The Jockey Club even has offices at the New York tracks. The Jockey Club once officially ruled New York racing, but lost its official control when a horseman named Jule Fink went to court after being denied an owner’s license. NYRA’s board is populated with Jockey Club members, and its chairman, Steve Duncker, like most chairman before him, is a member of the Club as well.

The tentacles clearly reach into breed associations, regulatory agencies and other organizations throughout racing and breeding.

What isn’t clear is why the Jockey Club, led by its chairman and vice chairman, wants so desperately to control the industry, and what they plan to do with that control.

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 The final numbers sent a mixed message to the market, as the gross receipts declined by 9.8% but average rose 16.2% and median price increased by 10.8% from last year’s opening session. Most  troublesome was the steep buyback rate of 30.6%, a sharp rise from last year’s 21.9% not sold on the first night.

Though Ferguson was the night’s leading buyer, the highest priced offering Monday, a Storm Cat filly from the Hill ‘n’ Dale Sales Agency consignment, was purchased by Team Valor International for $1,500,000.   The Vanlandingham mare Totemic, a graded stakes winner and dam of three stakes winners, including Fountain of Youth Stakes winner Lil’s Lad, produced the filly.

The only other $1-million yearling on the night was an A.P. Indy colt out of the Broad Brush mare Pyramid Lake, purchased for $1,200,000 by William Farish of Lane’s End Farm, where A.P. Indy stands at stud. The colt is out of a half-sister to European Horse of the Year Peintre Celebre and was consigned by Hunter Valley Farm, agent.

 Following Ferguson as the first session’s top buyer was Team Valor, the partnership run by Barry Irwin that has been very active at this sale in recent years. Team Valor bought three yearlings for $2,120,000. Third-leading buyer was Legends Racing, a newly formed partnership that is teaming with trainers D. Wayne Lukas, Nick Zito and Bob Baffert to pick out and train its horses, which bought three for $1,205,000, including a $700,000 colt by first-year sire Rock Hard Ten out of Tapstress, a Desert Wine mare. The colt was consigned by Gainesway, agent. The only other yearling by Rock Hard Ten offered Monday night was a colt out of Serena’s Sister, by Rahy,  that Maverick Racing bought for $450,000 from Bridlewood Farm, with Denali Stud as agent.

Missing from the list of buyers on the first night was Demi O’Byrne, agent for the Coolmore operation of John Magnier.

Totals for Monday were 59 head sold from 85 offered (with 30.6% not sold) for $17,915,000, an average price of $303,644 and median of $230,000. Last year’s numbers from the first night were 76 sold from 96 offered (21.9% RNA) for $19,867,000, an average of $261,408 and median of $207,500.

(Note: The statistics reported above were amended by Fasig-Tipton to reflect an additional sale of Hip 93, originally listed as RNA but changed to sold for $245,000 to BTA Stable. The adjusted final figures are 60 sold for $18,160,000; $302,667 average and $235,000 median.)