Crossing the high seas

Dan Ross finds out the reasons of the growing number of cross-Atlantic trips being made by US buyers

Preakness winner War Of Will was purchased in Europe

WHEN WAR OF WILL overpowered his competitors in this year’s Grade 1 Preakness Stakes, his win proved significant for a couple of reasons.

For one, it was a redemption of sorts for the horse’s controversial trip in a roughhouse Kentucky Derby. To recap, coming out of the home turn, War Of Will’s wet-sail run was all but obliterated by Maximum Security’s wayward antics immediately in front – what War Of Will’s trainer Mark Casse later likened to finding oneself caught behind a drunk driver.

The other reason? That the son of War Front was purchased at last year’s Arqana Breeze-Up Sale in May representing just the latest example of an American racing industry widening its embrace of the European yearling and two-year-old markets.

“We’re not stratified,” says the US-based bloodstock agent Marette Farrell, about racing’s global reach, and the boundaryshifting impact that has had on the bloodstock world.

When it comes to who or what played a seminal part in focusing America’s attention across the Atlantic once again, Farrell has in mind one man in particular.

What Wesley [Ward] did opened up American people’s eyes to what can be done

Justin Casse bought the Grade 1 Preakness Stakes winner War Of Will (right) at the Arqana Breeze-Up Sale. Casse, brother to trainer Mark, attends all the major European yearling, breeding stock and horses in training sales she said, about the trainer’s annual Vikingstyled Royal Ascot raids, beginning in 2009. “The Americans suddenly saw this amazing world that they don’t really have here.”

In the years since, the world that Ward threw open has extended outwards to include European sales rings, capitalised upon by trainers such as Chad Brown, some of whose European purchases – like Breeders’ Cup winning Newspaperofrecord, a Tattersalls October Yearling Sale alumna – have risen to the highest echelons of the sport back in the US.

Justin Casse

“There’s a lot of good bloodstock over there in Europe that suits US racing, and then is able to go back into our breeding stock, stallion barns and broodmare bands around here,” says agent David Ingordo, who’s based in Kentucky.

“Unfortunately, people are sometimes afraid to go outside the box,”adds Ingordo. “But it’s very important that we do. Good horses, they come from everywhere.”

SO, WHAT KIND OF HORSE are US buyers looking for when they cross the pond with cheque books in hand?

“You look for an athlete – something who walks well, presents well,” says bloodstock agent Shawn Dugan, a regular face at the European sales.

There are no set rules. You just have to be there and find the ones who are a good physical and mental fit

One thing that all agree upon, however, is the need for a horse with the physicality and constitution to withstand the rigors of training day-in, day-out on US racetracks – a vastly different world to the decidedly more languid environs of the European training centers.

“You have to visualise if this particular individual can handle training on the Dirt every day,” said Farrell. “Some of those floaty, weak-looking fillies that do so well over there [in Europe], they might not necessarily work over here. Maybe as an older horse, but not as a yearling or two-year-old in training.”

Nevertheless, though the European model might not always be as physically imposing as its Stateside counterpart, says Farrell, that can be a desirable trait for American buyers. “Nobody wants a big heavy horse – they train heavy,” she said. “The European horses tend not to be quite so hard on themselves.”

“In general, the European horse has a longer, sexier type of walk, while typically, the American horse has more hip. I love it if I can get both in the same horse

The stresses of a US training programme explain why Justin Casse, brother of Mark and the man who singled out in France the trainer’s future Preakness winner, identifies soundness and confirmation to be an integral component of his selection process.

“You’ve really got to be hard on the x-ray results,” he says. “You have to be very strict about what you’re doing, and I just want a horse with substance to come back to America.”

So, what attributes of European bloodstock attract him? “In general, the European horse has a longer, sexier type of walk, while typically, the American horse has more hip,” he said. “I love it if I can get both in the same horse.”

The horses that catch Ingordo’s eye, he says, are the ones who catch his eye in any sale’s ring, irrespective of geography. “They’re big, they’re strong, they have good bone, good feet. They have good tail-ends on them, good shoulders.”

There’s one deal-breaker, Ingordo added, when it comes to European stock returning to the US.

“When you have the really long pasterns, that doesn’t work,” he said. “Here, the horses are mostly working on the Dirt surfaces, and they take a lot of pounding.”

That said, the continued expansion of Turf racing Stateside will only further enhance the appeal of the European market for American buyers, said US agent, Jason Litt.

Shawn Dugan

“The trend is for more and more grass racing,” he forecasts. “Just look today at Kentucky Downs – they’re running races a 1m4f and beyond, with more big purses.”

And as Turf racing proliferates, those prolific European family trees will only grow in lustre, said Litt, especially among buyers looking for residual value in the breeding shed.

“So much of this game is trial and error,” says Litt, who maintains a small band of broodmares in France for a client. “You don’t know how they’re going to fit here, so why not try it?”

WHICH BEGS THE QUESTION: are there certain European stallions and pedigrees that experts are especially drawn to? “You’ve got to keep an open mind,” reports Dugan. “You do the same thing as you do anywhere around the world – you look for an athlete and you look for a proven stallion. Or, on the other side, you look for something young, stallion wise, that was a very good racehorse.”

According to Casse, his US clients typically prefer the more fashionable sire lines.

“If I have to explain the stallion to them, that might turn them off,” he says. “Frankel’s been good to me,” he added, before singling out Galileo and Kodiac for special mention, along with the likes Belardo and Shalaa among the freshman ranks.

“No Nay Never has been fantastic for me,” he adds. “I sold a couple of them this year for over half a million which we bought for under a hundred thousand as yearlings. He’s been great to me from a pin-hooking perspective.”

Stallions gifted in the twin assets of speed and precocity tend to do well Stateside, says Ingordo, before ticking off a list that included the likes of Bated Breath, Sir Prancealot, and Dark Angel.

“Speed is a dangerous weapon,” Ingordo smiles. “You’ve got to have speed on the Dirt. You’ve got to have speed on the Turf.”

What helps is that the expansion of global racing has blurred the lines that formerly delineated stallion expectations, with sires ostensibly geared for the Dirt now producing quality Turf runners – here’s looking at you, American Pharoah – and vice versa.

“We sometimes put ourselves into boxes and say, ‘we can’t do this, and we can’t do that.’ Instead, I think we need to open ourselves up to what the horses can do and then allow them to do it,” says Farrell.

“Those international families will work in any country around the world – they’re just talented,” she adds, saying that buyers can currently find value in European bloodstock at a time of often “outrageous prices” in the US market.

Of course, the intercontinental ties binding together global racing are hardly a modern phenomenon, and those who take advantage of them today are quick to acknowledge the progenitors of our shrinking world.

“A few decades ago, people such as John Magnier and Vincent O’Brien and Tom Cooper, all these people were buying horses at Keeneland and sending them to Europe,” remembers Dugan, describing as an inspiration these towering figures and their myth-making exploits. “That’s something I haven’t forgotten,” Dugan adds, “and nobody should.”

Ingordo wound the clock back even further, to the sepia-tinged annals of racing’s past, when blue-blooded European family members were routinely whisked back across the pond.

“If you look at it historically, after World War II when racing was decimated over there, a lot of those pedigrees came to America,” he said. “History’s a great teacher.”