Numerous tropes and cliches exist highlighting the difficulty of succeeding in the Thoroughbred racing industry: there’s the sartorially specific requirement that one must wear “long pants” to participate, or the idea that in order to end up as a millionaire with race horses, one ought to start off as a multimillionaire. Our personal favorite is William Butler Yeats’s more poetic notion about the influence of luck on one’s best laid plans: “pure-bred horses / And solid men, for all their passion, live / But as the outrageous stars incline.”
The proliferation of so many different takes on this theme indicates that one cannot enter the racing business and claim not to have been forewarned of the difficulty in achieving a positive financial outcome.
Our own participation in the Thoroughbred industry commenced late in 2014 with the purchase of Atlantic Rainbow at the Keeneland November Sale. A young, unraced product of a successful breeding program, Atlantic Rainbow was in foal at the time to The Factor, whose first weanlings were selling well at that sale. We added another in-foal mare from a similarly successful family, I’m Engaged, at the Keeneland January Sale a couple of months later, which would hopefully give us two foals to sell late in 2015 to fund the continuation of our venture.
Atlantic Rainbow and I’m Engaged both subsequently produced healthy foals early in 2015, the former a colt by The Factor, and the latter a filly by Congrats. The mares and their new babies then shipped from Maryland back to Kentucky shortly after the births – so far, so good, and everything according to plan.
Then things started to go awry. Neither mare ended up back in-foal during the 2015 breeding season, despite repeated coverings (and, in the case of I’m Engaged, despite a theretofore spotless conception and production record). Which happens; only about 60% of Thoroughbred mares bred each year eventually produce a live foal the following spring – obviously not as high of a number as breeders would like. But still, although not inexplicable, having two mares fail to get back in foal was not part of our business plan.
Even more – and worse – bad luck would follow, when, shortly before weaning, I’m Engaged’s filly by Congrats suffered an accident in the paddock and had to be put down. Thoroughbreds are well known for not only not being immune to accidents, but oftentimes seeming to seek them out. So to have one of our horses be the victim of an accident was tragic and upsetting, but, again, not something that could be called surprising in the grand scheme of things.
Things got back on track last fall, as Atlantic Rainbow’s colt by The Factor grew and matured problem-free in Kentucky. As the Keeneland breeding stock sale – where we had long planned to sell him – approached, he was scoped and given an “A” grade, and his X-rays came up completely clean. The first yearlings by his sire had sold like gangbusters that summer and fall, which fueled our hopes for a successful sale in November.
The only negative about the colt was that he was a bit short – but as the first foal out of his dam, who is not the world’s biggest mare, and being sired by a stallion who is average-sized from a sire-line not known for prodigious size, a lack of height seemed forgivable.
Still, as the November sale approached, we made the decision not to sell our slightly short colt and await the following September’s yearling sale with him. Our hope was that he would sprout a bit and reward our patience, rather than the foresight of a pinhooker who might have scooped him up as a bargain.
So we bided our time over the winter, and the colt continued to develop into a strong, quick-looking specimen, even if one that could not be described as “tall.” But his X-rays stayed clean, his throat remained clear, his legs continued to be thick and straight, and his walk got no less athletic.
As the Keeneland September Sale approached, the colt was slotted into Book 4, which was not our first choice, but could have been worse. Especially as the market during the sale looked strong, if polarized – we could not help but get our hopes up a bit that our patience would indeed pay off, literally and figuratively.
Then the day of his sale arrived, and things started to look less rosy. His throat and X-rays were as good as you could ask for, but nobody knew it because they had not looked. And those who did look, in the back walking ring just before his hip number was called, apparently decided that his lack of height was a bigger factor than his correctness or his being by The Factor.
When it was his turn, the colt did not get the live bid we were asking for, so he was led out of the sale ring unsold. Our dream of a home-run sale proved ethereal – as dreams often do – and the colt remained ours, a possibility that we had not seriously contemplated until that moment.
But this is not meant as a sob story, and we trust that its ending shall prove to be a happy one – for it is not yet over.
Indeed, in the days following the sale (and thanks to the efforts of a friend and fellow aspiring bloodstock agent) we sold a half-interest in the colt to a very nice, quite successful couple who own and train a good-sized stable of runners in the Mid-Atlantic – which means that we will be able to maintain close tabs on the colt, and hopefully collect some Owner and Breeder Bonuses when he races in Maryland in the coming years.
(Less importantly, but just as excitingly, we were able to name him ourselves. Melding the concepts of The Factor and Atlantic Rainbow, while trying to avoid any of those words explicitly, and using some alliteration – as was also the case in our choice of Marriage Material earlier this year – we decided that he would be known on the track as Nautical Nature. Thankfully, the Jockey Club consented.)
Although things did not work out as planned with Housatonic’s first crop of homebred foals last year, we can still hope that 2016 will turn out differently when we sell our weanling fillies out of Hula Skirt (by Twirling Candy) and Curlin’s Needle (by Data Link) in a few months. Plus, with three mares currently in foal for 2017 (including both Atlantic Rainbow and I’m Engaged), there’s always next year – which reminds us of another bit of racing-related conventional wisdom, not to mention the name of the dam of the excellent racehorse and sire Miswaki: hope springs eternal.
