My new Kentucky home - Michael Hernon - Gainesway Farm
/By Jeff Lowe
My NEW Kentucky home
As much as horse racing and breeding are steeped in parts of English and Irish culture, the avenue to America has been wide open for many years in providing numerous young horsemen with a chance to branch out in establishing themselves in the Thoroughbred industry. A fascinating aspect among the driven 20-somethings who come across the pond each year to work for farms and agencies, Kentucky is the likelihood that a certain number of them will find a new home there—both personally and professionally.
Michael Hernon
MICHAEL HERNON - Gainesway Farm
Expats dot the landscape of the Thoroughbred world in America, including a broad swath in the bluegrass. Take, for instance, Geoffrey Russell—Keeneland's long-time director of sales—and Michael Hernon, who has the same title at Gainesway, which is one of the leading stud farms and perennial leading consignors in the U.S. Russell and Hernon both arrived in Kentucky from Ireland in the same time period in the early 1980s and were roommates for a while in a Lexington townhouse.
Hernon was just getting started working for a pedigree service, and Russell was beginning a stint at Fasig-Tipton. Within a little more than a decade, both Dublin natives had ascended many heights with Hernon taking his current job at Gainesway in November 1995 and Russell joining Keeneland as Assistant Director of Sales in 1996. Hernon has been a mainstay under the Beck family's ownership of Gainesway and played an integral part in both the sales division and the acquisition of stallions, including leading sire Tapit and the repatriation of Empire Maker from Japan.
Hernon also has dabbled in breeding and pinhooking for his own account and has scored some big victories on that front recently as the co-breeder of champion Monomoy Girl and Gr1 winner Zazu.
Hernon can instantly recite the hip numbers of certain highlight horses with which he has been involved, not to mention prices and pedigree nuggets. He is a fervent admirer of Tapit, dating back to when he watched a replay one Saturday morning in the fall of 2003 of the horse's juvenile stakes win in the Laurel Futurity, which led to Gainesway pursuing Tapit's services as a stallion.
Where pride really begins to swell in Hernon's voice is in discussing a personal milestone: becoming a U.S. citizen in August 2019.
"I had been a permanent resident with a green card for many years, and I am very happy to say that I am now a U.S. citizen," he said. "Someone asked me last year if I was going home for Christmas and I remember replying, 'I am home.'
"America is what you make of it. If you work hard, you will get an opportunity to make your own buck. I have had so many great opportunities here from when I first came over and was learning from the ground up. I started out doing pedigree reading, writing, composition, and one key thing we did on Saturday mornings was go around and look at stallions. I got to see the stallions I was writing about and get that perspective. A lot of them did not have perfect conformation. But if you look at a horse long enough, they will more than likely tell you who they are. You can learn so much [by] looking at them in the flesh, seeing how everything fits together, and that is something that was formative for me from when I first came over."
CARL MCENTEE - Ballysax Bloodstock
Carl McEntee
Carl McEntee, president of the Kentucky Farm Managers Club and head of the Ballysax Bloodstock consignment, is a sixth-generation Irish horseman and came to America for good when he was 23 years old in a bit of an unusual circumstance. A graduate of the British National Stud, McEntee worked for Darley in Europe for three years before injuring his arm and needing to take off a few weeks of work. During the downtime, he decided to come and visit his brother, Mark, who was already working in the racing industry in Kentucky.
McEntee heard about a job opening at Idle Hour Farm in Lexington and figured he should apply and see if he got an interview, thinking it would be a good experience for him.
"I really didn't expect to get the job, but I did, and that kind of put me on an accelerated career path here in America—compared to what I would have been in Europe because it takes a little more time there, and I just settled right in," said McEntee, who met his wife, Rachel, a Kentucky native, the following year. The couple met at a barbecue hosted by Ben Colebrook, who is now a Kentucky-based trainer. The McEntees have three children.
"Things have continuously reached a crescendo," McEntee said. "I had the chance to set up Ghost Ridge Farm in Pennsylvania, and I think we helped move the breeding industry along there bringing in stallions like Jump Start, E Dubai, Honour and Glory and Smarty Jones from Kentucky. Jump Start was the first stallion I bought, and that was kind of my entry into sales. I had never done sales before, but I figured I could sell the shares of the stallion myself, and that's what I did. I think it turned out that I am probably better at sales than any other aspect of the industry, and so that was a big discovery.”
A stint at Northview Stallion Station in the Mid-Atlantic followed; and while attending the Keeneland November breeding stock sale, Carl and Rachel McEntee discussed their desire to return to Kentucky.
"We had just had our third child and she was dropping me off at the sale and she said, 'If there is an opportunity for us to move back to Kentucky, I would really like that since my mom lives here and we could have some help with the children," McEntee recalled. "I walked halfway around the pavilion and bumped into Robert Hammond and his first question was, 'Do you think you would be interested in being director of sales and bloodstock for Darby Dan Farm?’ That's how I ended up back in Kentucky.
"I think that's the great thing about working in America. You are presented with so many opportunities, and from all that I've developed a well-rounded perspective to go along with what I grew up with. I've done just about everything at some point: hotwalker, exercise rider, assistant trainer, farm manager, sales, yearlings, broodmares. I've been able to have my hand in just about everything and see horses from different points of view."
In early 2018, McEntee launched Ballysax, focusing on sales consignments.