Arnold Kirkpatrick Column - February 2012

​Of all the stories that Arnold Kirkpatrick loved to tell – from a repertoire that stretched from his days as a college student at Tulane, to his years as managing editor of Thoroughbred Record, and to his days helping Mr. Leslie Combs run mighty Spendthrift Farm – the story that he told most often, with the heartiest of laughs and with that enormous twinkle in his eye, was of the day he finally agreed to marry me.
Julia Kirkpatrick (February 1st 2012 - Issue 23)

Arnold Kirkpatrick Column - The story of Black Bess

The story of Black Bess
Not to toot my own horn, but, in 1973 when I was editor of The Thoroughbred Record, I was invited to Panama for the Clasico Internacional del Caribe, because the organizers wanted a “distinguished journalist” to cover the event for an international publication.
 
In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t think I’ve ever been referred to in those glowing terms before or since, and I should also probably reveal that my journalistic presence in that particular period of life was more akin to having Hunter S. Thompson at the festival surrounding the Clasico than William Faulkner. In short, over the four-day celebration which surrounded the race, I made the ugly American look like Raquel Welch – up to and including mistaking the President of Panama for the trainer of Montecarlo, the horse who won the race.  
Still, in all my days as a journalist, distinguished or otherwise, I don’t believe I’ve ever received such a positive reaction to any article I’ve written as I got for the one about Sgt. Reckless in the last issue of North American Trainer.
So in an effort to duplicate the good feeling engendered by the Sgt. Reckless piece, this column is also going to be about another mare who became famous for her exploits on the battlefield but is now more famous for other reasons.
Black Bess was the name of a fine mare who was ridden by John Hunt Morgan, the Civil War General, leader of Morgan’s Raiders, who gained fame on a thousand-mile foray in 1863 which took them from Tennessee through Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio – farther behind enemy lines than any other uniformed Confederate company went – where they captured and paroled an estimated several thousand Union troops, before they were captured themselves, trying to cross the Ohio River into West Virginia.
The Union troops had no intention of paroling Morgan or his troops, but he and six of his officers escaped from the Ohio Penitentiary and began raiding again in the area until September 4, 1864, when he was captured and killed near Greeneville, Tennessee.  
Now, as Paul Harvey used to say, here’s the rest of the story...
Black Bess is already memorialized in the form of a bronze statue, while the Sgt. Reckless Fund is still trying to raise money to place a bronze statue of the little mare at the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C. [Sgt. Reckless Memorial Fund, P. O. Box 1125, Moorpark, CA 93020].
In 1911, with the assistance of a number of local Thoroughbred breeders, many of whose antecedents had been forced to ransom some of the finest bloodstock in the state from Morgan’s Raiders, the United Daughters of the Confederacy commissioned a sculptor named Pompeo Coppini to create an heroic statue of Morgan astride Black Bess to stand, as it still does today, on the front lawn of what was then the Fayette County Courthouse.  It was the only one of 60 memorials created during those days where the honored hero was portrayed astride his horse.
There was one slight problem, though.   Signor Coppini was of the belief that “No hero should bestride a mare!” and, when the statue was unveiled, it was revealed that Black Bess had been endowed with equipment which, even today, would be the envy of any stallion standing in Kentucky.
So now a tradition has grown up around Black Bess at the University of Kentucky and most of their opponents in athletic endeavors wherein fraternity pledges on both sides of the athletic fields are sent prior to games to paint poor Bess’ balls, prompting an anonymous author, generally believed to have been historian William Townsend, to write The Ballad of Black Bess, which concludes:
To truth is all our homage due
But scholars must confess,
That art o’er fact hath won the day
With the balls of good Black Bess.
What saddens every Bluegrass heart
Is a continuing tradition
For students in their annual pranks
To alter Bess’s condition.
Now every year the faithful mare
Must suffer violation.
Her balls are painted every hue
Known to imagination.

Arnold Kirkpatrick (October 2011 - Issue Number: Issue 22)

Arnold Kirkpatrick Column - A True American Hero

Unlike most people of my vintage, I consider memory loss to be one of the benefits of the aging process. Unfortunately, though, my memory just isn’t going fast enough for someone who loves the Thoroughbred game and cares about the future of racing the way I do. For instance, the recent announcements that The Jockey Club has hired the international consulting firm McKinsey & Company – undoubtedly at enormous expense – to generate “a comprehensive study of the current state of Thoroughbred racing and the potential for growth of breeding and racing in North America” over the next decade is a laudatory endeavor at the very least. The problem is that damned memory thing.

By Arnold Kirkpatrick

First Published (25 July 2011 - Issue Number: Issue 20)

The Arnold Kirkpatrick Column - History Lesson

UNLIKE most people of my vintage, I consider memory loss to be one of the benefits of the aging process.  Unfortunately, though, my memory just isn’t going fast enough for someone who loves the Thoroughbred game and cares about the future of racing the way I do.
By Arnold Kirkpatrick

First Published (20 April 2011 - Issue Number: Issue 20)

Arnold Kirkpatrick Column - Variations on a theme

It’s a theme older than Aesop, who used it as the basis of his fable of The Four Oxen and the Tiger. It has been repeated frequently throughout the ages – as a foundation of the American Revolution, from George Washington to Patrick Henry, who cited it as the fundamental truth in last public speech, a fierce denunciation of the Kentucky Resolution – to today when, in a charming bit of irony, it appears on the state seal of Kentucky: “United we stand, Divided we fall”

By Arnold Kirkpatrick

First Published  (02 February 2011 - Issue Number: Issue 19)

Arnold Kirkpatrick Column - Pain and Suffrage

Ok, even in view of the fact that I had very little to do with the thing as a whole, I have to say the last issue of North American Trainer may have the best ever. Not only did it have a wonderful picture of Linda Rice – who is not only beautiful but a superb trainer - on the cover, but it also had the first of what promises to be a series of excellent articles from my friend Alan Balch, who has taken over as Executive Director of the California Thoroughbred Trainers.

By Arnold Kirkpatrick

First Published (20 October 2010 - Issue Number: 18)

Arnold Kirkpatrick Column - Accentuate the Positive

I woke up today with the lyrics from an old Johnny Mercer song running through my head: You've got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive, E-liminate the negative, Latch on to the affirmative, Don't mess with Mr. In-Between.Written in 1944, that song should be a pretty good anthem for today’s Thoroughbred industry.
By Arnold Kirkpatrick


First Published (21 July 2010 - Issue Number: 17)

Arnold Kirkpatrick Column - Heading in the right direction

It was a dreary ol’ winter in the country, with snow piled derrière-deep on a giraffe throughout most of the country, while the rest of the Northern Hemisphere was suffering from floods, mudslides, etc., as if the snow weren’t bad enough.
Arnold Kirkpatrick (14 April 2010 - Issue Number: 16)

Arnold Kirkpatrick Column - If I Were Czar – Part 2

Once upon a time, a tiny chicken named Chicken Little was walking in the woods when – KERPLUNK- an acorn fell on her head. Oh my goodness!’ said Chicken Little. "The sky is falling! I must go and tell the king".
Arnold Kirkpatrick (05 February 2010 - Issue Number: 15)

Arnold Kirkpatrick Column - If I Were Czar – Part 1

Last time I looked, the good ol’ U. S. of A. was not only a democracy but was trying to export democracy to a number of places, several of which didn’t seem overly enthused about having it.
Arnold Kirkpatrick (14 October 2009 - Issue Number: 14)

Arnold Kirkpatrick Column - Strike Two

Bill Young Jr. is a nice man - quiet, smart, private to the point of being very shy, honest and practical. On June 9, he shocked the Thoroughbred world with the announcement that he was dispersing almost all of the horses who are owned by Overbrook Farm, which had become one of the major success stories in the U.S. Thoroughbred business over the past quarter century.
By Arnold Kirkpatrick (16 July 2009 - Issue Number: 13)

Arnold Kirkpatrick Column - The AAEP

As long as I've been involved in the Thoroughbred business, which is getting to be a helluva long time now, I have always had an admiration and affinity for veterinarians and the American Association of Equine Practitioners.
Arnold Kirkpatrick (08 April 2009 - Issue Number: 12)

Arnold Kirkpatrick Column - A Point In Time

Happy New Year.  2008 is gone and thank God for that!Last fall, we were ravaged by a perfect storm of a justifiable collapse of confidence in the US economy, accompanied by atrocious results at our major sales, compounded by the anticipation of sales in 2009, where breeders will be selling yearlings and weanlings conceived and born at 2007 and 2008 prices.
Arnold Kirkpatrick (20 January 2009 - Issue Number: 11)

Arnold Kirkpatrick Column - 8 Deadly Sins

When Pope Gregory I consolidated the eight “evil thoughts” of the 4th Century Christian monk Evagrius Ponticus into the Seven Deadly Sins, he perpetuated what I believe may be one of the classic errors of all times by excluding “Arrogance” from the list.
In my opinion, Arrogance should not only be on the list, it should be #1.
While the thoroughbred industry and the press have examined about every possible excuse and reason for Big Brown’s collapse in the Belmont Stakes, ad infinitum et ad nauseum, I haven’t seen arrogance come up as one of the stated reasons for his disastrous performance in the Belmont, but I think it’s probably at the root of most of the excuses which have been proffered for the loss, thus far.
Arrogance: Trainer Rick Dutrow spent the three weeks between the Preakness and Belmont spouting the belief that his horse could not be beaten.
I have not trained a winner of the Kentucky Derby or of the Preakness, but I have been around for long enough to know that there are two types of horses; those that have been beaten and those who are going to get beaten. A couple of years ago the Blood-Horse assembled a panel of experts to name the 10 best thoroughbreds of the last century. There was some controversy over the top horse, but, to put it simply, the list follows (with undefeated status after each name):
1.    Man o’ War—beaten
2.    Secretariat—beaten
3.    Citation—beaten
4.    Kelso—beaten
5.    Count Fleet—beaten
6.    Dr. Fager—beaten
7.    Native Dancer—beaten
8.    Forego—beaten
9.    Seattle Slew—beaten
10.   Spectacular Bid—beaten
So, in the opinion of his connections, Big Brown is a better horse than anyone on that list.
Arrogance: By the time the smoke had cleared and everybody was looking for an excuse, Dutrow began to blame Kent Desormeux for the loss.
There possibly is some validity to Dutrow’s criticism—the horse was very rank going into the first turn and down the backstretch.
Finally, Dutrow apparently was sufficiently overconfident that he took it upon himself to discontinue the monthly dose of Winstrol he was having administered to Big Brown. To me that’s wrong on two fronts: (1) If I had a horse who was competing in the Triple Crown and running like Big Brown, I wouldn’t even change my underwear, much less his training regimen, and (2), if I did, I’d have a damned good reason. When asked by a member of the press why he gave Big Brown Winstrol on the 15th of every month, the trainer, whose RCI fine and suspension sheet looks like his pedigree should read “by Machine Gun Kelly-Ma Barker, by Jessie James” answered, in effect, I don’t really know why; I don’t really know what Winstrol does, I just give it to every horse in the barn every month because I like to.
To me, that’s not a proper answer, just as there’s no proper answer as to why so many racing cards are run today with 100% of the starters on bute and 85-90% on Lasix (oops, excuse me, Salix).
So here’s the bottom line. We can all point at Big Brown and his connections all we want, but we need to do something about it, all of us. 
I have a proposal for a modest start. Why couldn’t somebody in the industry, host a get-together for rookie owners and trainers coming into the Triple Crown, the Breeders’ Cup and other important events where they could meet some of their predecessors who are particularly good with the media so the veterans could remind them that they’re not just representing the horse whom we’re trying to make into a hero, they’re representing the whole racing industry.
Ideally, that would include an articulate vet who could coach the trainer to have an intelligent answer when some member of the media asks a perfectly logical question such as why is this horse on steroids, when all the other sports are outlawing them? And, by a plausible reason, I do NOT mean, “Everybody else does it” or “I like to do it.”
 Basically, the whole course could be summed up very briefly: “Millions of people will be watching you, perhaps including some potential clients, so don’t be an arrogant ass; it doesn’t help you and it won’t help racing."

Arnold Kirkpatrick
 (11 December 2008 - Issue Number: 9)

Arnold Kirkpatrick Column - Drugs in racing - should there be federal regulation?

THE Members of Congress were clearly bored and frustrated. One commented,

"The six members of this panel can't even agree on what to do; why should you expect us to believe that racing can handle this problem on its own?"

Another yawned.

A third snapped, "For more than 28 years, you have been telling us that you'd fix this problem and it hasn't happened; why should we think you can do it, now?"

Finally, another demanded, "We don't know the ins and outs of your industry, how do you to expect us to make a decision if everyone comes in here and says something different?"

Unless you've been in Siberia for the past few months, you've ascertained by now that I'm talking about the recent hearings in the U.S. Congress about drugs in racing and whether or not the Interstate Horseracing Act should be amended to provide that the federal government take over control of the chaos that comprises the current drug and medication policies of horse racing.

The consensus among the industry representatives who testified at those hearings was, in short, that there is no consensus. And the answer to the obvious question of Who's in charge here?" was "no one" - although NTRA President Alex Waldrop did attempt a brave imitation of his namesake Alexander Haig's notorious pronouncement, "I'm in charge here," but was forced to admit later that the NTRA is only in charge insofar as "building a consensus" is concerned, just like The Jockey Club and other organizations in the business which the normal person would assume would "be in charge.

My friend Arthur Hancock, one of the Thoroughbred fraternity's smartest, most articulate spokesmen, attributed our problems to a lack of leadership. "We are a rudderless ship," he said, "and the way we are going, we will end up on the rocks... We are too fragmented and too diverse. We are composed of too many 'fiefdoms, and each one is led by a Nero-like chieftain, who had rather do things his way than help the cause as a whole.

I have to take a little credit for the change of direction which concludes that assessment, because, when Arthur and I first began debating all this, it was his position that the industry's problems were the result of a lack of leadership, whereas I am unalterably convinced that our problem is not a lack of leadership but too much leadership.

As of this writing, we have 183 separate organizations in Thoroughbred racing alone. That's 183 separate egos. 183 separate agendas. 183 separate jealousies. 183 separate suspicions. 183 separate fears. 183 separate paranoias.

To quote an obscure gospel song I heard years ago, "Nobody wants to play rhythm guitar for Jesus; everybody wants to be the leader of the band."

It's probably inherent in the nature of our game, really, that nobody seems to want to cooperate with each other, but it's exceedingly distressing to me that we seem to have reached the point where many of the organizations and most of the individuals to whom we look for leadership would rather see the entire business go down in flames than cooperate with one of their competitors.

With 183 rudders all pointing in different directions, we have two possible outcomes - at best, we'll be dead in the water; at worst, we'll be breaking apart on the rocks.

All that having been said, agreement in racing is not necessarily an impossible dream.

There was one time when the whole industry came together, and, coincidentally, it resulted in the very same Interstate Horseracing Act which is back on the front burner today.

Believe me, it wasn't easy. It took more than 2½ years of hard work, tough negotiations and cooperation between people who were more inclined to detest each other than to cooperate. It was an alliance, not just of the organizations in the Thoroughbred industry, but of the entire pari-mutuel industry, including Standardbreds, Quarter Horses, Greyhounds, OTB interests, etc.

I think it's another failing of people in the Thoroughbred industry that we tend to underestimate the intelligence and level of influence of those who are not involved in our discipline. One of the astounding corollaries of the effort to pass the Interstate Horseracing Act was that we of the Thoroughbred industry discovered that there are a whole lot of smart, powerful and politically-astute people in the world who are not involved in the Thoroughbred business, and, without them, we never could have gotten the Interstate Horseracing Act passed.

So, when the industry went before Congress, we spoke with one voice and got the deed done. In short, it has happened once, and it can happen again.

What will it take? Sure, we could form another coalition, but that would require more than 100 fiefdoms to surrender a measure of their autonomy, and, trust me, they are not going to do that to an entity which is perceived to be advancing the agenda of any particular individual or group, an entity which is perceived to have a bone in any of these squabbles.

It would take years, if not decades, to build the trust and cooperation necessary to diffuse the detritus of years of turf battles between our fiefdoms.

If we are to have any chance at all to generate a consensus that would enable us to prevent federal intervention on the issue of medication and drugs in the horse business, I would suggest that the only ones to do it would be the ones who accomplished it 38 years ago--the American Horse Council.

With all due respect to the other "consensus builders," the AHC is the only organization which has an established reputation of fairness and objectivity toward all participants in the horse business, whatever their interest is; it is the only organization which has successfully convinced the other disciplines in the industry to help racing achieve something positive for it before; it is the only organization with a record of success in an endeavor of this type.

In short, it's time to face up to the fact that we need a trusted, impartial leader to guide us through these troubled waters. We had better pick one, and fast.

Arnold Kirkpatrick
 (14 October 2008 - Issue Number: 10)

Arnold Kirkpatrick Column - The Names (And Times) They Are A-Changin'

It was just a small item buried in the middle of the Thoroughbred Times TODAY, last November 19, but it aroused in me a deep sense of foreboding as an omen of a dark future for racing:
  “Mountaineer Race Track, the Chester, West Virginia, track officially has changed its name from Mountaineer Race Track and Gaming Resort to Mountaineer Casino Resort and Racetrack."

“Spokeswoman Tamara Petit told the Associated Press that the change reflects the facility’s newfound diversity and will be used as part of a new marketing campaign.  Mountaineer. . .opened 37 poker tables on October 19 and plans to add more tables plus another 50 games, such as blackjack and roulette, by January 1.” 

 That little announcement was followed by another in the December 29 Blood-Horse:
  “Philadelphia Park Casino & Racetrack received approval for its master plan from the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board Dec. 18 and how has a permanent license to operate slot machines.”
 So now, in less than a month, two racetracks have dropped the silly pretense that horses and horse racing are their raison d’etre and have openly acknowledged that the casino is now the primary emphasis of their operation.
 While both announcements were undoubtedly greeted with exuberance from short-sighted horsemen who view slots as “the savior of our sport” because they do result in increased purses, they just sent me back to an article in U.S. News & World Report which I have been saving since March of 1994.  The theme of the issue was “How Casinos Empty Your Wallet,” but I was particularly fascinated by one of the articles, “Tricks Of The Trade – The many modern ways casinos try to part bettors from their cash.”  That article is important enough to warrant a complete column in and of itself—and it will be the subject of my next one—but the essence of this column is that, while slots, etc., may provide a temporary fix to racing’s major problem, they are not in any way a solution for racing and we who are concerned with the long-term future of our  industry had better be looking at all these things as something to help us through a rough spot while we devise a more permanent solution to our problems, rather than as a solution in and of themselves.
While the majority of today’s racetrack operators apparently regard the average fan as a necessary evil to be barely tolerated, not welcomed, casino operators spend an inordinate amount of time and money trying to develop new fans, to get the existing ones to come back more often, to bet more and to stay longer when they do.
“Casinos have become pop-psych laboratories,” the article notes and continues, “. . . sensitivity to customer comfort abounds.
“Over a year, a special promotion or interior-design element that somehow keeps gamblers at play for just five more minutes a night can add millions to a casino’s gross.”
The point here is that casino operators are businessmen and not sports fans.  No matter how much we welcome them—and their money—if they haven’t done so already, it’s not going to take them long to figure out, as have Mountaineer and Philadelphia Park, that racing operations generate a very low percentage of their income and a very high percentage of their expenses.
Then, I suspect that we’re going to see a lot more name changes. . . and I’m afraid a lot of them will not just reverse the order of the priorities in their names; they may just drop the racing part entirely.

Arnold Kirkpatrick
 (14 February 2008 - Issue Number: 7 )

Arnold Kirkpatrick Column - Farewell Friends - John Henry and Tony Ryan

Among the myriad of adages that aficionados of the Thoroughbred game have devised over the years in an attempt to explain our complex and often perverse sport, one of the most enduring is: “It’s not the size of the horse that’s important; it’s the size of the heart in the horse.”

We lost two prime examples of that precept the first week of October, when John Henry was euthanized on October 8 due to the infirmities of age, and Tony Ryan died October 3 after a courageous battle with pancreatic cancer that he fought for more than 18 months.

They led remarkably similar lives, these two undersized champions, each of them utilizing an excess of intelligence, determination and sheer grit—the basic elements of what we call heart in a horse—to rise from very humble beginnings and become a legend in his own time.

 The story of John Henry is well known to most readers of Trainer. Small, underbred and badly conformed, he was a horse nobody wanted, having been sold for $1,100 as a weanling and, $2,200 as a yearling before being claimed for $25,000 as a three-year-old. 

From there on the rest was history. In a time when horses are racing less and less, he raced through the age of nine, was Horse of the Year twice and retired as the richest Thoroughbred in history with earnings of just under $6.6-million. In 1985, he was retired to the Hall of Champions at the newly-formed Kentucky Horse Park, where he reigned for 22 years as “the people’s horse,” the major attraction among countless champions of all breeds who have been shown at the park over the years.

More than 500 people attended his memorial service on October 19, the truly extraordinary thing being that the majority of them had never seen him race—they had come to adore him as the shaggy, irascible old war horse he was, not the sleek, beautiful Thoroughbred so often on display at the Horse Park. Also incredible to me were the distances people traveled to honor him. The last time I saw him was in April this year when I took a couple from France to meet him while they were in Kentucky on their honeymoon, and when word got out that he was to be euthanized, people flew to Kentucky from as far away as California to pay their final respects. Once again, they were ordinary people, not those who had been associated with him in his illustrious racing career.

I am told a similar crowd was on hand October 14 when the family of Tony Ryan held a memorial service in Ireland to honor the Irish legend who had died within the previous two weeks at 71.

I had first encountered Tony one night early in the fall of 2001 when I answered the phone and a deep mellifluous voice said, “Mr. Kirkpatrick, this is Tony Ryan and I have been told by several people that you’re the only honest real estate agent in the state of Kentucky.”    

“Well, I’m not so sure about that,” I replied with uncharacteristic modesty, “but I do take a great deal of pride in the number of my clients who wind up as long, fast friends, which may say a little something about my character.”

And, although he died too young and too soon in our relationship, I take great pride in the belief that I was a good friend of a great man.

When I looked him up on the day after our initial conversation, I found that Tony Ryan was a genuine Irish legend. Forced to drop out of school at 18 when his father, a railroad engineer, had died from a heart attack, he had gone to work for Aer Lingus, the Irish national airline, for 20 years before founding a highly-successful aircraft leasing company, Guinness Peat Aviation in 1975. In 1985, he formed Ryanair, which is now one of the most successful airlines in the world. 

In the process, he educated himself beautifully and became a self-made billionaire who was ranked earlier this year by the Sunday Times as one of Ireland’s ten richest men. Unlike many very rich, self-made men, though, he had many interests outside his primary business, including the arts, viticulture, philanthropy, Thoroughbred racing and breeding, and, in particular, restoration of historic properties, which is why he purchased the historic but somewhat run down Castleton Farm in October of 2001 and began the extensive renovation that it has turned it into the showplace it is today, including a replica of 11thCentury Cashel Tower in Tipperary, which he took great delight in my describing as his having produced the largest erection in the history of Central Kentucky.

I think we dodged a bullet, Tony and I, when he got Castleton Lyons under contract and in several conversations he began hinting broadly that he would like for me to become a part of running the operation. I sensed then that it wouldn’t work and declined, saying, “Tony, I’d much rather be your friend than to work for you.” 

As I learned later from numerous sources, he was very difficult to work for—a perfectionist with a fierce temper—but, in his defense, I think that he made no demands on his employees that he did not make on himself. But preternaturalambition and inspiration do not come often to mere mortals, and I, like many others, don’t believe I would have been able to keep up the pace that he set for himself and those around him.

Maybe Tony said it best of all in his choice of a quote from Bishop Richard Cumberland for his epitaph: 

“It is better to wear out than to rust away.”

Arnold Kirkpatrick
 (01 December 2007 - Issue Number: 6 )

Arnold Kirkpatrick Column - Sales Transparency - an invaluable development

As this issue of Trainer reaches its readers, the Thoroughbred industry will be approaching its single most important day of the year—not January 1, not Derby Day, not Breeders’ Cup Day—I’m talking about the beginning of the major yearling sales season.

Avoiding controversy is neither my style nor my publisher’s goal in these columns, but I suspect that one of the safest statements I’ve ever made in print is that Jess Jackson is not going to be the most popular man around the sales venues this year. To me, though, he is a hero. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s a brilliant billionaire attorney/ businessman/vintner and I’m just a schlep who loves the Thoroughbred business and writes an occasional column about it, but in three short years, Mr. Jackson has managed to accomplish something I’ve been trying to do unsuccessfully for more than 35 years.

Largely as a result of Mr. Jackson’s efforts, this year for the first time, sales will be conducted under a different, more transparent, set of rules and conditions as in the past because Kentucky sales will be operating under a new law of agency (well, to be more precise, it is a similar law to that which has been on the books for years, but designed specifically for horse sales) even as the industry’s Sales Integrity Task Force continues to meet in an attempt to iron out rules and regulations which will be a significant boon to buyers, but are causing a great deal of consternation among consignors and bloodstock agents.

The root cause of all this is that Mr. Jackson came into the business as a novice three or four years ago and was immediately taken to the cleaners by several of the trusted advisers whom he had hired to guide and protect him from some of the less savory sales practices, public and private, which are all too prevalent in the business—notably, he discovered his agent/advisors were not only taking commissions from him as the buyer of the horses but, unbeknownst to the man they were “representing”, they were also taking commissions from the sellers.

            Before continuing, there are two very important points that need to be made, here. Known as undisclosed dual agency, the above-mentioned practice is, to the best of my knowledge, illegal under all laws of agency, whether you’re trading in horses, cars, boats, widgets or real estate, the point being if a person would logically expect his agent to be representing him, that agent should actually represent his client to the best of his abilities.   On the other hand, there is absolutely nothing illegal, immoral or fattening if all the principals and parties to a transaction are made aware that it’s being employed. In fact, dual agency is so prevalent in real estate transactions that most boards of realtors provide pre-printed forms to be filled out by parties to a dual-agency transaction acknowledging that they have been informed that one agent is representing both sides, that agent has explained the rules under which he is permitted to operate and that the arrangement is acceptable to them.

            Unlike so many new—and experienced—owners and/or buyers who had been victimized in the past, Mr. Jackson refused to take the calumny of his advisors/agents lying down. He hired the most aggressive lawyer he could find, who began suing everyone in sight—some guilty, some unfortunately not(many have been dropped from the suits)—and used his experiences as leverage to get a law passed in the Kentucky Legislature that should increase the transparency of the sales process, which, in turn, will, I believe, help the horse business in the long term.

            However, change doesn’t come easy in life and the horse business is particularly resistant to it. So here are a few of the most common objections to the work of the Sales Integrity Task Force, followed by the reasons that I think it can perform a great service for the horse business.

1.      The good shouldn’t be lumped with the bad. The vast majority of sales companies, consignors, bloodstock agents, etc. are honest, hard-working, competent individuals and agencies who will do a good job for their clientele and will protect them to the best of their abilities, but there always have been and always will be those agencies and/or individuals—top to bottom, large and small—which will bend someone over the barrel given the chance. They need to have something which will, at the very least, make them pause to consider the consequences before they screw somebody—and there should be actual and effective consequences if they’re caught doing so.

2.      The bloodstock industry has not been regulated, heretofore, and regulation would drive off big agents from the American market, particularly the big spenders. There should be some form of licensing or certification process for agents and advisors, and, just as out-of-state and foreign licenses are acceptable temporarily in most jurisdictions, so could bloodstock licenses. Owners are licensed; trainers are licensed; insurance agents, jockeys, grooms, pari-mutuel clerks and even the guys who sell beer are licensed. And, in order to get their license, with the possible exception of the last few, they had to take a test to demonstrate at least some passing knowledge of the rules in order to obtain the license. I’m not talking an MBA in the economics of the horse business or a PhD in conformation, here; anyone who’s been in the business for two weeks knows it doesn’t take a genius to pass the trainers’ exam and I can also tell you from personal experience if you can’t pass the real estate exam, you shouldn’t have a driver’s license (however, there is a substantial emphasis on ethics in the curriculum). Why the hell should agent/advisors be the only people in the business who aren’t educated, licensed or certified to represent people who literally spend hundreds of million dollars on horses.

3.      The physical reporting requirements of the repository are already getting to be a pain in the butt, why should we add another level of paperwork to report ownership of sales horses honestly? I’ve actually heard of yearlings (or interests in them) being sold at an auction before going into the ring and the new owner bidding the horse up in the ring because he knew a client would spend more than what he had paid. I wouldn’t like to be a client of that agent, and neither would you, so making practices such as that more difficult is, to my way of thinking, good for the industry.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve heard dozens of additional arguments why bloodstock agents should not be regulated, but thus far I’ve failed to hear any that impressed me much.

For the past decade and more, I’ve also heard increasingly-desperate cries from breeders, trainers and bloodstock agents, etc., that we need more horse owners. Those people as much as anyone should know how difficult it is to survive, much less be successful, in the horse business ad adding a layer of difficulty in the form of less than total honesty at the sales is no help in attracting or keeping buyers.  

In today’s climate of needing new blood for the Thoroughbred business, the hundreds of good, hard-working, honest bloodstock agents in the business would realize that, like it or not, they are being tarred by the same brush as the few who are skating along the edges and get with the program, rather than fighting it.

Arnold Kirkpatrick
 (01 October 2007 - Issue Number: 5 )

Arnold Kirkpatrick Column - A Lesson In Loyalty, Etc.

I’ve been to the Kentucky Derby  27 times—16 as a member of the press as part of a team of writers and photographers who covered it for the Thoroughbred Record, and the others in every capacity from a drunk in the infield to the ultra-exclusive box reserved for heads of state and some of the biggest bigwigs invited to the race.

  (Disclaimer: Lest you get the misconception that I’m trying to make you think that I’m somebody, although I was at the time Executive Vice-president of Spendthrift Farm and President of Latonia Race Course, I was there as the guest of a bigwig, not one, myself.)
 It will come as no surprise I have not seen many Derbies which didn’t provide a few good lessons for any horse trainer who aspires to have a starter in the race—and who doesn’t ?—but this year’s running contained an exceptional number of good lessons, not just for trainers, but for breeders, owners, riders, etc. 
 For starters, Street Sense was ridden by Calvin Borel, 40, who has been a journeyman on the Kentucky circuit for 25 years and has won 4,000 races, but is not one of the riders one would expect to be aboard a Derby favorite.  He had never won a Grade 1 race until last summer, and, Street Sense won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile so impressively, last year, trainer Carl Nafzger began receiving calls from agents representing the crème de la crème of the nation’s jockeys, all of them hoping to get the mount on his star charge, but he stuck with Borel. 
I’ve known Carl Nafzger for more than 20 years and that is just the kind of decision you would expect from him, a demonstration of the class and loyalty that have not only made him a Hall of Fame trainer, but one of the most respected people in the game.  No doubt, he swallowed his heart three or four times when Street Sense turned down the backstretch 19th of 20 runners, but Borel (who is called ‘Bo-rail’, by Kentucky fans for his closing rides along the inside) brought his horse flying along his usual route with such a move that he had the luxury of beginning to celebrate a little prematurely, 100 yards or so before the finish line. 
Never, in all my years of going to the Derby—or any other race, for that matter—have I seen the racetrack staff, the jockeys and the horsemen happier for a winning rider than they were for Borel.  Standing straight up in the irons, tears running down his cheeks, pointing to the sky in appreciation in thanks for a clear ride, Borel was assailed with hugs and high fives from the outriders, from the other riders, from assistant starters, from other track employees and from other horsemen. 
 Lesson Two—make a plan and stick with it.  The press will second guess you, drive you nuts.  It looked to me like they were sort of getting to Nafzger about the time of the draw for post position.  The second-guessing had been brutal—no winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile ever had won the Derby; the last time the champion two-year-old had won the Derby was 28 years ago.  The last time the Derby winner had only two prep races as a three-year-old was 23 years ago, and that’s not enough, they said.  Many of them thought Nafzger should have stabled at Keeneland, where he could train over the Polytrack, rather than at Churchill where the track can be tricky at best.  Well, Carl Nafzger stuck to his plan, and now he joins only nine other trainers who have won the Derby twice.
 The lesson from owner-breeder Jim Tafel is that one can still be successful at breeding a horse for the track as opposed to the sales arena, even in this day and age when the concept of “breeding to race” is as foreign as Queen Elizabeth II, who was the honored guest this year in the bigwig box.
 As my friend Jim Squires, breeder of Monarchos, wrote in an op-ed piece for the New York Times a couple of days before the Derby, citing Seattle Dancer (a $13.1-million sale yearling) and The Green Monkey (a $16-million sale 2-Y-O) as the ideals of most breeders, today, he wrote “. . .it is the industry preoccupation with such horses and the lure of such extravagant prices that has kept breeders from producing in substantial numbers horses physically capable of enduring the Triple Crown grind.  And today’s trainers are far more adept at conditioning horses for distances of a mile or less, at which most North American races today are run. . .
 “A handful of throwback breeders continue to produce horses genetically capable of contesting the Triple Crown. . .[Congratulations Mr. Tafel]
 “But everyone agrees that even the right horse in the hands of the right trainer that wins the tough Kentucky Derby has little chance of winning the next two against a changing array of fresh contenders.  What was always difficult is now proving impossible.”

Arnold Kirkpatrick 
(01 July 2007 - Issue Number: 4 )

Arnold Kirkpatrick Column - Artificial Panacea?

Pan•a•ce•a [pànnə sée ə] (plural pan•a•ce•as) noun.  supposed cure-all: a supposed cure for all diseases or problems. 

For as long as I can remember, people in racing have been looking for a panacea for any and all of the problems faced by our industry—a panacea, that is, short of facing up to reality and making the hard, intelligent decisions that would actually solve the problems, rather than mask them.

In the ‘70s, Butazolidin and Lasix (now cleverly disguised by transposing the L and S to produce the anagram Salix) was touted by the veterinary profession as a panacea to cure problems with short fields (and racing careers) by enabling horse to make more starts.  How well did it work?  Well, according to The Jockey Club’s 2006 Fact Book, in 1970 the average number of starts per runner was 10.22; while in 2005, with most racing cards featuring 100% of the runners on Butazolidin and 90-95% on Salix, it was 6.45, the lowest figure on record.  Some improvement!

In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, off-track betting and simulcasting were touted as panaceas to solve declining attendance and handle at the track.  Well, they have helped handle, but trends in national attendance for horse racing are such that they are no longer published, because they “. . .have become increasingly inconsistent with the expansion of simulcasting and off-track facilities, where attendance may be estimated, duplicated or sometimes not reported at all.”   Trust me, if attendance figures were positive, they would be published.

Now comes the artificial surface, which has been a resounding success at Keeneland and Hollywood in terms of reducing fatal or career-ending injuries and a more moderate success at tracks such as Turfway and Woodbine.  Further, it is scheduled to be installed in time for this year’s meets at Arlington Park and Del Mar.

For the record, these synthetic surfaces have indeed resulted in significantly fewer serious injuries and that’s a very, very good thing, but it could be premature to attribute all the improvement to the track.  The Keeneland fall meet, for instance, is a prime race meet with good stables and good horses, particularly in 2006 when a lot of horses were there to prep for the Breeders’ Cup in Louisville. 

A truer test might be Turfway Park which is now in its second winter with an artificial surface—and with horses of more average abilities and soundness than are to be found at some of the larger tracks. 

As first recognized by major bettors, and shortly thereafter by racing officials, the Turfway surface is somewhat slower than the older surfaces, but, when it gets a little wet or cold, it speeds up substantially—and, with the increased speed, the number of injuries rises.   That has been the experience at Turfway, this winter, where racing writer MaryJean Wall of the Lexington Herald-Leader has reported a substantial increase in injuries, also noting that the times for a mile in December of 2005 were all 1:40 or slower, while in December, 2006, they are as fast as 1:36 and change.

Now, I’m no logician, but, in the face of the Turfway experience, I cannot help but see an affirmation of the correlation between speed and injuries. 

There are always minor problems with anything new, whether it be cars or computers or race tracks, and maintenance crews are scrambling to address the problems and create solutions to them—essentially trying to devise a way to preserve the consistency that the new synthetic surfaces are designed to provide for racing and I’m certain that, in time, they will accomplish that.

In the meantime, however, it would be wise to remember that these surfaces are a tool—a very good tool—to reduce catastrophic injuries, but it is nothing more than a tool, not a panacea. 
 
It is no substitute for horsemanship, for good breeding or for conformation.    
 

Arnold Kirkpatrick 
(19 May 2007 - Issue Number: 3 )