NOEL & WENDY HICKEY A FEW MARTINIS, A FILLY, AND A LIFE IN RACING

WORDS - KEN SNYDER 

“Never leave home without it" from the TV commercial for a credit card is a lesson that was career and life changing for Wendy Hickey, a Welsh emigrant and her husband Noel, also an emigrant but from Ireland. Fortunately, she learned from the mistake made by someone who left home without his checkbook. Worse, he had made the winning bid on a horse at a horse auction in Colorado.

"He had a few martinis," explained Wendy Hickey. No check, no horse. "So I ended up buying the horse that I hadn't even looked at" - a yearling filly.

The purchase of the instead of the checkless and feckless bidder was the entry point for Wendy and Noel to get into racing. Their filly raced in Arizona and Colorado for one year before Wendy gave her to a friend.

The single year of racing awakened the proverbial horse gene in both Wendy and Noel. Wendy began putting together partnerships in horses and racing them in Arizona and Arapahoe Park in Aurora, Colorado. That spanned eight years. Inspiration for partnerships came in part from the movie Dream Horse, the story of a small community, ironically in Wales, that came together to own a horse, appropriately named Dream Alliance. The horse won the 2009 Welsh Grand National.

In the last two years, the Hickeys have begun breeding horses, traveling monthly to a farm in Paris, north of Lexington, to check on progress with weanlings, yearlings and broodmares in foal.

The other part that led the Hickeys into breeding was a budding interest and investigation into Thoroughbred pedigrees while racing in Arizona and Colorado. "I started spotting mares that were up and coming on the racetrack and looking at their bloodlines," said Wendy. I got interested and actually claimed some, brought them to Colorado, and then took them out to Kentucky to breed."

Currently the Hickeys have seven foals due this spring and this is their second crop sired by Kentucky stallions. The Hickeys will face a decision many breeders have the luxury of making. "Until you see a foal, you don't know whether you want to race them or sell them." Mares will come back to Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming to foal and take advantage of breeding incentives. Colts and fillies foaled in Colorado will be raced in that state by the Hickeys.

Horse breeding, essentially, is agriculture subject to weather like any other crop in the field. Last year, during the breeding season, an ice storm hit the Bluegrass, hampering travel and altering the reproductive cycles for many mares. A percentage of mares do not take on the first breeding and have to come back for subsequent matings. Transportation in bad weather was an issue at times last year and had some effect on this year's crop of foals. Primarily the result will be more late foals this year.

"Because everyone wants to foal at the beginning of the year, it's kind of caused a bit of a scramble, because everyone wants to get their mares back and breed again," said Wendy, referring to second and sometimes third matings with a stallion to produce a foal.

"We had a couple of mares that did take straight away, but not all. There's wait time involved in a mare coming back into heat and then scheduling with the desired stallion."

The Hickeys have an advantage over many out-of-state breeders with a location in Paris [KY] which reduces the number of trips back and forth between states. Ironically, Rob Ring, who bred the horse that Wendy Hickey bought at the auction in Colorado, is now their breeder in Kentucky and oversees their operation there. Wendy is the primary decision maker in matings and Ring also has input into stallion choice.

Wendy's pedigree interests took her to a specific bloodline: Sunday Silence and his progeny. This horse won both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness in 1986. When overlooked by breeders here in the U.S. after retirement, he was sent to Japan where he was the leading sire there a record thirteen times. Progeny has won major races all over the world, and descendants in the U.S. have, in part, restored his reputation as a sire. In 2016, he was the leading broodmare sire in North America. (Read North American Trainer - issue 59 / spring 2021)

Tale of Ekati, whose dam Silence Beauty is a daughter of Sunday Silence, was the stallion a Hickey mare was bred to in 2024. The Hickeys brought the foal, a filly, back west to Wyoming. "She's quite small, but it's good to have a 'small' because Wyoming tracks are pretty snug. You need a small horse to get around the bends." said Wendy.

Another foal was sired by Highly Motivated out of an Irish mare, The Ginger Queen, from the Galileo bloodline. The third foal is by Gift Box, sired by Twirling Candy, winner of $1.1 million in purses including two Gr.2 races and a pair of Gr.1's, including the Gold Cup at Santa Anita.

"Right now, we have seven horses, three yearlings and four mares," said Noel Hickey. Among horses expected to foal this year by Mendelssohn, Drain the Clock, Gun Pilot, and Speightstown.

Foaling requirements to qualify as a state-bred in western states vary for the Hickeys. "Wyoming is the trickiest one because the broodmare has to be registered and in the state by the fifteenth of August prior to birth. So if you've had a mare that's had a foal late, you have to move the mare with a foal at her side, but before weaning."

Fortunately, as with their Paris location, there is a broodmare facility in Laramie, Wyoming for mares in foal and new foals. "Wyoming is really starting to advance now," said Wendy.

There are quite a few stallions there-Finnegan's Wake, King Zachary, and Dennis' Moment. "People are starting to catch on with the breeders' funds that you can get. They're trying to encourage people to foal out there and to build the racing program in Wyoming. Nebraska is doing something similar."
This past year Taylor Made Farm in Nicholasville, Kentucky introduced a "State-Bred Initiative Program" offering free seasons to four stallions at their farm to out-of-state mares who will foal in those states. The program hopes to boost regional breeding outside Kentucky and counter, to some degree, the continuing decline in North American foal crops. The Hickeys are prime prospects for the program.

The Hickeys make their home in Denver and own a combination 'Irish-Welsh' pub/off-track betting (OTB) facility - The Celtic on Market.

It was originally called the Celtic Tavern before relocation to 14th and Market Streets in Denver.

The move downtown and opening on St. Patrick's Day in 2017 was memorable for some nail-biting, last-minute wrangling over a liquor license, rivaling a neck-and-neck battle to the wire between two Thoroughbreds.

After numerous construction delays consuming parts of 2015, all of 2016, and the first three months of 2017, the new Celtic on Market was finally ready to open with all permit issues hurdled...except for liquor.

"We were not allowed to bring any liquor or beer into the restaurant until we had a license.

"We had trucks lined up outside, and so we called the liquor board and said, 'Could you send someone down to sign off on our liquor license?'" The reply, on the most important day of the year to the Irish and expecting brisk business, was "not until next Tuesday."

"I said, 'You don't understand, it's Friday and it's St. Patrick's Day and we need to open." The attitude they got in response was one we've probably all had at one time or another dealing with government officials: “’I’m sorry, sir, it will be next Tuesday’ and they hung up on me!” Hickey said, shaking his head at the memory.

A last-minute call to the chief of staff for Denver’s mayor produced a call back five minutes later from the same liquor board official who had hung up on Noel. Good news delivered coldly: “We’ll be down there in ten minutes.”

“That was three-thirty in the afternoon and at five pm we opened with a full house,” Noel Hickey said.

Nine years later The Celtic on Market will celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and its nine-year anniversary of that opening in the new location.

Today the venue is a center for emigrants from Europe and elsewhere to gather for Premier League matches and other major sporting events around the world like the Melbourne Cup. At the time of writing, the big promotion of the day was Spain’s major soccer match, El Clásico, pitting Barcelona against Real Madrid.

Horse racing is the daily mainstay for Denver horse racing fans and bettors along with out-of-town visitors coming into Denver for Broncos football games.

Noel greets visitors as the front-of-house guy. “I’m that guy that schmoozes people. Wendy does all of the back of the house for the bar, the OTB, and FanDuel.

Fittingly, the two met in an Irish pub in Düsseldorf, Germany that Noel owned 36 years ago. They’ve been married 34 years.

“We spend twenty-four hours a day with each other. We’re very lucky in the sense that we work well together,” said Noel.

Ah, there it is the luck of the Irish: a horse that fell into their lap to start the Hickeys in racing; the involvement that sustained and made possible horse breeding in Kentucky; and last but not least, owning Denver’s only OTB. What could be next? Given all that has already happened, the two of them in the winner’s circle of a Triple Crown race wouldn’t be a surprise.

State Breeding Incentives for 2024 - on a state by state basis

Article by Ken Snyder

Nineteenth century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli gets credit for coining the phrase “there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

Jockey club statistics showing the 2022 foal crop to be 18,200 in the U.S.—down from 19,200 in 2021--might come under the heading of “damned lie.” (Numbers for 2023 aren’t in yet.) 

The phrase is a caveat or admonition to not jump to conclusions with questionable deductions and pronouncements to what, in truth, are damned lies. First, the industry isn’t going over a cliff with foal counts. It operates in a free-market economy. There are gains and losses, “bubbles” when artificially high prices exceed real value, and “corrections” when prices drop to what they should be. 

With foal count, horse population, and racing in general, there are positive, remarkable achievements. In Pennsylvania, the state has experienced increases in foal count and anticipates more. Okay, it’s one state, but it belies that belief that the sky is falling.

Here are the numbers for PA in registered foals: 2017-549; 2018-606; 2019-623; 691 in 2020. Yes, there was a dip in numbers when a former governor attempted to raid the Racehorse Development Trust Fund (2021-593; 413-2022). But, said Brian Sanfrantello, executive secretary of the PA Horse Breeding Association, the foal count has bottomed out and the breeding industry should return to increasing foal numbers with a new governor. Further, five new stallions have come to the state for breeding in 2024.

A Stallion Series is a crown jewel of a breeding program that makes Pennsylvania breeding and racing literally worthwhile. Launched in 2022 it offered $600,000 in purses for stakes races for PA-bred two-year-old colts and fillies over two days of racing. On the first race day, colts and fillies raced for $100,000-dollar purses each. On the second day, they ran for $200,000. The Series attacked one problem for PA breeders and appealed to those out of state. 

“It’s costing forty thousand to fifty thousand dollars from the time you breed the mare to the time the horse races,” said Sanfrantello. “We’re trying to get the money back to the breeder as fast as possible.” 

The means this year, in addition to this Series, are eight two-year-old stakes races, four of which are for PA breds. For non-Series and other races, breeder awards are 40% for PA-sired horses (compared to 20% for non-PA-breds). “If it’s a fifty-thousand-dollar race, the winner would get sixty percent of the purse or thirty-thousand dollars. Plus, if it’s an open race not restricted, there is a forty percent owner bonus added to the purse or twelve-thousand dollars for total earnings of forty-two-thousand dollars for owners. A breeder-owner would get an additional sixteen-thousand eight-hundred dollars. The total? Fifty-eight thousand, eight hundred dollars.

The stunner is what breeder awards have totaled. The most striking example? Uptowncharlybrown won two of thirteen starts  and $125,000 in his career but he has earned in breeder and stallion awards $869,080.

Virginia, with twenty-seven race dates in 2023 at the Commonwealth’s lone racetrack, Colonial Downs, is obviously at the other end of the spectrum from year-round racing in Pennsylvania and other states. However, the Virginia Thoroughbred Association, of which Debbie Easter is executive director, is outdistancing any other state in how fast they are growing their racing industry.

We said, ‘What the heck, we may not be the biggest breeding state any longer, but what we can do and what we do have are farms and the training centers to raise horses.”

Starting basically from scratch when Colonial Downs re-opened in 2019 after closing in 2013, the foal crops had gotten down to a rock bottom, one hundred. This year Easter projects the crop will be 160, a 60% increase. Small potatoes in the general scheme of things but not the only means of building racing. 

“Starting this year, we’re paying for first, second and third anywhere in North America if you’re a breeder and bred a horse in Virginia,” said Easter. “By us paying win, place and show in North America all year long, that makes our program year-round. That’s a big advantage, we think, over other breeding programs. You don’t have to race in our state to get our money.” The award is 34% of the earnings added to the purse. Historical Horse Racing (HHR) generates the award money, which has increased the breeding fund from $500,000 to $2 million dollars in five years. 

Virginia has also initiated a “Certified Program” which covers a horse registered by The Jockey Club and conceived and foaled outside of Virginia, but residing in the state for at least a six-month consecutive period prior to December 31st of its two-year-old year.

“Our Certified guys are averaging about eight months or so a year here. We’re bringing in almost nine hundred horses in a year. We’ve grown the population of Thoroughbred horses in the last five years faster than we could ever have done it breeding horses. It absolutely saved our farms and training centers and the infrastructure that supports those farms.,” said Easter.

The big development with New York is state-bred, 2024 foals will run for the same purse amounts as open-company races. This year at Saratoga, maiden races restricted to two-year-old New York breds ran for $88,000 compared to $105,000 for two-year-olds in open company maiden races. ”It’s something that breeders in NY and horsemen who compete with NY breds have been advocating for a long time,” said Najja Thompson, executive director of the New York Thoroughbred Breeders.

Thompson added that this year there are also increases for New York breds whether sired by state sires or sired outside the state. For 2024, breeder awards are 40% for first place, 20% for second place, and 10% for third place, with a $40,000 cap award. Last year’s awards were 30% for first place and 15% for place and show finishes. A cap per award remains at $40,000.

Maryland’s biggest innovation this year is a two-tiered system, one tier for Maryland-sired and Maryland bred horses, and a second tier for Maryland-breds only. The system will begin with 2025 foals. “We are going to have a two-tiered system to try and reward MD sires as they do in Pennsylvania and other states,” said Cricket Goodall, executive director of the Maryland Horse Breeders Association.

Maryland’s best days will be when the $385 million Pimlico project is completed to rebuild the track from the ground up and also add a training center, according to Goodall.

“I think that you have to have a look to the future to be competitive,” said Goodall. She compares the project, which is projected for completion In what Goodall projects as “four to five years” to New York’s investment in Belmont Park. “Maryland is looking to be one of the states that is investing in racing and breeding.

Meanwhile, Goodall said Maryland is one of the states where stallion books have gone up this year.

Kentucky, of course, is the kingpin of American Thoroughbred breeding. While foal crops nationally have declined, Kentucky, from 2012 to 2021 increased in registered foals by just under 10%. Of the five top states for registered foals—Kentucky, Florida, California, New York, and Louisiana—Kentucky was the only one without a decrease in those years.

Strangely, the number of yearlings sold in North America in 2023—8,303, increased from 8,061 in 2013. That doesn’t correspond to decreasing foal crops. 

The principal reason for the overall decline in foals is increasing expenses, according to Duncan Taylor, senior Thoroughbred consultant and co-owner with three brothers of Taylor Made Farm just outside Lexington, Kentucky. “Costs just keep increasing, and they increase for all horses the same. I’m talking about daily board rate in Kentucky. The last eight years, probably, it has gone from thirty-five thousand to forty-five thousand dollars.” 

Vet care has gone up as well. “I had a mare that had to have a C-section. My bill was twenty-two thousand dollars,” he added.

“People can’t stomach these expenses on a less expensive horse. You got a million-dollar horse, you think ‘I’ve got a shot at getting it back because I could sell a five-hundred thousand, six-hundred-thousand-dollar yearling out of that horse.’”

The upshot is competition for the better horses offered in sales--what Taylor calls “more supply of a higher quality.” But what that also means, he said, is “It pushes the people in the lower part of the market out.” Hence, fewer breeders and foals.

Kentucky is awash in cash, which Taylor believes could stem the trend toward continuing foal crop decreases nationally. “All the purse money that is available to race for now, if it stays as good as it is, I don’t think we’ll continue to decline.”

Societal and cultural issues—challenges beyond, perhaps, the reach of horse racing as a sport and industry—are also factors in foal crops. Times have changed.

“At one time in this country, most of the large racing stables were owned by the kings of industry, with the horses coming from their own farms,” said Kent Barnes, former stallion manager at Shadwell’s Nashwan Farm in Lexington who currently directs the stallion division of Spy Coast Farm also in Lexington. “Unfortunately, in many cases, successive generations have either not shared in the passion, or had the wealth to carry on with these large operations, and most of these stables have been either dismantled or severely diminished.“

Duncan Taylor echoes Barnes’ observation. “The underlying condition is not enough people are in love that much with horses to where they want to have a big farm and raise them and then sell them. The condition is less breeders and that goes along with the declining foal crop.”

Ideas abound, some feasible, some not, some fantasy for getting foal crops back up. 

Evan Ferraro, director of marketing for Fasig Tipton, sees a breeding counterpart to racing syndicates as a potential answer. Racing syndicates both large entities and small, are popular. If there’s a way to encourage breeding syndicates that spread risk, they could be appealing.

Breeding to sell rather than race could be incentivized, according to Barnes. “I believe financial obligations are the primary barrier preventing more breeders from racing their own product.  A few years ago, several stallion owners came up with novel approaches to help the breeder decrease their risk going into the sales. Perhaps this same approach could be extended to allow breeders who choose not to sell to mitigate some of their risk going into racing. Stud fees could be deducted from race earnings. To make it more attractive to the stallion owners, there could be a sliding scale where they earn a higher percentage based on the horse’s performance.”

No matter the challenges, there are obviously bright, experienced, and energetic people at the controls of parts of the racing industry—people like Evan Ferraro, Debbie Easter, Brian Sanfrantello, Kent Barnes, Duncan Taylor and many more.

There is another phrase that may have application from someone who quoted Disraeli‘s phrase about statistics: Mark Twain. He said famously, “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

Racing is not dying. It is changing. And in everything, change is inevitable.

Where do we go from here?

The strange, but positive thing encountered in examining the declining foal crop and reasons for it, is that everyone interviewed had a different response to this question: What is the first thing you would do if put in charge of the industry? There were no limits put on the responses; the answers ranged from the completely improbable to things right under the industry’s nose. Even better, they span most aspects of racing from fan development to breeding.

First things first: fans. Empty grandstands on race days are par for the course and maddeningly accepted. To drive on-track attendance, Evan Ferraro, offered a simple, but great idea for weekends. “Open up the infields. Let people come in there. Let them bring their own stuff.” Add musical entertainment and things like face-painting for children or pony rides, and …voila, a family event for Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Stack that up against a $15 beer, $10-dollar hot dog, and $10 parking for a major league baseball game. Throw in a premium—cap, cups, etc.--and a free afternoon picnicking at the racetrack looks like a great day out. For racetrack management resting on laurels and reluctant to loosen purse strings fattened by off-track wagering and purses funded from casinos or Historical Horse Racing (HHR) machines, they could find a sponsor to add their logo to the racetrack’s giveaways. 

Ferraro added a familiar lament to his idea: “I don’t think we market our sport well anymore.

“I don’t think you can promote ‘our safety numbers are better.’ You gotta sell the races. That’s what has to drive everything to me. Create some familiarity and give customers a good experience.”

Add to all these things a focus on the “stars.” As recently as the 1970s and 1980s National Basketball Association playoff games were tape delayed. The sport, quite simply, was “meh”… until Larry Bird and Magic Johnson came along. This past year Cody’s Wish provided the public a truly moving story both on the track and more important, off the track in the horse’s relationship with the late Cody Dorman. “There was never a story by the major networks about Cody’s Wish,” said Ferraro. Thoroughbred racing has been silent since “Go Baby Go” was seen and heard on televisions more than twenty years ago. “Public relations,” anyone? 

Kent Barnes, sees a connection between attracting fans and foal crops: “The only way we could ever consider increasing our foal crop is if we can somehow get more end-users involved in the racing game. There is more and more competition out there every year for the public’s entertainment dollar and somehow, we have to attract back the fans, which increases the handle, thereby increasing purses and attracting owners.”

On another subject, the failure of a 140-mare cap for stallions in the U.S. frustrated Barnes, a respected and published researcher on the demise of sire lines and resultant inbreeding. He said, “I was disappointed in their reversal of the cap decision because I feel that if we limit the number of mares bred to each stallion, this ensures that the top stallions are getting the very best mares and also allows second-tier stallions to prove themselves by getting an increased number of mares.  

“There is no doubt stallions that failed to make their mark could have done so with enough mares of quality to prove themselves.”

Bloodstock agent Clark Shepherd pointed out the obvious without a 140-cap limit: “We’re limiting the gene pool. I get handed these mares that are fantastic on the racetrack, and they [clients] want me to do a mating for them. But when I sit down and do a mating, the mare’s bred like a stallion. So now what? It limits my choices.”

Here’s where foal crop numbers really might be, as British Prime Minister Disraeli said about numbers and statistics, “damned lies,” at least according to Shepherd. “I don’t know that a declining foal supply is a bad thing just because of supply and demand,” he said. “For the last three years, I’ve been waiting on the shoe to drop, and we keep going on this upward trend. 

“To me, it’s supply and demand.”

One factor in decline in foal numbers is, Shepherd said, “mom-and-pop” breeders leaving the business unable to afford stud fees for what he called “ultra-stallions.” “They don’t have the mares good enough to get into first-year stallions.”

Whether good or bad, Shepherd points to what he believes is an issue and factor in foal declines. “There’s a lot of mares, even stallions, that don’t need to be in production. If it’s a resulting decline in foal crop because of that realization, I’m okay with it. We’re striving to breed better horses and there’s less of them, and that creates more demand. It could be a good thing.”

On the issue of racehorse ownership Debbie Easter identified what she said is both the problem and a solution: “The problem is the owners don’t own the racetracks. Owners own the talent, but we don’t own the most important part of it:  the HHR or the things that fuel the whole game.”

The solution, in her opinion, is the Japanese model: “Owners are able to pay for their daily expenses with bigger purses earned over there.

“You have the cost of the horse and then there’s the daily cost of racing. I’ve always said, I think the guys would forgive the cost of the horse if they could just pay the daily cost…if they didn’t have to take it out of their pocket. I think we could grow ownership.” 

She wonders if there is too much racing. Contraction of the racing industry could possibly be the ultimate answer.

“Everywhere where racing is successful in this country—Saratoga, Del Mar, Keeneland—what do they all have in common? They don’t run year-round. And they’re in destinations where people want to come.” They also have capacity crowds.

Duncan Taylor, added a novel and, in truth, a not-to-be idea for horse owners. If he were commissioner and it was feasible “I would start purely an owners’ organization and it would be only owners with racehorses while they were running.

“I think they have the most to lose and the most to gain in an entrepreneurial way for improving the sport and not the mediocre management of the racetracks. I would try to get that group of people [owners] to actually buy the tracks.”

Answers? Solutions? Some are immediately viable from this story. Some are unlikely. And some are in a “perfect world” that won’t exist. 

There is, however, one thing on which everyone can agree: racing needs ideas.