"What secures Kentucky's treasured and coveted role as the Thoroughbred epicenter of the planet? The Kentucky Derby? No. Other races are richer and — to individuals in other countries — more important. The quality of its year-round racing? No. Racing circuits in New York and California offer a larger number of important stakes and host first-class racing nine to 11 months a year compared to Kentucky, where first-class racing occurs about four months a year. Its rich farmland and lush bluegrass? A factor, yes, but other parts of the world and other U.S. states also have rich farmland. Is Kentucky a large, wealthy and populous state? No, no and no.
And yet, Kentucky — more than anywhere else — is where owners, breeders and agents converge to buy and sell racing prospects (yearlings and 2-year-olds) and breeding stock. It is where they board their best horses. On a Wednesday or Thursday in April or October, attendance at Keeneland on the outskirts of Lexington sometimes approaches 30,000, dwarfing the crowd of 8,000 to 10,000 in attendance on a typical Saturday (as opposed to mid-week) at Belmont Park on the outskirts of New York City. What is the secret?
It is the quality of the stallions standing in the state. Kentucky's primacy derives from that factor more than any other. It assures that the best broodmares reside in Kentucky, producing the most genetically gifted offspring, some of which are sold through a sales company (Keeneland) that doubles eight weeks out of the year as a racetrack and can afford to fund purses that attract the nation's best racing stables.
Top stables attract enthusiastic racing fans, creating a unique equine culture rarely seen elsewhere — although extant also in places like Newmarket, England, Deauville, France, Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It's the stallions. And some already have left.
Among 1999's top 20 sires by international progeny earnings, 11 were Japanese-based, and six of those were North American-bred; three were European-based and also North American-bred, and six were North American-based (and North American-bred). This list confirmed the monetary dominance of Japanese racing and the sires based in Japan, but it also reassured that a healthy contingent of North American-based sires — standing exclusively in Kentucky and led by Storm Cat and Seeking the Gold — remained major international factors. The three European-based but North American-bred stallions ranked among the top 20, but all had raced exclusively in Europe and had stayed there as breeding stallions.
Seven years later, in 2006, only two North American-based stallions were ranked among the top 20 sires by international earnings, but among the 17 Japanese-based stallions in the top 20, seven (one more than in 1999) were North American-bred. How did this trend start?
In late 1990, with relatively little fanfare, more than a century-long tradition of outstanding Thoroughbred stallion prospects coming to North America from foreign countries was reversed with the purchase and importation to Japan of 1989 Eclipse Horse of the Year and Kentucky Derby-Preakness winner Sunday Silence. The scenario at the time did not seem all that unusual: Sunday Silence's part-owner, Arthur B. Hancock III, had tried to syndicate the colt for $250,000 per share (roughly $10 million in "book value" assuming 40 shares) but found only three breeders willing to commit. Hancock needed the capital gain to offset outstanding bank loans incurred in the expansion of his Stone Farm in Bourbon County, where he obviously had hoped to stand Sunday Silence along with more than a dozen stallions based there. The late Japanese industrialist, Zenya Yoshida, already owned 25 percent of the champion — purchased for $2.5 million following Sunday Silence's 1989 season — and acquired the remaining 75 percent for a reported $8.5 million, establishing the tenacious competitor as an $11 million property destined for the Japanese island of Hokkaido.
"It was the most wrenching decision I've had to make," Hancock later told David Schmitz of The Blood-Horse magazine. Before the decade of the 1990s was over, Sunday Silence would be unequivocally the world's leading Thoroughbred sire in international progeny earnings, established by his offspring's domination of what belatedly and almost reluctantly was acknowledged as the world's richest racing circuit. Without resorting to video lottery terminals (slot machines) or casino gambling, Japanese horseracing had capitalized on a homogenous, highly literate and highly numerate population that held a love of horses dating back centuries, developing an easily playable and efficiently administered racing circuit that continues to be the envy of the world. The offspring of Sunday Silence completely ruled this domain and eventually won important stakes in virtually every major racing nation as well.
Sunday Silence's home from 1991 until his death in August of 2002, Shadai Stallion Station, was not some remote, wind-swept outpost — nor was it a tenuous enclave surrounded by housing developments and shopping centers. The island of Hokkaido is about the size of Kentucky, and on the same approximate latitude as New York. Shadai Stallion Station is near the town of Shiraoi with a population of about 21,000 on the south-central coastline of Hokkaido. Cattle ranching, fishing and growing shiitake mushrooms are other major industries of the area, which has a population density of about 49 people per square kilometer and prides itself on being a city where people of all ages can live a healthy and active lifestyle. Sunday Silence's situation had to compare favorably with, say, that of North America's most expensive stallion ($500,000 stud fee), the late William T. Young's privately owned Storm Cat, who stands within a stone's throw of Lexington's Hartland subdivision.
In 1999, The Blood-Horse published its first list of leading international sires, which Sunday Silence led with total progeny earnings of $46,290,563 for that year, followed in third and fourth places by two more North American-bred stallions standing in Japan: Jade Robbery (who had raced in France) and Brian's Time. Storm Cat, who in 1999 ranked as the leading North American-based sire for the first of two consecutive years, was fifth on the international list with total progeny earnings of $12,028,000 in North America, Europe, Japan and Dubai.
Ranked ninth on the 2006 list of leading international sires (again led by the late Sunday Silence) was North American-bred and Argentine-based Candy Stripes — sire of international superstar and 2006 Eclipse Horse of the Year Invasor — and right behind him was a New Zealand-based stallion. Further down the list, one of the former leading Japanese-based and North American-bred stallions now stands in Australia. Increasingly, Pacific Rim and Asian nations have developed racing and breeding industries that are seeking out equine genetic "home run" acquisitions along the lines of Sunday Silence and are scrutinizing North American breeding stock (based mainly in Kentucky) for overlooked gems. Other stallions bred in Kentucky that have achieved prominence as sires after being sent abroad include Sadler's Wells (although he raced in England and Ireland before standing in Ireland), Forty Niner (Japan), Charismatic (Japan), Timber Country (Japan and Australia), and Spend a Buck (Brazil). What are the implications for Kentucky of what appears to be a growing trend, and how might this trend be addressed?
Gary Biszantz, principal founder of Cobra Golf (sporting goods), owner of Cobra Farm near Lexington and the longest serving chairman of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association in that organization's history, feels passionately that the state's legislature needs to constantly think: How do we help the horse industry? "Within Kentucky's economy, the horse industry is the largest industry in the state," Biszantz said, "and Kentucky's legislature needs to step up and realize that controlling and managing gambling — rather than trying to restrict it — is essential. The best places to allow gambling are places where gambling already exists — and that's the tracks. Also, why are cows and pigs free of sales taxes, but in Kentucky, in order to get tax exemptions for yearlings or 2-year-olds, you have to ship them out of state?" (Editorial note: For tax exemptions on yearlings, buyers must also be out-of-state residents.)
These and other adjustments, such as better depreciation schedules, Biszantz feels, would help provide incentives for keeping the best stallions in the state, although Biszantz also acknowledges that, "Racing has not done it right (marketing the sport) for 40 to 50 years."
Biszantz was forthcoming in pointing out an encouraging development: Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum's Darley at Jonabell Farm on the southwestern side of Fayette County announced it had purchased the breeding rights to 2007 Kentucky Derby one-two finishers Street Sense and Hard Spun. Both horses are scheduled to stand at that farm when their racing careers are concluded, along with 2006 Preakness winner and Eclipse Champion Bernardini, who is standing his first season there this year. Darley also has farms in Australia, Ireland and Japan. Biszantz is certain of Sheikh Mohammed's goal: "He (Sheikh Mohammed) realizes how hard it is to win the Kentucky Derby and feels it's better to breed in Kentucky with that goal in mind than to breed in Dubai. He has the resources to make that commitment, and I applaud him for doing so. But for smaller breeders, it's hard to achieve your goals when you aren't getting any help (regarding purse enhancements or breeding incentives). Politicians think that people in the horse industry are all fat cats and don't need any help. Certainly, housing and development are necessary, but you can't do it at the expense of destroying an industry."
Hancock, who still expresses twinges of regret for having sold Sunday Silence but feels that, financially, it was the best decision at the time, recalled that Yoshida, who had purchased the colt, was not influenced by narrow views many American breeders held regarding stallion prospects. "Yoshida liked a good racehorse, and Sunday Silence had not run on Lasix (an anti-bleeder medication generically known as furosemide) or Bute (phenylbutazone, an anti-inflammatory medication), which is not legal in Japan," explained Hancock, who is on record as opposing lenient drug regulations. "American breeders just didn't want to breed to him; they thought he was a fluke, a freak, possibly another Citation (1948 Triple Crown winner who was a disappointment as a sire). And someone like him, who looks a little different and doesn't have the fashionable pedigree, could come along again and still end up going abroad."
At Keeneland this past April, a Japanese-bred horse from Sunday Silence's next-to-last crop won the $400,000 Commonwealth Breeders Cup by four lengths in near-record time. As in the auto industry, Americans are still learning from the Japanese."