Pressures boil at bloodstock sales
"Nobody knows where that champion comes from." Cambridge Stud owner Sir Patrick Hogan.
The racing industry smelt of foreign cash and bated breath this week, ahead of its largest annual bloodstock sales and its first Government announcement.
The Karaka Million races at Ellerslie Racecourse on Saturday drew a large and wealthy crowd, but racing’s real money maker starts Sunday at the Karaka national yearling sales.
The new Racing Minister Winston Peters will open the sales with a speech. He has given no hints as to what he might say.
Auckland Racing Club chief executive Paul Wilcox said he had given the race-loving politician the benefit of the doubt that he would come good on the promises he made to the industry before the 2017 election.
Such promises included lifting the minimum stake price over its current $10,000 and bettering racetrack facilities where poor conditions often saw meetings called off.
Wilcox said in a perfect world, Peters would have made the announcement before buyers arrived for the busy Karaka sales this week.
‘‘At the minute we are just waiting with baited breath to see what he comes up with on Sunday.’’
But bets were not off at Karaka. New Zealand Bloodstock chief executive Andrew Seabrook said all going well, the Karaka sales can be breeders’ largest pay day.
With 12,000 horses set to be shown to buyers, naturally, pressure was high.
Racehorse breeders and vendors had been preparing since May last year to show off their stock to buyers from Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Dubai, Hong Kong, China, Singapore and Japan.
Sales last year totalled $82 million, $29m shy of Karaka’s record year in 2008.
Australians were the biggest buyers, Seabrook said. Collectively they spent $36 million on our yearling bloodstock at Karaka last year.
The most money was typically spent at vendors Cambridge Stud and Waikato Stud, Seabrook said. They could turn over more than $8m each.
Cambridge Stud owner Sir Patrick Hogan said all the vendors were feeling the pressure at Karaka this year.
As stud staff paraded yearlings to big name buying agents this week, Hogan said purchasing interest had been steady, not hectic.
He said he was ‘‘thrilled to bits’’ with his yearlings for sale this year but did not expect to make any groundbreaking sales.
‘‘I usually have a gut feeling that something big is going to happen. That I might get close to the highest price horse. I don’t think that is going to happen [this year].
‘‘I always know when I have got the winner, I do not think I have got the winner.’’
He would not say what vendor he thought held the winning horse this year. ‘‘You’ll get nothing out of me.’’
Hogan has spent 60 years breeding and selling bloodstock.
He said the mating of bloodlines was calculated and good grooming intentional, but a horse’s success was out of a breeders’ hands.
‘‘Nobody knows where that champion comes from.’’
To attract buyers at the sales, horses had to be on their best behaviour.
Mulcaster Bloodstock owner Guy Mulcaster said he picked horses for international buyers based on their attitude.
‘‘Temperament has got a lot to do with it. If they cannot handle the sales here, they are not going to handle the environment in the training stables.’’
Hogan said he did not like horses to be too tall. ‘‘A small horse for me is never too small.’’
Horses that are sold at Karaka will be loaded onto cargo planes and sent offshore immediately, or kept in New Zealand to be trained here.
It’s the buyers’ choice. Seabrook said Australians often took them home straight away.
Seabrook said it was better for the New Zealand economy to keep them here, but our bloodstock had to race overseas to garner international recognition.
Winning international races kept buyers coming back, he said.
HOGAN ON WAY OUT
This year’s Karaka sales are the last for Hogan as a vendor.
The industry veteran sold his 400 hectare stud to Sistema founder Brendan Lindsay and his wife Jo last year for an undisclosed sum. The Lindsays take over ownership in April.
When the new buyers were announced, the Lindsays said they would honour Hogan’s legacy.
‘‘Cambridge Stud is more than a stud farm – it is a unique Kiwi legend. We feel both proud and privileged to have the opportunity of helping to write exciting new chapters to the Cambridge Stud success story.’’
Cambridge Stud bred horses that collectively won eight Melbourne Cups, four Cox Plates, three Caulfield Cups and the Golden Slipper.
Hogan said it was ‘‘business as usual’’ as the 2018 sales proceeded.
But when the sales closed, his exit could be ‘‘pretty difficult to take’’, he said.
‘‘Maybe when the last yearling is sold in the book two session, maybe then it will hit me.
‘‘I’m the master of the draft yearlings here and have been for all those years. I probably will feel a bit lonely. I won’t know what to do with myself.’’
Reflecting on his career, the 83-year-old said the most memorable horse he bred and owned was Australian thoroughbred Surround.
In the early 1970s, Surround won 17 out of 28 starts within four years.
‘‘She was a champion and she would be the most exciting racehorse that I bred.’’
He said he had made a decent contribution to bloodstock sales and his competitors owed him.
‘‘To occupy myself I will go visit each vendor and hope that they invite me in. If they don’t, I will still go in and they can buy me a drink. It is the least they can do for me, I think they owe it to me.’’
Cambridge Stud’s largest competitor Waikato Stud was the first on his list, he said.
‘‘I will probably spend a good day there because I will get as much out of them as I can.’’