Sales protocol after COVID-19

By Jeff Lowe

Adapting to the new world with COVID-19 has led to a rapid integration of online bidding for Thoroughbred auctions across North America, presenting sale companies and consignors with a new challenge to supply potential buyers with enough information and technology for them to feel comfortable making a winning bid from afar. 

Keeneland, Fasig-Tipton and Ocala Breeders' Sale Co. (OBS) all added online bidding platforms by the time the sales calendar relaunched this summer after more than two months of dormancy, with sales either canceled or postponed during the height of pandemic restrictions in April and May. Regional sales scheduled for later in the year in Ohio and Ontario also moved toward a more flexible format with the option of online bidding. 

OBS was the guinea pig on two fronts amid COVID-19's impact. The sale company pushed forward with the OBS March sale of two-year-olds in training on March 17 and 18, which was right in the middle of lockdown announcements and steep stock market declines. The sale company did not yet have online bidding capabilities, but that would change by the time the OBS spring sale of two-year-olds in training took place from June 9-12. 

"We had a couple of months between sales to get the technology up and running for online bidding and it sure seemed necessary," OBS Sales Director Tod Wojciechowski said. "In the March sale, we just needed to get through it and do what we could to move horses along during a very tumultuous time, and then regroup for the sales this summer. COVID-19 was certainly a catalyst to bringing online bidding to market quicker. We had talked about doing it previously but with the pandemic, we felt we needed to get it up and running as quickly as we could." 

OBS relied on Xcira, a Tampa-based provider of auction software and technologies, to introduce online bidding functions to the OBSSale.com website in time for the spring sale. As it turned out, that sale occurred just as many COVID-19-related restrictions were being lifted. 

"We had a boost in buyer attendance from the timing there, but then in July we were back with the sale coming up when there was a big spike around us in COVID cases, and online bidding helped fill that gap in attendance," Wojciechowski said. 

Of the 517 horses that changed hands in the July sale, 72 of them (14 percent) were sold through online bidding. 

Fasig-Tipton also made a quick move to online bidding for its revised auction calendar, beginning with the Midlantic two-year-olds in training sale in Timonium, Maryland, on June 29 and 30 (with Fasig-Tipton reporting 15 horses were sold online) and continuing with an even greater emphasis on a remote marketplace in the July horses of racing age sale. 

Fasig-Tipton’s coronavirus protocols and precautions in place.

This was the eighth edition of the July horses of racing age sale and the first time it was conducted without an accompanying yearling sale. According to Fasig-Tipton CEO Boyd Browning, more than 100 people registered to make online bids for the sale, and 45 of them followed through with submitting bids. Seven horses were sold to online bidders. 

"With everything else going on in the world, we were certainly glad we added that capability for buyers to participate," Browning said. "In addition to the horses who sold to online bidders, those buyers also were immediate underbidders and second underbidders in a number of cases. There was an activity at all levels and all price ranges too.

"A horses of racing age sale lends itself to online bidding; buyers can see past performances and past races and they have a lot to go on. We'll be moving into the yearling sales and that's a little different. We'll be providing walking videos for every horse that the consignors want to do it. We'll be strongly encouraging them to do it. We'll work with them to provide the services ourselves or provide a stipend if they want to use their own vendor." 

Keeneland took online sale capabilities one step further by adding a new Digital Sales Ring platform that debuted on June 23 with a horses of racing age sale that was conducted entirely online, with technology developed by Horseco. Only 12 of the 38 horses cataloged changed hands, with a filly named Trapezium selling from Juddmonte Farms' consignment to St. Elias Stable for $327,000 as the top price. 

Keeneland officials are planning to add new online and phone bidding technology to the traditional live sale formats for the Keeneland September yearling sale and November breeding stock sales this fall, especially in light of international travel restrictions. Still, Keeneland does hope to have some international buyers in attendance. …

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Against the odds - how two tracks kept racing and reaped handle rewards

By Jeff Lowe

Fonner Park and Will Rogers Downs were the surprise beneficiaries of national attention on the racing landscape in late March and throughout the month of April. They were the only racetrack signals available early in the week with a somewhat captive audience as so many sports-starved handicappers were stuck at home amid the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Off-track handle exploded to record totals at both racetracks, but the bottom line effects were different with the backdrop of empty grandstands. 

Fonner Park in Grand Isle, Neb., has quietly built up an impressive on-track business model for its annual race meets, spanning from late February to Kentucky Derby weekend in early May. The meet has now been approved for 12 extra dates of spectator-free racing from May 4th through May 31 on a Monday-through-Wednesday schedule.

The grandstand sells out most every Saturday for 11 straight weeks, and the revenue from tickets, on-track handle, food and beverage are a large piece of the track's financial puzzle. The usual all-source handle for a Saturday at Fonner might not surpass $600,000, CEO Chris Kotulak said. Even though off-track handle skyrocketed to as much as a state record of $7.2 million for a mandatory Pick 5 payout and otherwise averaged about $2.5 million with the altered schedule, the track's off-track take at a rate between 3 and 4 percent is not enough to completely make up for the missing revenue from on-track patrons, he said. 

Fonner Park CEO Chris Kotulak

"You see those sexy mutuel numbers and might think 'Wow, what a success!'" Kotulak said. "My response is 'Really, we're just surviving.' The horsemen, other than reducing the purse values for a couple stakes races, the purses have not changed one penny. For them, it's pretty much status quo. But people have asked me, 'Are we going to stick with this Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday schedule to be more visible nationally,' and I don't even let them finish the sentence. Absolutely not. Fonner Park is not making any revenue on food, beverage or seating on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays now, and going forward we wouldn't make anything comparable to what we do on the weekends. We need that revenue to put that into our coffers to keep up on maintenance and repairs for our facility, and on top of that, it's the experience that is so important here. 

"No one is going to get sold on horse racing by going to a racetrack on a Tuesday afternoon with a handful of people there. A lot of the nation doesn't realize we sell out every Saturday for 11 weeks of racing, our grandstand is jammed pack, and Sundays are big here too. That vibe is what brings people back.

We are very much alive and thriving on-track every racing weekend. We are a clean, tidy, efficient little racing facility, and if you haven't been to us before, you wouldn't have any reason to realize what we do well.

You'd think this is a dusty, five-eighths mile racetrack with a ratty old grandstand; and that is not us at all. We run a proper race meet, we keep up the facility, and we have more than 900 horses stabled here. So we are not just some carnival that comes to town; we've been operating since 1954 and it's a rich tradition here." 

Fonner Park during normal times.

Kotulak realistically does not expect Fonner's signal to become more popular or pervasive after this unique circumstance that thrust the track into the limelight. 

"We'll be yesterday's news once other racetracks come back online," he said. "I get it. I understand most people would rather bet on $200,000 stakes races with horses running on the turf, but with what we're offering, we're presenting full fields and competitive racing, so it makes sense that as the only show in town, we're benefiting with huge off-track handle totals compared to what we're used to; but I don't want to overstate what that means for our bottom line.

"One other piece of this equation is that there is never a race run at Fonner Park where the commission of the mutuel handle on that race pays for the purse of that race. We're offering $50,000 in purse money a day for our (original) 31-day race meet not for what they wager on a big Saturday or a big week or a season. It's the season plus the Triple Crown races, plus the Breeders' Cup and our big, mega handicapping challenge we offer in January each year that is either the third- or the second-best weekend we have annually. All that put together, we're able to scratch and claw together a condition book with roughly $5,000 a race in purse money." 

Trainer David Anderson has been racing at Fonner for 40 years and said the surreal circumstances are never far from his thoughts in this meet. 

"It's just a weird feeling every step of the way," Anderson said. "You're saddling horses with no people in the stands and with our masks on. There's no rah-rah and go-go, which is totally different for Fonner Park. It's always been a track with great crowds; the clubhouse sells out all the time. It's a big thing in Grand Island, Neb., and people come from all over the state. It's a real social gathering. Without all that, we're holding our own; but trust me, no one is liking this. There's the anxiety that if someone on the backside were to test positive for the virus, you got to think we'd be shut down right away. Then, there's no place to go. Every day we get to race; we've got to be thankful." 

The big difference at Will Rogers Downs compared to Fonner is the presence of an onsite casino. Will Rogers—about 30 miles outside Tulsa, Okla.—is owned and operated by the Cherokee Nation. On-track attendance for racing is not that important in the overall revenue model, but Will Rogers was already positioning its schedule for more exposure by racing early in the week when there is less competition from bigger tracks. In March and April, Will Rogers only races on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. In May, Saturdays are added in. 

Will Rogers Downs handled $16.8-million during an entire 25-day Thoroughbred meet in 2019. This year, that total was surpassed by the eighth day of racing. 

"We have been the beneficiaries of this global pandemic that has shuttered racetracks—there is no question about it," said Jon Lies, who serves triple duty as the Will Rogers racing secretary, track announcer and oddsmaker. "Our racing product has really improved. Not only is field size up, but more importantly, the quality of the races has increased tremendously. The class levels of races that I'm able to offer have also increased; it results in much better cards, and the horseplayers have responded very positively. Purse levels have not changed and look to remain the same for the foreseeable future. The main catch right now is that the casino is closed, and the simulcast operations have also stopped at this point; and that's a lot of our purse money for the future. The additional handle that we're getting now is obviously much greater than before, so the percentage of that going back into purses has increased dramatically. So time will tell as far as what impact that will have for future race meets here." 

A sign of the strange times is the availability—or lack thereof—of wagering for horsemen to bet on their own horses at Fonner and Will Rogers while much of the racing world is watching. 

Fonner owners and trainers can bet online through an ADW. Owners can do so onsite at Fonner from the comfort of their vehicles. The track is allowing owners to drive up to the track apron and watch their horses run live, but without getting out of their cars. 

In Oklahoma, in-state owners and trainers with horses running at Will Rogers do not have a way to bet on the races; there is no wagering on-track or simulcast operations during the pandemic, and ADW wagering through an online provider was already not an option in the state. 

"It's a very unusual situation where this Oklahoma track is thriving as much as it is, but the horsemen that are here year after year can't bet on their own races," Lies said. 

"Going forward, I think it's opened up a lot of doors for us. We've gone international and had eyeballs on us that we never would have imagined. Our goal is to try to retain this new audience that we have gained to what we feel like is a very attractive wagering product." 

Will Rogers is the true home track for trainer Scott Young—he lives a few furlongs up the road and has led the trainer standings in recent years. This meet has been much more competitive, he said. 

"It's definitely tougher racing, but we're just happy to be racing," said Young, who had a division this winter at Sam Houston Race Park, which cut short its meet due to COVID-19. "You have a lot of people shipping in since so many other tracks are closed, but I'm all for it. We're able to take advantage of it and put out a product that the gamblers are liking and seeing since we're pretty much the only game in town. 

“It's nice to see full fields and the horses we enter are able to race, as opposed to races getting called off because of four or five entries. Before, we were life and death to draw enough horses for the ‘two other than’ allowances and upper-level claiming races, but now we're filling every race that's written, and horses are shipping in from Kentucky, New Mexico—you name it. You see horses shipping 12 or 13 hours to come run here at Will Rogers and it's kind of unbelievable."

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.

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Changing hemispheres

By Jeff Lowe

For as long as racehorses have been moved from one hemisphere to the other, the effect of crossing the equator has been an age-old mystery. How much recovery time a horse generally needs, and why, is still a complex issue for American trainers who regularly find success with horses from the Southern Hemisphere.

Hall of Fame trainers Richard Mandella and Ron McAnally follow a similar timetable before they generally feel comfortable sending a horse from the Southern Hemisphere to the races. Mandella, who has a long list of South American stars like Bal a Bali, Redattore, Gentlemen, Sandpit and Siphon accentuating his career highlights, suggested that four months is an ideal amount of time once a horse arrives to the United States before his or her first race. McAnally, with a roll call from Argentina that includes Candy Ride, Different, Paseana, Festin and Bayakoa, operates with a ballpark estimate of four to six months.

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Richard Mandella at Santa Anita Park

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Ron McAnally

"I could not tell you why they need that long," McAnally said. "It would take God almighty upstairs to answer that.

“I just know that with a horse like Candy Ride, he had about six months once he got here and he was ready to go; he won an allowance on the dirt at Hollywood Park, then he won a nine-furlong Gr2 on the turf at Hollywood Park, and he won the Pacific Classic [a $1-million Gr1] going a mile and a quarter at Del Mar.”  

Mandella's and McAnally's calendar does fly in the face of the schedule of a giant gelding who helped blaze the trail from the Southern Hemisphere to the U.S. Australian legend Phar Lap traveled 10,000 miles by ship to San Francisco in the winter bridging 1931 and '32, arriving January 15. He promptly ran away with the Aqua Caliente Handicap in Mexico just two months later, setting a track record before mysteriously dying that April.

Likewise, with the shoe on the other foot, horses from Europe regularly trek to Australia for prestigious races. Godolphin Racing's Cross Counter arrived "Down Under" last September 8 from England and came away with a victory in the Gp1 Melbourne Cup two months later. European shippers have won the Melbourne Cup five times in the last nine editions.

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Black Caviar wins the Gp1 Diamond Jubilee Stakes at Ascot

Heading the other way, horses from Australia have been successful right off the bat in Europe, with the prolific sprinter Black Caviar as perhaps the most notable example. She won the Gp1 Diamond Jubilee Stakes at Royal Ascot just six weeks after prevailing in the Gp1 Goodwood in Adelaide, Australia. Aidan O’Brien’s spectacular success from his Ballydoyle base in Ireland has featured a few imports from Australian and New Zealand, among them a top-caliber sprinter in Starspangledbanner and a 10-furlong specialist in So You Think.

Starspangledbanner, like Black Caviar, scored in the 2006 edition of the Gp1 Golden Jubilee at Royal Ascot, just a couple months after arriving from Australia. Conversely, So You Think had six months in between his final start “Down Under” and his European debut in Ireland.

“It all depends on the individual horse and how they adapt,” O’Brien said. “No doubt, when they don’t have to stop training and can continue exercise in quarantine, [it] is a big help.”

Mandella suggested that a break is often necessary for a Southern Hemisphere horse to adjust to its new environment and build back up after a long season back home. The differences in the U.S. include the makeup of the racetracks, as some dirt tracks in South America are much harder than the sandy loam in place at Santa Anita and elsewhere in the states. South American imports also have to adjust to wearing a saddle in their training each day, whereas back home they usually would only be ridden with a saddle in workouts and races.

"I let them down and bring them back easy and by the time I get them ready it's about four months, and I think that works real well," Mandella said. "Generally they have done quite a bit to earn the chance to come here, so they are due [for some time off], but the difference in the environment and the training is probably the biggest change, and you have to kind of re-train them to our style of training with saddles every day, traffic they have to face—those kind of things that we have at our American racetracks."

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