Leading U.S. owner intends selling stock

Press, 28 June 1989, Page 29

Leading U.S. owner intends selling stock

By

DAVID MCCARTHY

Eugene Klein, the leading owner, by money won, for three of the last four years in the United States, has announced his intention to sell up his racing and breeding stock at auction next month.

Among Klein’s horses being offered is the 1988 Kentucky Derby winner, Winning Colors, the Eclipse Award winner among the three-year-old fillies; and Open Mind which won the Eclipse (equivalent to our “Horse of the Year”) among the two-year-old fillies.

Klein is a relative newcomer to racing in America having first come to prominence through his ownership of leading baseball teams there. He quickly experienced success, however, and since 1985 has won more than SUS 26 million in stake money. He was the leading owner in 1985 ($5.45 million) 1986 ($4.33 million) and 1987 ($5.74

million) and was second to Ogden Phipps last year when his stock earned $5.63 million.

Phipps, aged 80, is one of America’s most famous owner-breeders and he also won two Eclipse awards last year; with Personal Ensign, the champion older mare which was retired unbeaten after thirteen starts, and Easy Goer the champion two-year-old colt.

Easy Goer won the Belmont Stakes in New York recently preventing Sunday Silence from achieving the first-Triple Crown among American three-year-olds since Affirmed eleven years ago.

Runner-up to Affirmed in all three of those races was Alydar, the sire of Easy Goer. Phipps also broke a more recent tradition last year. His five individual Group One ' winners all carried the blood of Buckpasser, the best horse raced by Phipps, but none had a drop of Northern

Dancer blood, an unusual occurrence in international racing these days. Klein has fallen far short of the Phipps family (Phipps’ son is chairman of the New York Jockey Club) when it comes to stamina as an owner whatever his achievements. However he told reporters recently that he had never been in racing for the “long haul” and was more than satisfied with what he had achieved. Klein horses won seven Breeders’ Cup events which have provided some of the toughtest of international competition in recent years and altogether won eleven Eclipse awards.

About 150 of his horses are expected to be offered for sale. Klein’s announcement comes hot on the heels of another one: that the prominent American breeder, Brownell Combs, is to sell his breeding operation to Arab in-

terests. There is growing apprehension in Europe that the wholesale success of Arabian owners is driving others from the industry and discouraging newcomers from joining in. Individual owners, no matter how wealthy, are finding competition with Arab money impossible, a recent example being the once dominant Robert Sangster whose major wins are few and far between these days. Arabian interest have recently moved into Australia through the Emirates Stud in New South Wales and are now well established in Kentucky. The exit of wealthy owners such as Klein usually leaves a space other rich sportsmen are keen to fill but there seems little question that enthusiasm is being dampened by the domination of English and Irish racing as well as the French classics this season by the Maktoum brothers.