Posts Tagged ‘Robert McNair’

By Ray Paulick
Anyone who has been with us at the Paulick Report since our June 2008 launch knows that I have been critical of Ogden Mills Phipps as one of the Thoroughbred industry’s leaders, or to borrow a phrase from the late John Gaines, a “self-appointed guardian of the Turf.”

One thing I’ve never questioned in my own mind, though I probably have never written it here, is that the Jockey Club chairman better known as “Dinny” loves this industry as much as anyone and has always acted in what he believes to be in the industry’s best interests. What those actions are and have been is where he and I hit the fork in the road.

This has been a tough year, personally, for Dinny Phipps as he has battled some health problems, and if the old axiom is true that the outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man, I’m sure I’m not alone in wishing the Phipps Stable continued success in 2009 and beyond. That stable, carefully developed over generations of both horses and the family that has owned and bred them, is quietly having a very good year in terms of success in American Graded Stakes, with three AGS winners of four graded stakes. Sure, it’s not quite like 1988, when Dinny’s late father, Ogden Phipps, directed the stable to one of the most amazing years in racing history, when Personal Ensign, Easy Goer, Cadillacing and other Grade 1 winners carried private trainer Shug McGaughey and the Phipps family to a sweep of the Eclipse Awards in outstanding trainer, breeder and owner categories. Five years later, McGaughey won five Grade 1 races on the Jockey Club Gold Cup card at Belmont Park, led by Miner’s Mark’s triumph in the Gold Cup itself.

The three 2009 Phipps Stable AGS winners (Parading, by Pulpit; Vacation, by Dynaformer; and Gone Astray, by Dixie Union) put this relatively small but select outfit in a four-way tie for third with three other homebreeding operations ( as opposed to commercial breeders), Sheikh Mohammed’s Darley Stable; the Juddmonte Stable of Saudi Arabian Prince Khalid Abdullah; and the stable operated by Virginia-based Edward P. “Ned” Evans. The leader, with five AGS winners of 2009, is Robert and Janice McNair’s Stonerside Stable.
I don’t really think it’s any coincidence that the leading breeders of AGS winners are outfits designed to produce horses for the racetrack as opposed to the sale ring. Are there any lessons that commercial breeders can gain by more closely studying how these private operations have functioned, developed their broodmare bands, and plan their matings? Perhaps.

Looking at Bloodhorse.com’s list of leading breeders by money won, Stonerside ranks the highest of the five leaders by AGS winners at fifth on the money list behind Adena Springs, Eugene Melnyk, Brereton Jones, and William S. Farish. Stonerside, which was sold to Darley when the McNairs opted to get out of the business, also has the most starts of the five (604). Evans is sixth on the money list from 437 starts; Juddmonte is eighth, with 217 starts; Darley is 11th, with 423 starts; and Phipps 22nd, with 206 starts.

By Ray Paulick
I make no apologies for my dissent with Eclipse Award voting results in the outstanding breeder category on at least three different occasions in the years since the vote was taken away from a six-member committee and given to the larger group of voters that determine the other Eclipse Award winners–members of the National Turf Writers Association, Daily Racing Form staff and racing secretaries at National Thoroughbred Racing Association tracks and select Breeders’ Cup employees.

When that decision was made earlier this decade, the NTRA might as well have said it would give the annual award to the breeder whose horses earned the most money. It’s gone to Frank Stronach’s Adena Springs Farm each of the last five years, whether the operation had a truly good year or not, simply because he dominated the money standings by breeding the most horses and winning the most money. I’m not knocking Stronach, who has built a breeding empire and deserved the Eclipse Award in years that he produced champions and a number of high-quality, graded stakes-winning racehorses. His success in those years didn’t happen by accident or through sheer numbers. Adena Springs has been a top-class operation, and it’s something for which Stronach should be proud.

However, I disagree that the breeder who wins the most money should automatically win the Eclipse Award in that category, something that is now occurring routinely. Voters have done a great disservice in recent years to individuals who have had incredible success with a far smaller number of mares.

Full disclosure: I served on that six-member Eclipse Award outstanding breeder committee as editor of Blood-Horse magazine, as did Mark Simon, editor of Thoroughbred Times, along with two editors with expertise in bloodstock matters at Daily Racing Form and two representatives of the NTRA or its Eclipse Awards-sponsoring predecessor, the Thoroughbred Racing Associations of North America. The committee would be presented with a wide array of breeding statistics, have the opportunity to study them, then meet via teleconference to discuss the merits of the leading candidates before taking a vote. In my opinion, the committee got it right far more often than the general Eclipse Award electorate has when determining outstanding breeder.

The committee tended to discount breeders who had simply led the money list. That cost the late Harry T. Mangurian an Eclipse Award several years when he or his Florida-based Mockingbird Farm led the list by earnings from 1999-2002. When some Floridians cried “foul,” the Eclipse Award steering committee gave Mangurian an Eclipse Award of Merit at the 2002 Eclipse Awards dinner. Shortly thereafter, the vote went from committee to the larger body, which I think was a mistake.

Why was it a mistake? Twice in the last seven years, breeders who produced two of the 10 Eclipse Award champions—with a small number of broodmares—didn’t even get enough votes to be among the three finalists as outstanding breeder, much less win the Eclipse Award. That happened in 2002, when Virginia Kraft Payson bred champions Farda Amiga and Vindication and wasn’t a finalist, and again in 2004 when Aaron and Marie Jones bred champions Speightstown and Ashado and were ignored by the voters.

Think about that for a minute. You are a breeder with a relatively small group of mares and produced two out of the 10 Eclipse Award champion horses. Yet you weren’t even recognized as one of the three outstanding breeders in North America. That is an insult to all breeders who work hard to produce a good horse. Eclipse Award voters really should be ashamed for their ignorance or lack of interest on breeding matters.

Last year, Adena won its fifth consecutive Eclipse Award as leading breeder by a wide margin—receiving 139 votes, more than twice as many as runner-up Stonerside Stable. Adena won the most money, by far, $19.2 million, but produced no champions. With far fewer runners, Stonerside-bred horses earned $8.5 million but included 2-year-old male champion Midshipman and Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Raven’s Pass.

That brings us to this week’s spotlight on leading breeders on our weekly feature, American Graded Stakes Standings, brought to you by Keeneland. Stonerside–the Paris, Ky., operation founded by Robert and Janice McNair and sold last year to Sheikh Mohammed when Robert McNair said he needed to spend more time on his Houston Texans of the National Football League team–is the leading breeder of American graded stakes winners, with five, led by Grade 1 winner Santa Teresita. The others are Grade 2 winners Tizaqueena, Skylighter and Cowboy Cal, along with Grade 3 winner Stormalory.

Sheikh Mohammed’s Darley, Prince Khalid Abdullah’s Juddmonte Farms, and Edward P. Evans are next in the list of breeders of American graded stakes winners, with three apiece.

Stronach’s Adena Springs, which is the leading breeder by money won so far this year, with $7,054,476 earned from 2,322 starts, has bred just one graded stakes winner, the Grade 3 winner My Princess Jess. Stonerside has had 481 starts and earnings of $3,252,001, ranking fifth by money won. Evans has had 360 starts and ranks sixth with earnings of $2,936,973; Juddmonte is 18th with $1,948,227 from 175 starts; and Darley is 19th with $1,943,075 from 328 starts.

In terms of money won per start, which I think is a good overall indication of quality, of those listed above, Juddmonte is the leader, with $11,323 earned for each start; followed by Evans, $8,158/start; Stonerside, $6,760/start; Darley, $5,924/start; and Adena, $3,038/start. Those statistics include international racing. The lists presented below strictly represent American graded stakes, those approximately 500 races designated by the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association’s American Graded Stakes Committee as the best races in the United States.

We hope that by focusing each week on the leading breeders, owners, trainers, sires, sale companies and consignors of the winners of American graded stakes, which define the best races in the United States, Eclipse Award voters might start to look beyond the simple exercise of seeing which breeder earned the most money in a given year.

 

 

                   

It took centuries for the people of Iraq to experience the joys of voting in a democratic election. Thoroughbred breeders only had to wait 25 years.

For over two decades since its inception in 1982 as the brainchild of the late John Gaines, Breeders’ Cup Ltd. had been run under the cloak of darkness, or as Canadian breeder Frank Stronach said, as a “club.” There was an unwieldy, self-perpetuating board numbering 48 individuals and numerous committees dominated by members of the Jockey Club. For most of its 25 years, however, the Breeders’ Cup was controlled by a small executive committee headed by Will Farish, the vice chairman of the Jockey Club, and later by G. Watts Humphrey Jr., a partner in many of Farish’s breeding ventures at Lane’s End Farm and a Jockey Club insider. Meetings of the large board were seen by some board members as nothing more than a good opportunity to catch up on industry gossip, doze and rubber stamp decisions of the executive committee.

Control fell into the hands of the Jockey Club hierarchy at the outset of the Breeders’ Cup when then-powerful Claiborne Farm at first resisted the idea of nominating its stallions to the program, a move that would have prevented it from leaving the starting gate. Gaines, who was never a member of the Jockey Club and often referred sarcastically to its poo-bahs as the “self-appointed guardians of the Turf,” agreed to remove himself from any management role in order to end the acrimony with Claiborne. The farm’s president, Seth Hancock, had very close ties to the Jockey Club’s ruling family, the late Ogden Phipps and son Dinny.

A decision by Farish and Humphrey to reach into the rich coffers of the Breeders’ Cup (estimated conservatively then at $40 million) and provide financial assistance to the fledgling National Thoroughbred Racing Association through a joint operating agreement in 2001 rankled many breeders, who had built the program from scratch with annual foal nominations of $500 and annual stallion nominations equal to a horse’s stud fee. Those breeders had grave concerns over how their money was being spent. Breeders’ Cup purses were being outpaced by a growing number of international races, and under Farish’s leadership (and Breeders’ Cup executives Ted Bassett and D.G. Van Clief Jr., both Jockey Club members) the original seven race program that began in 1984 was unchanged until the addition in 1999 of the Filly & Mare Turf.

Many breeders did not see or understand the merit of propping up the NTRA, an organization formed in 1998 after Dinny Phipps derailed another initiative pushed by Gaines, the owner-driven National Thoroughbred Association, morphing that into a hybrid vehicle driven by a combination of owners, breeders and racetrack executives who could never agree to do anything significant enough to help the industry.

But I digress.

Stronach was among those who began to stir the nest in 2001 making pointed comments at a public forum about both the NTRA and Breeders’ Cup and its boards of directors. By then, his Magna Entertainment owned a number of racetracks, and he threatened to pull them out of the NTRA unless he was satisfied the organizations would make some reforms in governance. Van Clief, then vice chairman of NTRA and president of the Breeders’ Cup was quoted in a Jan. 14, 2001, article at ThoroughbredTimes.com as saying that the Breeders’ Cup was reviewing its methodology for electing directors and hopeful of resolving the issue in “the next few days.”

Those “few days,” however, stretched into weeks, then months, then years. Stronach was otherwise appeased, and his tracks remained NTRA members.

In 2005, when the Breeders’ Cup board rubber-stamped a committee recommendation to increase stallion nomination fees for stallions with 50 or more foals, there was more stirring. John Sikura, owner of Hill ‘n’ Dale Farm, wrote a letter published in The Blood-Horse that was extremely critical of the move. “The focus of the Breeders’ Cup should be on cost containment and fixing their business model so that 20 years after inception, we do not have to alter an agreed revenue sharing formula to fill revenue gaps and create their profitability,” wrote Sikura, who called the change a “luxury tax” on stallions producing more than 50 foals. Sikura agreed that the Breeders’ Cup needed its purses to keep pace with competing races, then added, “At the very least, the Breeders’ Cup must pledge 100% of these additional revenues to purses and realize it is our money they are spending, not theirs.”

The Breeders’ Cup was not strapped for cash. At the time, it had accumulated over $40 million from nominations and revenue from its annual championship day of racing.

Sikura’s letter was a lightning rod for the growing discontent many breeders were feeling over the use of Breeders’ Cup funds in NTRA operations. “That letter really got people fired up,” a current Breeders’ Cup board member told me recently. “People weren’t so much upset about the decision to increase the fees, but how it was made and where the money was going.”

Many people believed the administrative budget for operating the Breeders’ Cup and NTRA had become bloated. “The overhead model was strewn with numerous employees with outrageously high salaries and no financial accountability to the breeders who funded the organization,” said one current board member.

The stallion fee increase came in the wake of a simmering dispute between the ruling members of the Breeders’ Cup/NTRA boards and a group of owners and breeders organized under the banner of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association who were proposing a race series called the Thoroughbred Championship Tour. Among the big names pushing the TCT series was its chairman, owner-breeder Robert McNair, the owner of the National Football League’s Houston Texans. The series concept was created by Thoroughbred Daily News publisher Barry Weisbord, who a decade earlier had started the American Championship Racing Series, which gained traction on the racing landscape but ultimately failed because of industry squabbling.

TCT backers felt the Breeders’ Cup/NTRA boards were not doing enough to support their proposed series, which never got off the ground and suspended its operations in July 2005. Those backers joined the growing chorus of voices seeking reforms at the Breeders’ Cup, where the people John Gaines called the “self-appointed guardians of the Turf” finally realized that change was inevitable and necessary. The old board altered the corporate bylaws in November 2005, creating a new operating board of 13 members, who would be selected by a larger group of “members and trustees.” Those members and trustees would be elected by Breeders’ Cup foal and stallion nominators under a formula that assigns one vote for each $500 in nominations to the program. (For example, someone who owns a stallion with a stud fee of $10,000 would get 20 votes.”

Finally, 25 years after the Breeders’ Cup was created, the people who funded the program would have the chance to have a say in how it is run. The struggle for control of the Breeders’ Cup was reopened.

Game on.

Editor’s note: The original version of this article incorrectly stated that the National Thoroughbred Association was created by John Gaines. The NTA was solely created in 1993 by advertising executive Fred Pope. Gaines joined Pope in helping push the initiative three years later.

TOMORROW: Part 2. Power-seekers, politicking, deal-making, and clashing egos.

By Ray Paulick

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