9 minute read
First Word
Different Times
THE long journey home from Deauville was made more enjoyable with the purchase and re-reading of an iconic 1980s-written Dick Francis stud-based crime novel. Francis always based his fictional stories on reality, but so much has changed since he penned his words
MY RETURN ON THE Dieppe to Newhaven ferry from the long weekend in Deauville after an enjoyable time at the Arqana August Sale had looked as though it would be a very boring few hours, spent in my cabin with nothing to read or watch.
My usual well-plotted pre-journey strategy of downloading a few films, TV programmes or books in order to pass the time on such occasions had been forgotten over the busy sale weekend. With no accessible wi-fi on board (the ferry’s lauded internet far too weak to even register on my phone let alone allow films to be streamed), it looked as though I had a very dull few hours ahead of me.
After a failed attempt at some sleep, I wandered up to Duty Free for some window shopping, such a bizarre mix of goods in the shops, and to buy my nephews some giant bars of Milka chocolate (a present always greeted with awe).
There was a small book stall and I browsed, not expecting to find anything to read, the stand housing trashy badly written stories; click-bait novels without a decent story line and characters devoid of personality have rather worn thin.
But, bizarrely, nestled in amongst the rom-coms and the repetitive spy stories, was a Dick Francis. And it was one of the “originals” – Banker.
As a teenager I read all of the author’s books, fell in love with every brave and daring and courageous hero, who always shrugged off broken limbs and death threats as mere inconveniences but yet was still endearingly vulnerable.
The heroes were always in touch with emotions, kind, generous and, of course, always men and always good-looking; the James Bonds of the racing world.
Francis’s books were a massive part of my growing up experience, and were the first set of “adult” books I read with polite references to sex and love.
However, for me, the far more influential references were to the brave jockeys riding steeplechasers at thrilling speeds over fences; with hindsight I am convinced the books massively stoked my own desire to ride racehorses.
Merrick Francis, son of the late jockey and blockbuster writer, was at Arqana that weekend – he has sold his successful Lambourn Racehorse Transport business but was in France still overseeing operations – so I decided that purchase of his father’s book was meant to be.
I gleefully handed over the euros – I can’t remember the last time I bought a print version of a book – and returned to my cabin with the enjoyable prospect of revisiting my teenage crushes.
Banker, written originally in 1981, and the version I had purchased reprinted in 2014, is a tale of, as you would expect, a banker named Timothy Ekaterin, and he is our hero. He had some childhood involvement in racing due to a mother who gambled away the family fortune (would not have happened under affordability checks), but he had left the sport to concentrate on his finance career, and to bury unhappy memories.
He was approached by Oliver Knowles, a stud owner and stallion man, to help fund the purchase of a colt to stand at a fictional farm in Hertfordshire. Of course, the individual was a true Francis equine hero: he was a brilliant racehorse and had won the 2,000 Guineas, finished fourth in the Derby, got back to winning ways in the King Edward VI Stakes at Royal Ascot, the “Diamond” Stakes and the Champion Stakes, which was run, as was the case then, at Newmarket.
The colt was typically handsome with a Classic pedigree and promised to propel Knowles’s small-scale stud to a new level of prominence in the bloodstock industry.
As the story unfolds Ekaterin, who had not been involved in the bloodstock industry, has to gain a quick understanding of the financing of a stallion and Francis uses this opportunity to explain how (as recently as the 1980s) that was strategised – Ekaterin finds a helpful bloodstock agent named Ursula Young to explain the money to him.
“Well, a stallion covers 40 mares in a season. Some can do more, but others get exhausted. So 40 is the accepted number,” she says.
She continues: “So to fix the stallion fee for the first three years you divide the price of the stallion by 12o, and that’s it. That’s the fee charged for the stallion to cover a mare. That’s the sum you receive if you sell your nomination.”
Ekaterin, a good man for the sums, quickly did the figures: “That means that if you sell your nomination for three years you have recovered the total amount of your original investment. And after that... every time, every year you sell your nomination, it is clear profit? And how long does that go on?”
Young said: “Ten to 15 years, depends on the stallion’s potency. It is one of the best investments on earth!”
Easy money...!
For the purposes of the story line, and to ensure that Ekaterin’s bank was immediately on board with the investment, Francis has conveniently ignored all the things that can, and do, go wrong when a colt’s second career is developing.
This book was written in the 1980s and has not been subsequently updated. Then, as Young helpfully explains, a stallion would have in the region of 120 foals on the ground by the time his first crop reaches the racecourse. Some 35 years later those figures have exploded.
While farms still plan to “get out” of the horse by the time his stock make it to the racecourse, after dramatic shifts in management and techniques, stallions can now cover in the region of 150 to 200 mares a season, and all the figures have been dramatically extrapolated upwards.
Now a commercial stallion, who has full books of mares, could have nearly 600 foals born before he even has a runner; and the industry has been completely transformed due to the complete revision of the stallion business.
The changes have produced both good and bad outcomes the industry.
With books no longer limited to just 40, so many more mare owners have access to stallions they might wish to choose, books are not limited to just the elite few.
This, of course, can mean that better horses as whole are bred… broodmare owners can send their mares to better quality sires than they had to resort to previously.
The massive prices that developed in the 1980s for stock by Northern Dancer et al were created to an extent by the rarity value.
With only a handful by the ground-breaking sire coming onto the market each year, demand for stock by such sires went skywards; it made stallion nominations excessively expensive and led to the downfall of many over-extended farms as the bubble burst in association with the subsequent financial downturn.
While the industry has grown and mare owners perhaps have more opportunities, the overall broodmare bands have not expanded so much and the industry, in ways, has also contracted… the big-name sires, or the “sexy” new commercial first-crop stallions, can now take the bulk of a region’s spring coverings in a region.
It means that respectable stallions outside of the main echelon, don’t really get much of a look in.
It is such a number’s game now… a stallion struggles to succeed as a long-term proposition if he does not have large books and a stallion manager, standing a stallion perhaps not from the top bracket, has to weigh up possibly conflicting aims of filling a book whilst maintaining some level of mare quality.
Breeders, who are planning to sell the offspring, have mare, no matter how carefully they have planned the mating, might not from that stallion’s select harem.
With such a focus on a few sires with such large book sizes it explains why that oft-term “fashion” has become so important at the foal and yearling sales.
It is also makes the sale of foals or yearlings so vital to the owner… not often can they rely on any rarity factor to boost a sale, a decent price relies on hope value of that individual created by its physique, its own pedigree and, importantly, its stallion’s profile.
WITH FASHION (aka recent stallion results or mere gossip on the sale ground) dictating so many buying decisions at the sales the breeder needs to make plenty in the sale ring from any “in vogue” yearlings in order to make up for the ones who do not meet market expectations. It is very difficult now for the more “random” sire to make a success of his job.
It is big business now – a stallion covering 150 mares at a commercial fee of £15,000 produces a turnover of £2,250,000 p.a.; his purchase price will reflect this early income and and now only the big farms with big backers can only stand a young colt with a profile that will be high
If he had been writing today, Francis’s man Knowles would have struggled to get his chance to stand the Classic winner under his farm’s own finance.
Big business brings in big investors attached by the huge gains that can be made if a stallion hits his target. And in today’s world run on bigger, faster and larger finance, bloodstock has to be able to hold its own within a myriad of investment opportunities for those with the ready cash available to make more cash.
With such big business it requires vigilance to ensure that the our industry is not merely a way to launder big money by those who with ill-gotten gains.
And as for so much of the racing industry the changes over the last half decade has seen the bigger entities getting bigger and the smaller individual units struggling to make an impact. We are in danger of producing an industry that is not vertically aspirational.
In the 21st century Francis would definitely have had to explore a differing story line for his book.
Knowles’ ambitions to break through into the higher echelons of the industry may have had to see him court a range of Middle Eastern-based investors, or breed, produce and race colts himself with a view of then selling a good one for a lot of money to a large established farm.
And, instead of a dodgy horse guru featuring as the novel’s bad man, maybe a big time money swindler would be a more appropriate crook in today’s story.
