Bluegrass Auctions for Bluebloods

When the rich try to hit it big--or in their case, bigger--they do not go to their neighborhood parish house to play bingo or purchase lottery tickets in a cigar store. Instead, they travel to Kentucky in the summertime and, midst all the splendor of the bluegrass, they buy thoroughbred race horses.

On the surface, such a venture seems nothing short of fiscal madness. For every dream horse like Seattle Slew (auction price: $17,500; payoff on the Triple Crown races alone: $462,380), there are thousands of also-rans and tens of thousands of never-rans. As a rule, only 5% of the more than 30,000 thoroughbreds foaled each year will ever earn their keep on a race track. Fully 65%, in fact, are high-priced, slow-footed dreams deferred that will retire without a single trip to the post. But if the pie is quite high in the sky, the tax shelters are very down to earth, so the wealthy gather every July in Keeneland and Lexington for the Keeneland and Fasig-Tipton Select Summer Yearling Sales. Dripping jewels and dropping the names of noble bloodlines--both human and equine--they have spent nearly $35 million this year on 623 unnamed, untried colts and fillies.

There were old railroad money and new fast-food money, Saudi sheiks and Japanese transistor magnates, Texas oilmen and British noblemen, not to mention the usual clutch of Whitneys and Vanderbilts. Around the barns of the great breeding farms--Spendthrift, Claiborne and the like--and under the canopies covering the caviar at auction-weekend parties, the talk was peppered with the names of sires: What A Pleasure, Round Table, Sir Ivor, Northern Dancer. A casual comment about one filly brought the quick question: "How was she bred, ma'am?" The equally quick answer: "By Secretariat out of Crimson Saint by Crimson Satan, seven wins in eleven starts for over $90,000." That yearling was gaveled off at Keeneland a few days later for $275,000; another, by Bold Bidder, went for $400,000, just $5,000 shy of the record for a filly.

Preston Madden of Hamburg Place ushered prospective buyers past ferns and bunting into an air-conditioned, mirrored tack room. As butlers proffered champagne from silver trays, Madden screened footage of his past turf champions. Tom Gentry, the showman of the bluegrass, hawked his yearlings like a carnival huckster, giving away Tom Gentry T shirts, Tom Gentry hats and Tom Gentry Slush, a rum and lime concoction. Seth Hancock, breeder for Claiborne Farm, conducted business more sedately. His yearlings were paraded six at a time before sharp-eyed trainers searching for tiny flaws: a foot that was slightly crooked, a back with too much sway, undersized hindquarters, oversized hocks. No frills, just fine horseflesh.

Mesmeric Chant. Finally came the auctions, first Fasig-Tipton, then Keeneland--the K Mart and Cartier, respectively, of Kentucky horse breeding. Fasig-Tipton drew less impressive lineage to its open-air pavilion in Lexington, but the payoff in recent years for bargain-basement colts has been tremendous; Seattle Slew was a Fasig-Tipton colt, as were Bold Forbes, the 1976 Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes winner, and Elocutionist, which won the Preakness the same year. The total auction price for those three was only $47,000; their track earnings so far are $1,601,905. Sales were up more than 50% this year, as 299 yearlings drew more than $7 million in purchase prices, an average of more than $23,000 each.

Two days later, Keeneland held its auction in a vaulted, air-conditioned pavilion. Green plush chairs flanked the velvet brown of the auction ring. The horses--resplendently combed and curried, some with ebony-polished hoofs, others with intricately braided manes--were led into the ring. Auctioneer Tom Caldwell began his mesmeric chant as buyers scanned programs printed in French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic and English. Caldwell opened the bidding on a Bold Bidder colt at $50,000, and the price seesawed upward. Spotters in impeccable tuxedos kept a keen eye out for the finger tapped on the nose that could signify a $10,000 raise or the slight nod of the head that could mean a $50,000 jump. The top price of $725,000 went for a Secretariat colt--a lot of money for a horse that had never had a saddle on its back, but a bargain of sorts compared with the $1.5 million paid for another Secretariat offspring in 1976.

The biggest buyers were the British

Bloodstock Agencies. Said one Kentucky breeder: "They choose the best horses and are willing to pay any price. They just don't relent." The knighted ex-jockey Sir Gordon Richards, noting that the agencies' representatives from Ireland and London brought $6 million and left most of it behind, offered an explanation: "The Americans bought the world's best bloodstock after World War II. We are here to buy some of it back."

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