What secures Kentucky's treasured and coveted role as the Thoroughbred epicenter of the planet? The Kentucky Derby? No. Other races are richer and ó to individuals in other countries ó 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 ó more than anywhere else ó 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 ó 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 ó standing exclusively in Kentucky and led by Storm Cat and Seeking the Gold ó 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