Thinking for the future

Last year Indian bloodstock agent Gaurav Rampal hit the headlines in his home country as a micro-share owner of Kentucky Derby and Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Authentic. Rampal explains to Aisling Crowe how he’d like to see similar syndicate ownership in India, how he thinks Indian racing should develop and how he is also putting his MBA to good use

AUTHENTIC’S TRIUMPH in the 2020 Kentucky Derby was the victory that went around the world; sparking celebrations from Churchill Downs to Kildare to Pune and plenty of places in between for the 5,314 people who owned the micro-shares in the son of Into Mischief through MyRacehorse.

Gaurav Rampal, a bloodstock agent of 15 years standing, was one of those whose tiny investment yielded enormous joy, cheering on the colt to Kentucky Derby and Breeders’ Cup Classic glory, despite difficulties of time and technology. His involvement in Authentic ignited interest in his home country with an article on the front page of The Times of India. In a country where cricket dominates the sporting discourse like no other, it was a rare foray into the mainstream headlines for a horseracing story.

The experience of Authentic was so positive that Rampal has invested in 14 twoyear-olds through the micro-sharing vehicle.

“Success needs to be rewarded,” he smiles, from his home in Pune, sitting below images of Sea The Stars. “They are doing a great job. The detail and the documentation you are provided with, the level of transparency is phenomenal.”

It has also given him even more of an insight into how a tiny morsel of success can be transformed into a banquet on which so many more could feast.

“I could only have dreamed of owning a Kentucky Derby winner but I had a share in one! It happened!” he exclaims. “Imagine if it wasn’t a COVID year, these 5,314 people would have been at Keeneland for the Breeders’ Cup and you can imagine what that would have been like.

“It shows how popular the sport could get. The press coverage in India was insane. It was the best investment for me ever. It was good for awareness of the sport in India, we don’t usually receive mainstream media coverage. It’s been a while since even the winner of the Indian Derby was on the front page of The Times.”

For Rampal, there are two keys factors to securing the future of Indian horseracing; investment in media and marketing and developing syndication as a way of attracting more people into ownership.

“A lot of effort and investment needs to go into marketing the sport, there needs to be huge investment in education. We need to introduce people to horses at a young age, so we need to have racing academies that teach horsemanship.

“We need to make people aware of the sport, to encourage them to get involved, to even go riding and that needs to brought to the majority of the population, it needs to be brought into the cities. We need to get youngsters hooked by horses and then racing. By making information more freely available and making horse ownership more accessible and cheaper the sport can develop,” he says.

“A lot of The racing and bloodstock effort and industries in India are investment concentrated in four main areas needs to go – Maharashtra, Karnataka, into marketing Punjab and Delhi – and the sport there are seven tracks. The season runs from November to October, but some tracks are unable to host racing in the heat of the summer months.

Every centre has its Classics, the regional Classics, but the mother of all Classics are the Indian ones held in Mumbai. The Indian Derby is for four-year-olds and is usually run on the first Saturday of February, but has been pushed back this year due to COVID and will be on the March 28.

Rampal acts as a bloodstock consultant to a number of Indian studs. He visits each farm every two or three weeks to advise on stock and give some business input

All the regional Classics are run for threeyear-olds, and the juvenile races don’t start till the end of October so there is very little two-year-old racing in the country.

The issues of funding and prize-money are so common to many racing jurisdictions around the globe, and India is no different. Rampal offers a bluntly honest assessment of the problems facing the industry in the country.

“It’s not healthy, we were looking at heading towards a correction anyway, but COVID has made it happen more quickly. We are experiencing a major problem with taxation; racing is the only sport you can legally bet on and betting is taxed very heavily, there is very little support from the government. We need to reinvent and monetise our assets to be more viable financially, with this tax structure the future looks bleak,” he confides.

“All the race clubs and the Turf Authority need to come together to reinvent the sport, to keep lobbying the government to make them aware that it is a sport that supports a lot of livelihoods and ancillary industries.

“We need those points made more forcefully to the government and since we are a very small minority involved in this sport, we don’t get the necessary attention from the government.”

Rampal embarked on his career 15 years ago. After two years working at the Poonawalla Stud Farm he had a year spent in banking and although he was then utilising his MBA in Finance and Marketing he was miserable, yearning to be back with horses and disliking the moments stuck behind a desk.

So he became just the third bloodstock agent working in India, and now there are just two, with the emigration of one of that original duo.

India’s major races and Classics are restricted to horses born in the country and only breeding stock can be imported from abroad so Rampal travels to Europe for the Goffs November Sale and the Tattersalls December Sale to purchase in-foal mares, who are transported to India before they foal so their offspring are eligible to race.

Kevin Needham of BBA Shipping, along with James Underwood, Ted Voute and Anthony Stroud earn Rampal’s gratitude and praise for the help and guidance they provided him with when he was first starting out. The teams at Goffs and Tattersalls have also provided him with assistance and support in what can be a lonely role.

India has a small broodmare band of around 2,800 divided amongst 25 or so stud farms and producing approximately 1,200 foals a year. There are 80 active stallions at stud in India, according to the online database of the Indian Stud Book and the vast majority raced in Europe. An important element of Rampal’s work is sourcing new sires for the farms he numbers amongst his clients. Europe is by far the most important source of stallions for the Indian bloodstock industry.

“Arod is my most recent stallion import, I bought him from Sheikh Fahad and he is a very nice son of Teofilo,” he explains. “He was a beast of a racehorse who won the Group 2 Summer Mile and was placed in Australia’s Derby and in the Lockinge and Sussex Stakes, he stands at Sans Craintes and his first foals are being born now.”

The Indian Derby is to be run this year on March 28 rather than on its usual late February date

A close relation of the horse whose artistic representation adorns his wall is another of Rampal’s recent imports to stud in India.

The Group 3 Meld Stakes winner Moonlight Magic,who was trained by Jim Bolger for Godolphin, stands at Equus Stud. He is a son of Cape Cross and his second dam is Urban Sea so he’s a three-parts brother to Sea The Stars. He is a half- brother to the Arc third Masterstroke, and his three-parts sister Khawlah is the dam of Godolphin’s homebred Derby hero Masar.

Ampere, a son of Sea The Stars’ older halfbrother Galileo, is another stallion whom Rampal has bought for Indian clients. He was trained by André Fabre to win the Group 2 Prix Hocquart and to finish second in the Group 1 Grand Prix de Paris for Andreas Putsch’s Haras de Saint Pair.

With so few stud farms, stallion choices are often dictated by the breeding goals of Rampal’s clients, who are buying the stallion.

IF THEY WANT to win the Derby they will ask him to find a stallion capable of siring Derby winners for them, and that is the ultimate aim of many of his clients. That’s not to say that sprinters and milers are not imported, indeed Rampal has enjoyed success with one such stallion, Surfrider.

“I bought a son of Dansili who raced in France named Surfrider, who won the Group 3 Prix Djebel and was second to Goldikova in the Forêt,” he recalls.

“They sent him to race in Belmont Park and I bought him from there. He was a proper 6f or 7f horse and stands at a boutique farm in India where he has done exceptionally well; last year he sired Trouvaille, the best three-year-old in the country who won the Pune Derby and 2,000 Guineas.”

A rare purchasing expedition to Australia also turned up trumps for Rampal, buying Kingda Ka, who had finished second in the Group 1 Rosehill Guineas for Gai Waterhouse.

He also stands at Nanoli, as does Cougar Mountain, a Group-winning son of Fastnet Rock out of a Nureyev half-sister to Zafonic, whom Rampal bought out of Ballydoyle.

“Even though Kingda Ka was a sprintermiler himself he has produced Classic winners. The current leading four-year-old in India is a horse called Lagarde, who has won three Classics in a row and is by Kingda Ka. It was a big experiment for us to go and buy a horse from Australia but it has worked out well.”

Trouvaille wins the Pune Derby. He is the best three-year-old in India, and is by the Dansili stallion Surfrider, bought by Rampal in the US

Dreamfield, a son of Oasis Dream out of Izzi Top, is another Rampal recruit to the Italian stallion ranks and he stands at Dashmesh Stud.

Those years spent studying for his MBA have also been put to use by Rampal, who also operates in a managerial consultant role for his clients.

“I consult for stud farms on their entire business management, and I visit these farms every two to three weeks to provide input on the business front and inspect the stock, to check their progress.

“This is an important part of my business in India now and I end up selling a lot of those horses for my clients. We have a culture of private sales here, you go to the studs, view the horses and do deals.

“We have a culture of private sales here, you go to the studs, view the horses and do deals

“The studs also run their own private auctions and I’m an auctioneer as well! But the speed of auctioneering is a bit slower here,” he laughs.

Derby winners, whether in Kentucky or Mumbai, are anything but slow, and Rampal’s involvement in both along with an authentic passion for the sport and for breeding ignited by riding lessons at boarding, have brought him to the front page of the Times of India and places he could only have dreamed.

Rampal finds time in his busy schedule and in non-COVID years to make a trip to Royal Ascot