Saratoga Auction: The Very Elegant Crap Game

The son of a Hall of Fame horseman (Bill Winfrey, trainer of Native Dancer), TIME Correspondent Carey Winfrey spent his first 15 Augusts in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Now 30, he returned last week for the annual thoroughbred yearling sales. His report:

IN the early evening's cool, the uninvited maneuvered for a position near the glass, while under bright lights inside, the horsy rich gossiped, complained about the location of their seats, shifted their jewels and studied their catalogues. From high on a rostrum center stage, a young man in a tuxedo surveyed the all-white crowd, then once again rapped his gavel and begged for silence. When it came at last, he reverentially intoned the pedigree of the skittish filly in the ring below, then turned the microphone over to the man beside him. "Well-1-1-1 . . ." began the second man in a rolling baritone, "who'll give 10,000 to starta? I got five, six, seven. All righty nowya, who'll give 10,000 fora, who'll bid 10,000 dolla billa, billa, billya, willya, willya . . ."

Thus last week--for the 51st time --began the Saratoga yearling sales, considered by knowledgeable horsemen to be the Tiffany's of thoroughbred horse auctions.* Four evenings later, a total of 224 yearling thoroughbreds ($6,841,100 worth) had passed under the auctioneer's hammer for an average price of $30,541, an alltime Saratoga high.

In the early 1950s the sales were held in the open air under a tent, the bidders sat on hard wooden chairs, and the average price for a yearling was closer to $5,000. The auctioneer's chant was only occasionally interrupted by Announcer Humphrey Finney. Eyeglasses perched precariously at the end of his nose, he chastised the audience in thick British accents: "Now, ladies and gentlemen, we're way too low on this filly. She's out of a stakes-winning mare by a half brother to the winner of the St. Leger." Then the auctioneer would continue, building purposefully to that inevitable climactic gavel rap: "Are you all through? At fifty-five hundred and . . . six, you want him? Fifty-five hundred and . . ." BAM, the gavel would come down, and the gentleman in the fifth row who had firmly decided he could spend no more than $3,500 for the filly would suddenly find himself signing a slip for $5,500.

Today the bidding jumps at the rate of $150 per second, often to six figures. Humphrey Finney has passed the company presidency on to his son John. The new $500,000 pavilion, used but one week a year, features more than a thousand cushioned chairs, an art exhibit, and closed-circuit television inside and out. Still, the sales at Saratoga --American racing's most traditional and posh resort--are essentially unchanged since that evening in 1918 when Samuel Riddle bid up to $5,000 for a handsome chestnut colt. They named him Man O' War, and Fasig-Tipton --the company that conducts the auction for 5% of the gross--has been packing them in ever since. The rising price scales remain unaffected by recession, famine, or even an epidemic of Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis. This year special spice was added to the proceedings by the memory of the 1969 Keeneland sale of Canonero II, who went for the bargain price of $1,200 and won the 1971 Kentucky Derby and Preakness. "There's only one thing we're selling," says Auctioneer Ralph Retler. "We're selling dreams."

At Saratoga those dreams come high, cash on the line and no money-back guarantees. For the prospective owners, the odds are worse than at the $2 window. Of the roughly 24,000 thoroughbreds foaled each year in the U.S., only about half will ever start in a race. Of those who start, only half will win and less than 3% will win a stakes race--where the big purses are.

For every Man O' War or Canonero II, there are hundreds of auctioned yearlings who race only into obscurity. Saratoga graduates--carefully selected for looks and pedigree--have compiled impressive track records. But for every Derby winner (the Saratoga sales have produced four), there are many high-priced yearlings--Bold Discovery ($200,000), Love of Learning ($225,000) --who went on to undistinguished racing careers. "We are selling athletes by the standards of a beauty contest," says John Finney. "It's roughly equivalent to a pro football team drafting 13-year-old players."

This year the glamour yearlings were those sired by Buckpasser, the 1966 horse of the year, who won 25 races and $1,462,014. The first big surprise of the auction came after only eleven horses had been sold, when a New Jersey computer magnate and racing novice paid $125,000 for a Native Dancer grandson. Having given his trainer authority to buy the horse, Joseph Taub was eating a leisurely dinner at the time the trainer spent his money. He returned from his meal to borrow a flashlight and inspect his new acquisition in a darkened stall. The highlight came Thursday, when a three-way bidding contest for a bay son of Buckpasser ended with Mrs. Marion duPont Scott the victor: price, $235,000. While the auctions offer a newcomer like Taub a way to break into racing, most of the Saratoga yearlings are sold to barely more than a hundred regular customers --owners with established stables and breeders looking to diversify their bloodstock.

For all the egalitarianism of betting windows on track or off, the owning of first-class thoroughbreds remains the province of the rich. John Finney says that he would advise a newcomer with only half a million dollars to spend to avoid the Saratoga sales and get his feet wet at cheaper auctions later in the year. And he confides: "What we're dealing in is a very elegant crap-shooting game. What passes for wisdom in it depends on what you can shoot for and still be prepared to lose."

*Though less of a social watering spot, the summer sales at Keeneland boast no less inflated prices. It was there in 1968 that a Norfolk, Va., grocery-chain owner outbid the late Charles Engelhard to set a still unbroken record: $405,000 for a filly, Reine Enchanteur.

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