IN SEARCH OF A BETTER WAY

Scenes from the Keeneland September Yearling Sale
(Photos : Keeneland)

“It’s not the strongest of the species that survive,
nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
- Charles Darwin

Last week, we penned a piece about a better deal for broodmare owners. While it is so that markets for young stock in this country have stood up better than in most countries, the truth is, we can make things better, and there are lessons to be learnt from those nations that have suffered to a greater degree than we have. The extreme example of “blood-letting” resides in the United States, where, despite the outward impressions, breeders still lost more than $100million at this year’s marathon Keeneland September Sale. While in some respects the sale could be counted as a success, measured in terms of the improved percentage of horses sold, specific areas of the market which stood their ground and the fact that things seemed to be getting better, it’s a scary thought that breeders have collectively lost a half billion dollars over the last four years, which compounds the problem.

No matter how spinners spin the spin, when an already struggling industry loses a half billion dollars in the “churn” needed to re-supply the overall system, the only word that comes to mind is crisis. Now there are all sorts of things that contribute to this malaise; one is a market that has been over-traded for many years and which has suffered all of the consequences of over-pricing. For an awfully long time, the top-end of the American market thrived to a degree that stallion fees (and hence the overall cost of production) spiralled out of control. When the international economy nose-dived and the principal supporters of that market (and especially the rulers of Dubai), clipped their own wings, the overheads breeders had incurred in developing and operating their farms had reached a point of no return. Coupled with a racing industry in the US which is based almost entirely on private ownership and the need to provide a return to shareholders (there isn’t a model anywhere that works long term along these lines), you had the perfect recipe for a storm.

On the surface, this is a crisis for breeders who form the headwaters or the main tributary for the revenue stream from which many service providers drink. Below the surface, therefore, those suppliers who also depend on the revenue stream from auction sales feel the pain as well. This is obvious, because as the river shrinks the fiscal health of every other group is affected downstream. So when a half billion dollars in “churn” disappears (along with a lot of other breeders and mares), everyone needs to sit up and think. In the simplest scheme of things, basic principles of economics suggest that making things better for the breeder makes things better for stallion owners, for boarding farms, sales companies, consignors and agents, vets, feed companies, transporters, farriers, industry publications and insurers.

Like us, breeders in America are the foundation of the revenue pyramid, and the bulk of them, like us, are producers who depend upon the income of their farms to sustain themselves. Quite clearly, neither breeders in America nor anywhere else, can continue to sustain the losses they’ve had to bear in the last four years. In order to understand this, there were those who thought that the Keeneland September sale was a “good” one with a gross of $219million. Yet in 1999, the gross for the same sale was $233million, which converts roughly into $322million in today’s dollars. In order to achieve 1999’s result in 2013, breeders would have to see an increase of 40% to get back to where they were 13 years ago. What differentiates today from 1999 though, is the magnitude of cumulative losses breeders have suffered in the US, and are having to carry forward. Somewhere, surely, there is a tipping point where resilience gives way to debilitating weakness.

There is only one choice, and that is to acknowledge the crisis and to respond to the financial landscape by finding new ways to do business. There is little comfort in knowing these lessons apply mainly to markets far away from us. We are not so far removed that we are immune, and if we keep doing what we’re doing ourselves, sooner or later we’re going to get what the Americans are getting. In the end, remember what Charles Darwin had to say on the topic: “It’s not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

The one hot topic that appears to top most slates in the United States, is the subject of stud fees. Those of you that study these columns, will know that for many years now, we’ve been encouraging our colleagues in the stallion business not to out-price the market. In the end, there are just 6 or 7 entities that control the tight number of commercial stallions in this country, and quite clearly a re-alignment of stud fees would help in keeping breeders afloat. The conundrum lies in the fact that most semen sellers are unable to drop their prices much, because we overpaid for our stallion corps in the first place, and we’re all stuck trying to protect or recoup our investments. The other thing is our fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders, which, like shareholders wherever they are, create upward pressure on the need to maintain dividends. All of these are understandable fundamentals of the economic cycle.

The limited number of stallions commanding commercial lustre or “bling” and the fact that in tough times people seek sanctuary in the tried and tested, does not help in solving the problem. In the context of stallions, horsemen appear to have an hereditary obsession with the proven horse, at the expense of all else. When you recall that Northern Guest and Foveros, Jet Master, Western Winter and Fort Wood, all had first crops, and those with a sense of adventure were the ones who cashed in, it’s difficult the grasp the concept of a singular concentration on a handful of elder statesmen, particularly in a business where we know that fashion switches from pinstripes to polka dots in a matter of months, and the older brigade inevitably lose their appeal. It even happened to Sadler’s Wells, remember, and the first signs are when mares carrying to the cover of an aging icon, fetch less than the cost of the service.

Somehow, we have to revive the memory in the minds of those that make up our market, that there is enterprise in identifying the rising freshman. That way, breeders will find a new enthusiasm for the new arrival, and that in itself will take some pressure off the established sires. The longer view of how the world will be in 2015, when the consequences of our choice of stallions this past season will become known, must surely suggest that by then we will be back on our feet. The attributes that have seen this country create more great companies than any other of its size, courage, enterprise and the pioneering spirit, will deliver up a new generation of investors with a fresh sense of where the world is headed. Those who rely more on memory than vision, are driving in the rear-view mirror.

A review of the stallion business worldwide reveals that the bulk of the best commercial stallions are held by just a few individuals or entities. They do not operate in what one might term as a genuinely free market, where widespread competition naturally creates downward pressure on fees. For want of another name, you might call it an oligopoly, a market condition that exists where there are fewer sellers. In this environment, prices generally trend upwards, because it is normally associated with a situation where demand exceeds supply, and buyers have to have the product. In this situation, whatever the long-term consequences, stallion fees are inclined to be set as high as possible, simply because those of us that control them, can.

In the context of what’s happened in America in recent years, while that may provide a better result in the short term, it can’t be smart in the long term, because in the end, it destroys your customer base. Nobody foresaw the 2008 collapse of international financial markets, and nobody anticipated the implosion of the American Thoroughbred market, nor the impact it would have on markets worldwide. The fact that there are still many breeders in business, including smaller operators, says something for their personal fortitude, though it doesn’t say much necessarily for what’s left in their kitties. And while there is some comfort in reminding ourselves that it has not been as bad in South Africa as it has been in many countries abroad, the fact is, many of our colleagues are struggling, particularly the smaller ones, and they in the end, are the bedrock of the breeding community. In the more than 30 years that we’ve been in business, we’ve seen more stud farms go than come, and increasingly, the power of production is concentrated in fewer hands. Whilst rationalisation is an imperative consequence of any downturn in any market, ours is an especially precarious one, and the balance between the number of horses we need to sustain our racing industry and the number that will fail to sustain it, is perched on a thin red line.

If you haven’t already worked it out, we guess it’s time for us to say it. Once upon a time, stallion contracts here and abroad, were universally “90 days in foal”, and the fee became payable. Then the Northern Hemisphere countries introduced a scheme whereby payment was made on the 1^st September (March in our language) in the year in which the mare was bred (ie. within two or three months of the breeding season, but before the foal materialised), on the understanding that if you made timeous payment, you got a live foal guarantee. As we mentioned in a previous article, Summerhill revolutionised this concept by introducing a : “no payment” deal until the foal itself was on the ground, standing and nursing. Yet those in a position to do so saw the standard formats morph into various other forms of payment, including “upfront, no guarantee” (for the likes of Northern Dancer, Nijinsky, Danzig, Mr Prospector etc.), “live foal payable within 30 days of foaling”, then “out of sales proceeds”, and then finally, “out of proceeds with forgiveness”. With forgiveness means that, where the resultant progeny fails to make the value of the stud fee, the stallion owner receives all proceeds, whatever they may be, and simply lets the customer off for the balance. While that may relieve the broodmare owner of the liability of having to pay the full fee, it doesn’t detract from the fact that he’s saddled with whatever his other production costs are, including the keep and maintenance of the mare and yearling to that point.

As we pointed out a while back, the broodmare owner has to carry the accumulated costs of production for three consecutive foals before the first gets to the market, which means that if you have a broodmare band of even say, 10 mares, you need a small fortune in operating capital in order to fund your business, a commitment which is on-going for as long as you are in business. The risk to the broodmare owner is magnified because he and the stallion owner do not share the same timetable. Stallion owners operate annually from the 1^st September to the 15^th January (in Southern Hemisphere parlance), while breeders are effectively, as we’ve said, on a two and a half year calendar from the time they breed the mare to the time the yearling makes the auction, and even longer if you’re attending a later sale. In a world where lots can happen in a day, having to spin the wheel for two and a half years, particularly when the market is battling, can be daunting.

Another way stallion owners can help, and especially in South Africa where we have a relatively small market, is to limit the number of mares their stallions serve. That way, the broodmare owner has a bigger chance of recovering his expenses and in the end, because it has to be the object of the exercise, of generating a profit. By making the commodity scarcer, we improve the level of demand, and we also ensure a spread in the patronage of a broader base of stallions. In the Northern Hemisphere, where stallion books long ago soared past the 100 mark and are now, incredibly, surpassing the 200 level, breeders are not only regularly compromised in getting their mares covered by a stallion because of congestion in the line-up, but they’re also putting themselves at the mercy of an over-crowded yearling market, when that time comes.

We have thought long and hard about these issues at Summerhill, and we’re wondering whether there isn’t another and a better way to extend the life expectancy of a breeder. Perhaps the answer lies in a combination of the terms we offer and an element of relief where the yearling does not cover the value of the stud fee (provided of course that the breeder has given the horse every chance to be what it can be). There are many ways of skinning this cat, and we need to put our thinking caps on before we find ourselves in similar straits to our colleagues in the United States and elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere.

Enquiries :
Linda Norval +27 (0) 33 263 1081
or email linda@summerhill.co.za
www.summerhill.co.za

THE TYRANNY OF DISTANCE

Irish trainer Dermot Weld with 1993 Melbourne Cup winner, Vintage Crop
(Photo : Irish National Stud)

“One aspect of Japanese racing which I admire
is the way it still encompasses top-class races for stayers.”
Andrew Caulfield

If there’s one horror breeders around the world seem to have, it’s breeding to stallions which have displayed large reserves of stamina. On Tuesday, we penned a piece on the mind-shift adopted by British breeders following the conquests of the likes of Sir Ivor and Nijinsky in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and their abandonment of the use of stallions which had proven themselves over the longer trips. The emphasis turned to speed, preferably horses that had proven themselves at a mile or less. We speak of a universal horror, but at least the Japanese have overcome any concerns in this respect, and they have benefitted substantially by it.

In the immediate aftermath of our article, the pedigree guru, Andrew Caulfied, produced a commentary on Sunday’s winner of the Japan Cup (Gr.1) (Gentildonna), and in the course of it, he commented on this very topic.

“One aspect of Japanese racing which I admire is the way it still encompasses top-class races for stayers. The JRA stage the G2 Sports Nippon Sho Stayers Stakes over 2 1/4 miles, the G3 Diamond Stakes over 2 1/8 miles and the G2 Hanshin Daishoten over 1 7/8 miles, but more importantly it also still runs the spring edition of the G1 Tenno Sho over two miles and the last leg of the Triple Crown, the G1 Kikuka Sho, over 1 7/8 miles. Unlike in Europe, distinguished participation in these races doesn’t confer an automatic ticket to obscurity after retirement. Deep Impact won the Kikuka Sho to become only the sixth horse to win the Japanese Triple Crown. Then, as a 4-year-old, he began his campaign with clear-cut victories in the Hanshin Daishoten and the Tenno Sho (2 miles), so he clearly stayed very well. To be flippant, it appears that Deep Impact’s stamina hasn’t had a negative effect on his value. He was syndicated for Yen 5.1 billion, which at the time equated to around $42.7 million! He went on to run two more races after his syndication, ending his career with decisive wins in the Japan Cup and Arima Kinen, both at around a mile and a half. He has rewarded investors with 22 graded/group winners in his first two crops, which equates to more than 7% graded winners to foals in those two crops. These 22 have 19 different broodmare sires, with the doubly represented Caerleon and Bertolini each owing his double success to a single broodmare.”

Caulfield’s comments on stamina remind us of a story on The Melbourne Cup, which appeared in these columns a few seasons back: “The Melbourne Cup is an Australian institution dating to 1860 (more than thirty years before Durban staged its first Durban July), and for the first 150 years almost, Australians counted the Cup as their own, at least to the degree that they could ever count New Zealanders as family. The Aussies can be quite parochial about these things, so anything they’d have to share with their trans-Tasman neighbours could only occur in harmony if the Kiwis could take it home with a measure of grace. The stature of this race, in the end a handicap contest between a bunch of old stayers in a speed-crazy country, has grown to such a degree that the first Tuesday in November is celebrated as a public holiday in the state of Victoria, and the race has been known not only to “stop the nation”, but also to suspend the Federal parliament. The coziness which had the Cup in the clutches of Australasian horsemen for almost a century and a half, was rocked in recent years by the outreach programme embraced by the Victoria Racing Club (VRC), which subsidised flights, entry fees and accommodation for foreign raiders. In the broader scenario though, nobody foresaw a change in the status quo, so nobody worried.

Along came the Irish-trained Vintage Crop, and along came the end of innocence. Australia’s oldest sporting tradition had finally been opened up to the outside world, and the outside world had won. Some believed this could only enrich the race and the folklore that goes with it. But others were uneasy. Foreigners had plundered their best race: they might grab the money again next year. Outsiders had made their racing heroes look ordinary. If they had not come along, Australians could’ve gone on telling themselves they had the best horses and best jockeys in the world.

The controversy still simmers: it gives a fresh dimension to Geoffrey Blainey’s theory about the tyranny of distance. There is a charm in distance. It allows you to hang onto your myths. When the VRC first invited Irish and English horses to run in the Cup, most locals thought it a fine idea. It was assumed these beasts would have the good grace to lose, and that their connections would fall about saying what super horses the Australians had, and what an honour it was to spend sixty grand on airfares and to be allowed to listen to the Governor General, reading from his prepared notes with all the spontaneity of a dissident at one of Stalin’s show trials.

The trouble was, the Irish trainer Dermot Weld, did a wondrous thing. He brought Vintage Crop 17,000 kms on a 38-hour plane trip. He turned him out beautifully. He had him as fit as a horse could be, and he didn’t just win the Cup: he romped away with it, and set a weight-carrying record for a seven-year-old. Locals said it couldn’t be done, and this infiltrator had done it. The Melbourne Cup, like no other race in the world, is part of a National culture. In less than three-and-a-half minutes, everything had changed, perhaps forever. Now the other hemisphere owned a piece of the race. The Cup would become The Staying Championship of the World. This year Irish accents, next year American accents. Australians’ might have trouble winning their own race. What had they started?”

ENGLISH TRIPLE CROWN : D-DAY APPROACHES

Click above to watch the St Leger Stakes promo…
(Image : Ramadan - Footage : Official BC Series)

LADBROKES ST LEGER STAKES (Gr1)
Doncaster, Turf, 2937m
15 September 2012

Camelot (GB) (Montjeu) yesterday headed the 11 entries remaining for Saturday’s G1 Ladbrokes St Leger and trainer Aidan O’Brien admitted to some anxious moments ahead of the unbeaten colt’s Triple Crown bid. Currently rated a 1-3 shot, generally to emulate the 1970 hero Nijinsky and end the 42-year wait for the prestigious honour to be bestowed once again, Derrick Smith, Susan Magnier and Michael Tabor’s flag bearer is firmly on target for the extended 14-furlong test and a slice of history.

“Everything has been good so far, although there are always worries,” the Ballydoyle maestro told a gathering at a media day yesterday. “We are in the zone where you don’t want to talk about things, you just want to keep everything smooth. None of us know what is going to happen tomorrow. Accidents never just happen, they are always caused along the line. We just have to try and cover everything. It is a fickle time but we just have to stay focused.”

O’Brien admitted that the road to this point has not been straightforward, with testing ground at The Curragh almost curtailing his stop-over in the June 30 Irish Derby.

“We always had it in our heads that he would have three or four runs this year. After Epsom, our grass gallop was flooded and all his work was on the woodchip. When he ran in the Irish Derby, I don’t think I have ever known the ground so heavy at the Curragh. He runs very low to the ground, not rising much, so it was very touch and go whether he would run. He went through the race very easily, only racing for two furlongs; he just couldn’t quicken in the same way that day. We gave him a good break and his weight started to increase which was unusual. He will be heavier for the St Leger than he has been going into any other race, but with 3-year-olds they often don’t change until later in the year. His body is built more like a miler, in that he is round and strong as opposed to angular and lean. That is a little thing that would be in your mind.”

Camelot’s attitude is one of his great characteristics, O’Brien explained. “After his races, he just stands there and doesn’t blow which is very unusual. Most horses are bit agitated after a race. I think he must have a tremendous heart and lung capacity.”

“The horse is a very independent thinker. He is very sharp minded, very intelligent and very relaxed. If he was in a barn of 40 horses and some horses started messing, usually the barn would go mad but he wouldn’t. When horses walk off, most of them need other horses with them, but he doesn’t mind being by himself. He doesn’t look for company and makes his own mind up about things. We have to prioritise; we think Camelot is like no other horse. Who knows what is going to happen; we don’t take anything for granted. We will do our very best, it’s all we can do. We knew that Sue Magnier had the name Camelot for 10 years, since the last Derby winner, and we were not going to influence her in any way. She made her own mind up about it. It is a mystical kind of name and everything about this horse has not been normal. They have to have speed, stamina and courage - they are the three most important things when you are breeding horses. The Ladbrokes St Leger will expose the last two.”

“It will be an interesting day. The Triple Crown is a dream; what has changed with the lads is originally they wanted to make stallions and got them off to stud quick. Now it is make a stallion and expose him because they have a lot of mares. I suppose things have moved on - people are not as forgiving as they were and want to see horses being tested. The lads are prepared to race on the older horses and that previously did not happen. There are an awful lot more disappointments and you do your best; sometimes it is good enough, sometimes it is not. When it is not you try and analyse why not, move on and try not to dwell on it.”

“He is a jockey’s dream to ride as everything comes naturally to him,” jockey Joseph O’Brien, all nineteen years of him, said. “Camelot is an exceptional horse with a brilliant turn of foot. Whether he will stay a mile and three quarters, that’s the big question and nobody knows the answer until Saturday. It may only be just over two furlongs further than he has been before but that is still a lot. Camelot is still learning and has not had as much racing as some horses of his age. The Triple Crown would be a dream come true. I have seen the videos of Nijinsky and Lester Piggott and if Camelot could emulate that it would be unbelievable.”

THE MEANING OF "T.C."

Camelot is coming…
(Image : BBC - Footage : Doncaster Racecourse)

LADBROKES ST LEGER STAKES (Gr1)
Doncaster, Turf, 2937m
15 September 2012

Charles Engelhard’s epitaph simply read “Here lie the remains of the owner of a Triple Crown winner”. Not “feted businessman”, not “gems billionaire”, nor anything else, just “owner of a Triple Crown winner”. For all his achievements in the world of business and philanthropy, Engelhard is best remembered for his association with the 1970 English Triple Crown hero, Nijinsky, and to illustrate how rare the feat is, Nijinsky’s Triple Crown came 35 years after the previous ace, the Aga Khan’s Bahram who achieved the feat in 1935. It is a little known fact though, that the American mining magnate kicked off his career on the turf in South Africa, with the late George Azzie as his trainer. Engelhard was a regular dinner guest at the tables of like-minded South Africans, the Oppenheimers, the Mosenthals, the Gallos, the Barlows, high society as you can see, and his first horses included the Durban July victor, Numeral, the much-celebrated Hawaii, Sea Rover and a supreme colt called Elevation, whose championship achievements he was to be denied by his premature death. Engelhard’s successes in South Africa inspired him to invest abroad, principally in the progeny of the great Italian champion, Ribot, and from these flowed the Classic winners, Ribero and Ribocco, and the English Champion juvenile of his year, Ribofilio (who was to stand subsequently at the Oppenheimer’s Mauritzfontein Stud outside Kimberley).

It was the homage Charlie paid to Ribot and his progeny that ironically led him to his Triple Crown winner, when he sent his Irish trainer, Vincent O’Brien to the Canadian sales at Woodbine, to buy the sole entry by Ribot in the catalogue. On his arrival, O’Brien was little impressed by the son of Ribot, but instead recommended to Engelhard that he acquire an exceptionally good looking colt from the second crop of E.P. Taylor’s diminutive champion, Northern Dancer. At $84,000, Nijinsky topped the Canadian Yearling sale, a princely sum for a horse from a relatively obscure breeding region of the world. The rest is history.

If winning the Triple Crown means anything, it’s worth remembering that Bahram went on to head the British Sires’ list, and founded an enduring sire line through his son Persian Gulf, as much a success in South Africa as anywhere, through the champion sires Abadan II and the multiple Premiership leader, Persian Wonder. Nijinsky topped the American and European sires’ premierships, and commanded a fee at his height of $300,000 while standing at Bull Hancock’s Claiborne Farm. It was this early association with the Oppenheimers, which led to their inclusion among the founding shareholders in the all-conquering stallion.

This Saturday, we face the first serious possibility of a Triple Crown winner since Nijinsky (in other words, in 42 years) as Camelot goes to post the hottest favourite in history for the third leg, the St Leger at Doncaster. On his performances so far, it will take a train to stop him.

For a horse with Triple Crown aspirations, Camelot went an unconventional route. The English 2000 Guineas (the first leg of the Triple Crown) has traditionally been something of a graveyard for winning graduates of the Racing Post Trophy (a Group One mile for two-year-olds, run at Doncaster at the end of the British season), though it’s been a great forerunner for recent winners of the Investec Derby (understandably, because it’s often run in the wet and is a good test of stamina for a two-year-old with aspirations over more ground at three.) Its recent Derby-winning advertisements number some of the standout racehorses of recent generations, including: Galileo, High Chaparral, Sir Percy, Motivator, Authorized, Sea The Stars, Workforce and Pour Moi, besides Camelot. In contrast to his facile five length victory in the Derby, Camelot just got home in the dying strides of the Guineas, suggesting the further he goes the better he will be, a daunting warning for those seeking to take him on this Saturday. Tune in to DSTV Channel 232, and witness history in the making.

MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME

Photos from Claiborne Farm…
(Image and Footage : Mrs LW)

“If you keep quiet and listen,
it’s evident you can learn a lot at Claiborne.”

Mick Goss
Summerhill Stud CEOA year ago to the day, and fresh out of a Warren Buffett presentation of epic proportions, we were winding our way to Churchill Downs for the curtain-raiser to America’s greatest horse race, the Kentucky Derby. The first Saturday in May marks the “Run for the Roses”, and in 2011, we were there to witness a famous victory for Summerhill clients, Team Valor, and their new-found hero, Animal Kingdom. Our friends at Team Valor bid for a double tomorrow with Went The Day Well, though they could’ve been represented in a three way assault if things had gone their way, double-handed as they are in the talent at their disposal.

For several days we traversed the pikes and turnpikes of Lexington, from one great farm to another, renewing our acquaintances with old friends like A.P. Indy, Pulpit, Distorted Humor and Dynaformer and a few new pretenders, Tapit, Malibu Moon and Giant’s Causeway. We kicked off deep in Bourbon County, just outside of Paris, Kentucky, like Mooi River, a slow town alongside a little railway station which looks as if it was a remnant of the Civil War. Everywhere are the fields of dreams, dotted with oak trees and enclosed by identical four-rail fences, all stained black. Wisps of fog hover low over the blue grass which has been washed bright green by a summer shower. Every so often, the columns of a white mansion peek discreetly through a cluster of trees. The mood is such that if Scarlett O’Hara was suddenly to glide by in hooped skirts, carrying a parasol and cooing, you would probably think, yes, she fits well enough. We are, after all, in a rare place, some of the richest farming dirt in the world. Old families, old money, nicely understated. A warm hand of friendship greets you, much like your arrival at Summerhill, but this time with a greeting “good to see y’all”, which can be confusing if, as often happens, there is only one of you. Like us, the racehorse is the reason for it all.

The Hancock’s Claiborne Farm is just outside Paris. No farm anywhere has more influenced the evolution of the American thoroughbred this last century. Claiborne is all about the brotherhood and, God knows, it is understated: no bragging, no hussle, no brochures in technicolor. Claiborne has been going so long it is a shrine as much as a business, and like us, it’s only as good as its current batch of stallions. You learn soon enough why Claiborne is what it is. All you need do, is watch and listen.

I recall my visit to Claiborne in the dead of winter, 1988. We were there to buy Coastal, the first American classic winner to set foot on African shores. Clay Arnold, one of the stallion men, was stooped by his 70 years, yet there was a boyish serenity in his face. You figure this was because he liked horses and the place, and never wanted to do anything else, and Clay said “you figured right”. He clipped the lead shank on the old bay stallion who was bathed in a pale yellow glow by the sunlight streaming into his box. Most things at Claiborne are in pale yellow, including the paint on the stables. The stallion stepped out calmly, tall with a great length of rein, and a head that was surely what the man meant when he coined the line about “the look of eagles”. But the bay was light of flesh on top and behind, the near-hind was swollen up to the hock, the off-fetlock was so thickened as to be deformed, turned way out and filled so tightly that pink skin flared through the white hairs just above the hoof.

The old horse was grinding away on courage at the end of his career: he was not about to play the invalid now. The light still burnt brightly in his eye. He let us rub his forehead, but he did not acknowledge us. Like any good stallion, he does not look at you, but over and beyond, out over the fields of dreams. He was Nijinsky, the last winner of the English Triple Crown in 1970. Here was another Claiborne legend, the genuine article, the sire of 125 Stakes winners and a sales yearling who brought $13 million (about R104 million). Clay Arnold had handled a few legends. He merely touched the old horse on the neck and drawled: “yessir, he’s a nice horse… a nice horse… I like him a lot, yessir”.

Claiborne is also about ghosts. To feel them you need but step into the stallion cemetary, and read the names on the grey headstones. Nasrullah, died 1959, one of the immortal sires… Secretariat, the great red horse with flaring nostrils who won the Belmont by 31 lengths… Bold Ruler… Round Table… Princequillo… Blenheim… Galant Fox… Buckpasser… Court Martial. Go to a yearling sale anywhere in the world, Dublin, Buenos Aires, Sydney or Johannesburg, and these names appear on practically every page of the catalogue. Claiborne was running out of burying room, but there was a place for Nijinsky. Standing there though, he seemed happy to stay out of the place. He stood quietly for us, and never thought to fidget.

Clay brought up stallion after stallion; not one played up. At last there was Mr. Prospector, whose blood runs so thick and so deep here at Summerhill these days, and who stood for around $300,000 in those days. And little Danzig, commanding much the same fee and built in the classic Northern Dancer mould: neat, strong through the body and with a lovely head and jowl. As I’ve said, all you had to do to learn was to watch. These stallions were so well behaved, so content, because generations of stallion-handling were built into Claiborne. The place has always believed in the primacy of stallions, in the farming truism that a good bull is half your herd, and a bad bull is all your herd.

Claiborne has been chasing stallions since Captain Richard Hancock came back from the Civil War, determined to breed the best. He chased stallions in Europe, South America and Australia, looking for hybrid vigour, for that magical beast who outbreeds his own pedigree and performances, and South Africa has not been exempt from their shopping list. Hawaii, officially a son of Utrillo, but rumoured in fact to have been sired by Joy II, was one South African who had the distinction of getting a winner of England’s most famous race, the Epsom Derby, as well as a second and a third in the same race. Horse Chestnut, as good a racehorse as this country’s known, was another to grace those historic pastures. No family has done more to turn the American thoroughbred into an international commodity than the Hancocks.

And so the story goes on, one great stallion after another, and sooner or later we will provide you with a little more of the history of this great farm.

The most intriguing building on Claiborne is not the white stallion barn with its yellow trim and the brass name plates that tell you that Bold Ruler and Secretariat lived here. It is the breeding shed. In recent times, some very elaborate breeding sheds have gone up in various parts of the world, complete with hot and cold running vets, lasers, rubber floors, videos, and all the software of the hi-tech age. They have the décor of hospitals. The breeding shed at Claiborne is clad with warped slats on which the black paint has blistered and peeled. The shingles on the roof are stained green with mildew. Inside the floor is uneven and covered with bark. The only concession to modern times is the yellow padding around the walls. Yet heaven knows how many great horses have been fashioned in greatness here.

There’ve been only 11 Triple Crown winners in the history of American racing, which brings us back to tomorrow’s race, the Kentucky Derby, the first leg of this illustrious treble. No less than five of these heroes were conceived in this rough old Claiborne shed. A Kentucky horseman, one of the brotherhood, explained it this way: “Yessir, it’s not the fancy things inside the shed that count: it’s the quality of the horses that grow up outside of it once their mothers have passed through the middle”. If you keep quiet and listen, it’s evident you can learn a lot at Claiborne.