A few decades back a prominent bloodstock agent, when asked how would someone come about becoming one, replied that you would need a minimum of twenty years working day to day amongst thoroughbreds on a stud farm. Only then could a person properly have developed an eye, feel and understanding as to how the horse develops.
For those of us on the outside, it is one of the most mysterious areas of the sport. To be honest, if we go to extremes we could all probably tell the difference between a Bungle Inthejungle juvenile lining up in the Brocklesby, and a strapping Fleminsfirth five year old appearing in a Carlisle bumper. Whether we could tell the difference between a two year old at the Goffs UK Breeze Up Sale in early April , and one making his racecourse appearance in the Convivial Maiden in August,.. hmmm I'm not so sure.
But what about the faces you see assessing yearlings at the sales who don't even look twenty yet alone have twenty years working day to day with developing thoroughbreds. Surely some then must pick up the skills and develop the eye quicker than others. Some perhaps very quickly, others may not ever pick it up at all.
As a starting point we would reasonably expect a sixty year old stud hand who has been in the industry all his life to be superior at assessing a yearling than a twenty five year old, though it's likely that the former will lack the flowery vocabulary and use of in vogue buzzwords that the younger generations are adept at using.
It's hard to find a comparison with other sports. Maybe there is one in the putting side of Golf. There are no physical demands in this sphere of the game so you would expect it to improve with practice and age, especially reading the greens. However, it is this area of the game that starts to suffer first. Hand and eye co-ordination and all that. You could draw a similar comparison with darts, and snooker.
So do these bloodstock agent characters actually reach a peak at a relatively early age, then either stay at this level or deteriorate. Maybe some have beliefs so long built that they will never be able to accept changing wisdoms.
Apparently, when Anthony Stroud was Sheikh Mohammed's racing manager from the mid-1980's to the millennium, he was said to possess the ability to go out and assess a couple of hundred yearlings and be able to form a picture memory of each individual and provide a detailed description of their conformation at random.
Stroud achieved that position chiefly on the strength of his buying record in the National Hunt arena . I guess he talked a good game too.
Indeed, in the misty world of buying and selling bloodstock, there are those who consistently hit lucky above the norm and must possess a degree of innate ability to have the knack of picking up bargains from the maze. The Doyle family would be prime examples
The late Jack Doyle bought many of Ryan Price's best flat horses, including his most famous, the 1975 St Leger winner Bruni, and his highest rated by Timeform, Sandford Lad. He also bought Deep Run who would go on to be the perennial champion jumping sire, Champion Hurdle winner Another Flash and the mighty Mill House.
His son and grandson, Peter and Ross, have a long association with the Hannon's and have found most of both the Hannon's best horses for middle to lower level price ranges.
Pacemaker ran a three part series of feature articles on Jack Doyle from December 1981 to February 1982. Doyle was quoted saying, 'the Lord knows when it comes to this game just how little we know'.
He was never put off by the bottom part of a pedigree producing animals that had done well in the National Hunt sphere. He termed these 'rough families' and reckoned that all the good two year olds he bought for Ryan Price and the Prendergasts contained this element.
He also stated, 'the only thing that makes a horse expensive is pedigree. But there is no such thing as a bad pedigree. Some families are better than others because they have had more chance'.
What of the ones whose viewing skills are not as fine as others? It would depend on how much emphasis you attribute to this part of the exercise. Mark Johnston has revealed he begins with pedigrees as his starting point, whereby the dams must have achieved a certain level of form racing or have beared foals who have gone on and achieved a certain level of form. Once he has his short list Johnston will not examine any entrants outside of it.
It makes you wonder how much of an eye you need when a qualified vet puts more accent on what is showing in print. While you probably do need many years of experience to 'develop an eye', it's conceivable that anyone with the right connections could get through a crash course in pedigrees in a few weeks, then be able to compile their own short list, set of rules, and then just hit lucky.
If setting up with a leaning towards the pedigree side I suppose you would be best advised to play down the physical assessment and intuitive part, to sully those who claim to have a 'feel' and spot a 'presence' in one after a live viewing, to play up the pedigree assessment angle and to claim that it takes years of studying pedigrees to effectively assess a catalogue page.
The sport is full of famous horses with ' defects' or who 'weren't correct', as they like to say. Mummy's Pet a great progenitor of speed apparently had dreadful hind legs, while we are told it is not uncommon for Northern Dancer male line horses to have parrot mouths, with Dancing Brave being a prime example. Championing such examples helps those who put the main emphasis on pedigree.
Every so often a story will break away from the inside of this clique and will shed an appalling light on the industry. The sale of the Tale Quale gelding eventually named Pru's Profile springs readily to mind.
It is a well-documented story involving collusive bidding involving trainer Paul Webber who then worked for the Curragh Bloodstock Agency, and Oliver Sherwood. It was found that the animal in question had it's price falsely inflated and the episode ended with the High Court awarding the buyer over £50,000 in damages against the bloodstock agency.
One of the most disturbing aspects of this to an outsider was that both Webber and Sherwood received a good deal of support and sympathy from within the business. The general consensus seemed to be that it is a practice that is common and that Webber and Sherwood were unfortunate to be made scapegoats.
We are now approaching the height of the sales season. Doublespeak and doublecrossing, corrective surgery, rumours that some consignors have means and ways of nurturing eye-catching but temporary physiques in their stock, the loss-leading buys to hype up stallions. We'll see the sales reports and results not knowing half of what is really happening.
image Auctioneer and assistants, Cheviot,Ohio, 2004 by Rick Dikeman CC BY-SA 3.0
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