THE THOROUGHBRED BREEDING SEISMIC SHIFT

Nasrullah
(Photo : Bloodlines)

“International victories tougher to come by
for North American horses.”

American-bred horses are gradually disappearing from the winner’s circles of European group stakes races.

So far this year less than 7% of the group stakes in England, Ireland, France, Germany, and Italy have been won by horses bred in the United States compared with 30% in 1985 and 32.8% in 1990. The ability of American-bred horses to compete among the most elite European runners has suffered just as much. American-breds have accounted for only 3.8% of group 1 wins this year through Aug. 30. In 1985 American-bred horses won 37.1% of the European group 1 races, according to data supplied by The Jockey Club Information Systems.

Several breeders and trainers on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean said the reasons behind this trend are no mystery. American breeders don’t support stallions whose progeny are likely to be successful in Europe running a route of ground on the grass. An equally significant change is that Kentucky no longer possesses the same status it once had as the hub of the world’s Thoroughbred breeding industry because the quality of stallions has improved substantially in other countries.

“(Coolmore Stud managing partner) John Magnier told me if a horse like Sea The Stars had dominated racing 15 years ago, it would have been assumed the horses would have stood in Kentucky,” said Garrett O’Rourke, manager of Juddmore Farms near Lexington. “The difference between the 1950’s and today is the strength of the U.S. economy. At that time they could offer prices the European breeders could not refuse. Now the quality is more spread out, and you can’t do that as much anymore.”

America’s Thoroughbred breeding began growing in international stature in the 1950’s when Arthur “Bull” Hancock Jr. started acquiring top stallions from Europe. Hancock shipped their leading English sire Nasrullah and French champion and top sire Lebhuleux to Claiborne Farm, believing that sires from around the world would add vigor on American blood-sires. Hancock’s son Seth continued the tradition, bringing over 1970 European Horse of the Year and top sire Kinsky II. The 1970’s John Gaines began building his own internationally renowned stallion station called Gainesway and introduced more prominent European sires to the North American market than any other breeder. He acquired, Lyphard, Riverman, Blushing Groom, Green Dancer, Irish River, Sharpen Up and Vaguely Noble, who were all either European champions or major stakes winners. John T.L. Jones Jr. did his part too, standing European champions Alleged and Nureyev at Walmac International, while John Galbreath imported the undefeated champion Ribot to stand at Darby Dan Farm.

Part of what has kept top European runners out of the United States has been described as the “Coolmore-Darley influence.” Coolmore Stud and Darley have build up substantial stallion operations in Ireland, England, France, and Australia. Coolmore Stud, which is based in Ireland, has 19 stallions standing in Ireland, 11 at its U.S. Ashford Stud operation, and 15 in Australia, of which 10 are  shuttlers from the U.S. and Europe. Sheikh Mohammed, the ruler of Dubai, has done even more to build up stallion operations under his Darley brand. Darley owns 63 stallions : nine in Great Britain, eight in Ireland, seven in France, 27 in Australia (including 13 that shuttle from the U.S. and Europe), 16 in the U.S., and nine in Japan.

The decline in the U.S. Thoroughbred market makes it even harder for U.S. farms to recruit the next big horse. And even though E.P. Taylor proved he could stand the best horse in the world - Northern Dancer - in Maryland, the competition for stallions is remarkably stronger now around the globe.

Purses aside, the U.S. Thoroughbred breeding market has been profoundly shaped by the commercial market that offers a premium of the progeny of sires that excelled on dirt tracks. Bloodlines that promise precocious early speed are also desirable. European-type stallions - again, think turf runners with stamina - are decidedly non-commercial.

John Gosden said he sees two key problems with the American breeding industry as it relates to the rest of the world : the emphasis on dirt and speed, and the emphasis on breeding for the commercial market.

“The issue of the commercial world itself is the tendency, and we have seen it in Europe, to see breeders breeding to sell rather than to race. When you breed to sell rather than to race, you raise the horses a little differently, and I’ll leave it at that. I will say I think breeding to sell has been to the detriment of the breed.”

John Sikura of Hill ‘n Dale agreed the American breeding industry faces some challenges because of different cultural attitudes about horse racing. Overseas, horse racing is more about sport and there is status associated with owning a horse. In America, the attitude is more businesslike and less cultural, according to Sikura.

“America for better or worse is the purest capitalist country in the world,” he said. “It is easy to like the horse business when you are selling million-dollar horses. It tests your commitment when that horse sells for $200,000. There are a lot more people in the industry in this country that have an exit strategy.

A continued decline in European bloodlines in American stallions is expected to shrink future demand for all American-bred horses offered at auction because it eliminates the incentive for overseas buyers to travel to U.S. Sales.

Gosden Predicts America’s breeding industry has had its time at center stage and that the market will now shift elsewhere.

“In 10-15 years I would expect the strongest racing will be in the Far East. Continously we are suffering by being marginalized in both America and Europe. It is something we are all keenly aware of.”

“The American dirt horse is a very noble creature, but it’s not terribly relevant to the rest of the world. There has been something of a seismic shift,” Gosden said.

Extract from Blood Horse

"LEGEND". NO OTHER WAY OF DESCRIBING GRAHAM BECK

Mick and Cheryl Goss with Graham Beck and Laurie Jaffee in Dubai
(Photo : Summerhill Archives)

GRAHAM BECK
1929 - 2010

Mick Goss
Summerhill StudThe word “legend” is a much abused word in racing, or anywhere else for that matter. But in Graham Beck, here was the real life embodiment of the coinage.

What else can one say about a man whose passing has made all of the national news headlines, that hasn’t already been said. Descriptions that race to mind are “bigger than life”; overt generosity; an infectious, guttural sense of humour; a streetwiseness of uncanny proportions, and an enormous capacity for making others feel warm, wanted and, critically, worthy.

South African racing in general and the Jewry of Johannesburg in particular were once blessed with the “Three Musketeers”, Graham Beck, Cyril Hurwitz and Laurie Jaffee, now all passed on, and presumably, in the Elysian Fields. We say “presumably”, because they could at times be wickedly naughty, all three of them, and we’re not quite sure what the test is for entry to this apparent paradise. What we do know though, is that whatever the verdict on the first to go, (Cyril), it would’ve been the same for the other two, so the one assurance we do have is that they’re now together, and they’re probably looking down on us wondering whether we’ll see their like again. For my money, that’s c’est non possible. And you’d have to ask yourself, whether the makers of J&B have a factory big enough up there.

How do we place this man into perspective? In racing terms, he was a colossus, one of the greatest and most benevolent owners the game has ever known. Three things stand out for me in particular, not that they were necessarily, by any stretch, momentous in his life. The first involved the purchase of my first filly off the track from Graham, in a private transaction in his office. Given his stature and my own relative insignificance at 27, he couldn’t have been more accommodating, in what could’ve been frighteningly intimidating.

The second involved his purchase of Gainesway Farm. I happened to be representing the TBA on a trip to Kentucky, when I attended the Breeders Cup meeting. Just the day before, I made the acquaintance of a fellow solicitor, a Mr. Bishop who was counsel to one of the two greatest stallion stations in the world, Claiborne Farm; the grapevine, he said, was that a South African had purchased Gainesway, the other of the two great stallion stations. This was astounding news given that it was 1989, and that no South African had ever made such a splash in the bloodstock world.

The following day, Graham asked me to join him at his table at the Breeders Cup itself, there beside us was the founder, John Gaines himself, as cultured and intelligent a man as I’ve had the pleasure to know in racing. In that instant, Graham Beck had acquired the gigantic likes of Lyphard, Blushing Groom, Riverman, Vaguely Noble, Irish River etc, some of the noblest names of all thoroughbred breeding, and South Africa had “arrived”.

Henceforth, and for some time, Graham Beck would be Kentucky’s most favoured dinner guest, and his legacy at Gainesway today is one of the most beautiful farms on the planet. As a farmer myself, I should use this moment to applaud his stewardship of the land. That is his, and his lovely lady, Rhona’s signature, wherever they have invested.

The third instant reflected his own international standing in the thoroughbred world. I was in Dubai for the inaugural World Cup, and I received a distressed message from Graham’s office in Johannesburg, enquiring whether I could intervene in getting his private aircraft which was already in flight into Dubai. His sin was that he was Jewish himself, and that his aircraft had been to Israel on its journey to Dubai. Given the difficulties Israel and its Middle Eastern neighbours have experienced over the decades, aircraft emanating from there were not always welcome.

There was no one bigger in the thoroughbred world at that time than Sheikh Mohammed, and there was no-one more capable of influencing events in the Middle East than him. Within an hour, the big plane was not only welcome, but Sheikh Mohammed attended personally at the airport to fetch Graham.

In every material respect, Graham Beck was an enormous man, big in personality, big in generosity, massive in his contributions to our game, and in the lives he touched. At Summerhill, his Highlands Farm was our biggest competitor, and no-one competed “better” than he did.

Rest in peace, old pal. Your life has been hectic, and you deserve it.

WORDS WITH A SAGE

J&B MET 2010
GRAHAM BECK AND ANTONY BECK

For a man who had little in the way of a “horsey” background, Graham Beck has had a remarkable association with great horses. He was telling me on Saturday that he kicked off with a R42 000 buy in Big Swinger (a multiple Graded Stakes winner), but it’s mainly for his stallions that this el padrino of our game will always be remembered. Persian Wonder, Elevation, Harry Hotspur, Jungle Cove, Lords, Badgerland, National Assembly and Jallad rush to the mind in local parlance alone, and while these include several South African Champion sires, we mustn’t forget, this is a man who’s been associated with some of the greatest stallions in history.

His acquisition of the famed Gainesway Farm in the United States from the founding father of the Breeders Cup, John Gaines, included at the time some of racing’s greatest names, Blushing Groom, Vaguely Noble, Riverman, and Lyphard and through modern day associations, extends to Unbridled and the current “big hiters”, Tapit and Birdstone.

It must be ten years or more since we saw Graham’s son Antony at the races in South Africa. Now the master of Gainesway himself, his respect extends throughout the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and he sits on both the Breeders Cup and Keeneland Association boards. As the owner of one of the most beautiful stud properties in the world, it was reassuring from a Summerhill perspective to have Antony remind us again, that most of what he knows, he learnt from Summerhill, and that this farm, for its systems and practices, could hold its own with the best in America. Pity he doesn’t come home more often.

Classic double for the Becks at GAINESWAY FARM

Birdstone
(Photo : Stallion Register)

Just on twenty years ago, I was privy to a glimpse at an intimate connection at the Breeders’ Cup meeting of 1990 between local “el padrino”, Graham Beck, and the then founder not only of Gainesway Farm, but also of the Breeders’ Cup, John Gaines. Earlier that day, Buddy Bishop, renowned solicitor operating in Lexington, Kentucky, and legal counsel to what was then the principal opposition to Gainesway, the Hancock family’s famous Claiborne Farm, confided in me that a South African was rumoured to have purchased Gainesway. I was astonished, and dismissed it as conjecture. After all, this was the farm that housed the likes of Lyphard, Blushing Groom, Riverman, Vaguely Noble, Irish River, Cozzene, Afleet etc, and it was almost inconceivable that it should be a South African that had put up his hand for this iconic property, when all the world was there to compete for it.

It turned out that Buddy Bishop’s “intelligence” was spot-on, and that the enterprise of Graham Beck, the stuff of legend in South Africa, had indeed laid claim to one of the greatest titles in thoroughbred racing. I wrote about this property two weeks ago as a place of solace to me on the passing of my late mother, and today we can celebrate the fact that one of its resident stallions, Birdstone (who spoilt the party for Funny Cide in his quest for the American Triple Crown, by snatching the laurels in the final leg of the Belmont Stakes (Gr.1), has produced from his very first crop, two winners of separate legs of the Triple Crown.

The first and arguably the most famous leg, the Kentucky Derby (Gr.1) was taken in spectacular fashion by a 50-1 chance in the form of Mine That Bird (by Birdstone), who came from a shotgun position at the back of the field to land a storied victory by six, and who was the sole pursuer of the filly Rachel Alexandra, in the Preakness Stakes (Gr.1) a fortnight later.

In the absence of the filly, Mine That Bird was made a certainty by the bettors for Saturday, and he looked home and hosed shortly after they turned into Belmont’s fabled straight, only to be swamped by two foes, one of whom was his paternal half-brother, Summer Bird, who came home to proclaim his sire, if not yet quite in the same league as Medaglia D’Oro as a commercial stallion, certainly every bit as serious a property in reality.

Birdstone is the son of a Kentucky Derby winner himself, the rather unattractive and poor legged Grindstone, he in turn by Unbridled and tracing back, (no alarms), to Mr. Prospector, whose stamp on the American classics is as indelible as any stallion in history. As for Birdstone, he’s not a big fellow (I would say he stands 15’3 at the most) and he’s what one might describe as a “plain brown job”. However, and particularly considering his ancestral belongings, he’s a clean legged horse, well balanced and displays the touch of class that separates the serious from the ordinary.

Watch the 2009 Belmont Stakes and Kentucky Derby