The making of dreams

International racing plans were made at the Autumn Horses In Training Sale

PEOPLE MOVE IN WAVES; historians have seen throughout history the movement of people across countries and locations for survival, economic, cultural and social reasons.

While life-changing events were not on the line this autumn at the Tattersalls Autumn Horses In Training Sale, the auction has long brought in flows of buyers, and the power and magnetic draw of horseracing was again evident this year, the Newmarket-based sale drawing buyers and customers from all regions of the world.

If the racing industry wants to strengthen its diversity card, it needs only take a visit to these sale days. At times through the week, the paved area around the sale ring must have been the most culturally diverse non-High Street and non-tourist location in Europe.

The sale used to be given the catch phrase that it was a bloodstock auction of “broken dreams”; there is a strong argument now that it is in fact a sale that makes dreams – buyers hailing from those regions that are without their own breeding industries able to stock and restock with proven horses for their own stables.

These influxes of buyers have been created by opportunities that have been developed in racing, and over the past 20 years the HIT sale has been both a great equine benefactor to those developments and also a beneficiary.

Around 10 years ago, the Dubai Carnival was the ultimate purchasing goal, creating buyers both from Europe and Dubai wanting to access horses to run at the various meetings at Meydan, and the best on offer then were frequently bought by Sheikh Mohammed himself.

“He is for the Carnival,” was the frequent response by bloodstock agent Anthony Stroud when asked of plans after purchasing a likely three-year-old 90+ handicapper, adding (when pushed): “He is for an existing client”.

There was then a brief interlude when British-based owners made a foray into the market to buy horses specifically for the All-Weather Championship, looking again for horses rated over 80 to qualify and then take part in the big races on Good Friday.

There were few of those intrepid British souls at this year’s sale. I am not sure really why, maybe buyers were priced out of the top of the market and unable to get involved at a high-enough level to produce after-sale purchasing quotes and consequently flew under the radar, maybe thy did not turn up anyway because the option no longer holds too much in the way of interest, or maybe just the general state of British racing is just not attractive for owners to buy for that racing sector.

Of course, many of those likely horses have already been sold to go aboard, or the owners were in the process of selling at Tattersalls rather than buying or investing. Possibly a combination of all.

It will be interesting to see the development of the 2023 British All-Weather Championship meeting and the remaining qualifiers – will the races maintain quality and numbers and override the economic “sellthe-good-handicappers” pressure that British owners are facing?

Recently, international buyers have travelled to Newmarket looking to add to strings based in Qatar or Bahrain for the developing big race days and carnivals held in both Emirates, but the dominant purchasing power this year came from Saudi Arabia and Australia; the Australian presence at Tattersalls not in any way a new phenomenon.

The trend for buying “staying” horses in Europe for the Melbourne Cup, a strategy successfully employed once again this year, is not new and now over 100 years old.

In 1910, Comedy King became the first Europeanbred horse to win the Cup, although even by that point a number of winners had been sired by British and European-bred stallions shipped to Australia.

Comedy King was purchased in utero by Sol Green, an Australian-based bookmaker and horse breeder and then one of the richest people in Australia. Originally from the East End, Green livened up a return trip to Europe on relative-visiting duties and bought himself a broodmare – Tragedy Queen in-foal to the 1896 Epsom Derby winner Persimmon, a son of the great St Simon, and he shipped her to Oz.

Green had left the country of his birth as a teenager and by 22 had found employment as a bookmaker’s clerk; with a “nimble” mind he soon became dominant in the bookmaking fraternity and started to make some proper money.

His great innovation was to run a book by post from Perth in Western Australia, so anyone anywhere in the country could wager on the outcome of major races.

The operation was a huge success.

He eventually gave up the bookmaking and turned his concentration to standing stallions, breeding and producing racehorses. He was pretty successful – nine years after Comedy King took the “race that stops a nation” Green’s imported stallion became a Melbourne Cup-winning sire of the 1919 winner Artilleryman. The “we are buying for the Cup” mantra was oft repeated this year at Tattersalls and a variety of horses were targeted by connections ranging from 7f runners to horses already proven over two miles, all purchased with the Melbourne Cup goal in mind.

SUCCESSFUL AGENT Stuart Boman of Blandford Bloodstock bought the sale’s second top-priced lot for 675,000gns, the previous Richard Hannon-trained Fancy Man. Boman was buying for Annabel Neasham, the British-bred, Sydneydomiciled talented trainer who had decided she wanted her “one for the Cup”.

In Neasham’s “pre-interest” communications, 200 people had expressed a desire to be kept in the loop regarding whatever she and Boman declared was the “one” – the duo’s previous Tattersalls purchase Zaaki continuing to advertise their abilities. The seven-yearold Leroidesanimaux gelding has now won over £5.1 million and added the Group 1 TAB Champions Stakes on November 5 to his winners’ haul.

One for the Cup? Fancy Man, the second top price at the recent Autumn Horses In Training Sales, was bought with the Melbourne Cup in mind

There is a great spread of Australian buying groups now – with the superb prize-money on offer many are also just looking for good, ready-made horses who can compete in the best races Down Under.

Amazingly, with the greater onset of rain in the nation at this time of year, possibly a reflection of climate change, one buyer even reported that he needs to be looking now for horses who can act on softer going.

Despite the growing expense of air shipping horses, costs increased multi-fold by the pandemic and the energy crisis, the strength of the local prize-money still means it is worth buying and then shipping horses who are considered to be better than the native equine population.

The most populous buyers at all levels at this year’s HIT Sale were from the Saudi Arabia, and the ever-growing popularity of racing in the Middle East generally and in Saudi particularly is seemingly on a never-ending loop.

Qatar has a new track; the main Al Rayyan course was really unable to cope with greater racing demands and Al Uqda, which is found outside the city of Doha, now offers more opportunities for horsemen. The course has been open for a couple of years and offers an extra day at the sports through the season.

At the moment Qatar, however, has other things on its mind with the football World Cup about (as we write this) to get underway.

In Saudi, the Saudi Cup is gathering a strong momentum with the local population, or at least the male population who can afford horses, and this trickles down from the Royal family through associated dignitaries to various rich individuals.

The Saudi-based Najd Stud, which emerged on a buying mission at Tattersalls in 2019, has been very active at the horses-in-training sales over the past couple of years. The team was possibly not as busy as previously, and this year was not working alongside a European-based agent having already had something of a conveyor belt of names at its side.

This year the stud perhaps had decided on a more targeted spend, and sat back on the Autumn Sale top lot as an underbidder when the price hit 850,000gns for I’m A Gambler, the No Nay Never three-year-old gelding bought by Californian owner Tim Cohen of Red Barons Barn.

However, despite a reduced spend compared to 2021, Najd Stud bought seven lots for an outlay of 1,460,000gns, Prince Faisal bin Khalid bin Abdulaziz’s farm still leading the way to Saudi.

Others are keen to follow and, with another an improved racecourse coming on stream, the opportunities for racehorse ownership and involvement amongst local Saudis is growing.

Rubio Draco bought to race in Saudi Arabia by brothers Nawf and Mohammed Almutairi

King Khalid racecourse is at Ta’if in the mountains and around seven hours from Riyadh. Alongside its higher altitude, Ta’if is also closer to the coast and the resulting cooler climate helpfully extends the racing season into the warmer summer months.

This year, Ta’if racecourse was allotted an extended fixture list to encompass 48 meetings, double the number of dates from 2021.

Saudi Arabia is a large country (it is the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the Arab world, and the largest in western Asia) with lots of space, little development and very little to do – the ultra-religious movement in the 1980s saw cinemas, theatres and social activities closed. That cultural shut down is slowly beginning to be eroded; in 2018 the first public cinema opened after a ban of 35 years, and there are plans to have more than 2,000 screens open by the 2030s.

But there is still very little to do for those who have money to spend on entertaining themselves – there is after all only so much shopping that can be done in the malls, and the trips to the empty desert regions for a picnic can only hold so much interest.

ACCORDING TO STATISTICS from the World Bank, 98 per cent of the population of Saudi Arabia are internet users which puts it as the eighth highest internet-using country in the world; Saudi Arabia already has one of the fastest 5G internet speeds in the world.

Saudi is also the largest economy in the Middle East and the world’s 18th largest economy by GDP. It also has one of the world’s youngest populations with approximately 50 per cent of its 34.3 million population under 25 years old.

It is a nation set to be interested in horseracing, and at Tattersalls many of the buyers who were active through to Day 4 were younger teams and proof of that desire of the generation to become involved.

They were also proof of the enduring and great thrill people still get from the purchase of a racehorse.

A chat with the brothers Nawaf and Mohammed Almutairi, purchaser of the second top lot on the final day of the Autumn Sale, Rubio Draco consigned by Baroda Stud for trainer Joseph O’Brien bought for 60,000gns, revealed that Mohammed is already the owner of seven racehorses in Saudi.

And when the assembled banks of the press (by that stage in proceedings reduced to James Thomas and myself) asked if he thought that the son of Fast Company would be his one for the Cup, in this case the Saudi version, Almutairi Snr looked a little witheringly at us and said that was probably unlikely.

If all goes well and the horse transitions successfully to the new environment, he thought the horse might be good enough for the Cup’s under card, after all there are 22 other races over the two-day meeting.

Almutairi, full of dreams and ambition, then headed back to take a selfie with his colt, who was happily standing in the autumn sunshine at Park Paddocks with his new connections.

Of all the countries in the Middle East, Saudi it seems offers the most scope for the onward development of horseracing, particularly in light of the reported financial strains that Dubai is facing.

The general governance, human rights and sports washing issues regarding Saudi’s future are there for debate, but horseracing offers its wealthy, and young, population a wonderful mode of entertainment and sporting involvement – and also offers its participants an excuse to visit Europe on equine dream-making buying missions.

That age-old desire of racehorse ownership, that need for sporting equine competition stretching back 200 years to its strongest origin in Newmarket, is making its influence felt in one of the world’s newest racing regions.

Dreams can be made at horses-in-training sales.

And just maybe those dreams, and that driven demand to buy British, Irish and European-bred proven racehorses, can help ensure that the British and the European horseracing industries stick around.

Racing at King Khalid racecourse: the sport appeals to the young Saudi population