BRED in the PURPLE

Korero (AEWS), Volume 3, Issue 2, 26 February 1945, Page 18

BRED in the PURPLE

Three thousand guineas for the toppriced colt, from Foxbridge out of Ann Acre, 1,550 guineas for the top-priced filly, by Nizami from White Gold, 90,865 guineas for the 194 yearlings sold, 456 guineas the average price. There, in figures, is the story of New Zealand's “ nineteenth annual national sale of thoroughbred yearlings ” at Trentham Stables on January 19 and 25, 1945. And every figure is a record. If to the total of the yearling sales is added the return from the 75 brood mares, stallions, horses in training, and untried stock sold on January 26, it brings the sales to 269 lots and the receipts to 113,674 guineas. Even that odd shilling which divides the plain pound from the lordly guinea is important ; it means in this total £5,683 10s., so that in pounds shillings and pence the sales brought breeders £119,357 IOS -> a respectable sum. Add to these figures a few facts about the weather —the first day very hot and very wet and the second two days very hot and very fine and it might almost be supposed that the whole story of the sales has been told. There is a little more to it than that. There is, for instance, the harmless but intriguing mystery which for a time surrounded the identity of the buyer of the toppriced colt. That 3,000 guineas should be given for a colt by an unknown purchaser was too much for the rumourmongers. Immediately Wellington was flooded with reports that the colt had been bought by a United States soldier. The only really strange thing about this rumour is that it seems to have been correct, or rather, as nearly correct as

any rumour could possibly be. The purchase at the sale was made by Mr. A. Winder, Te Rapa, as agent for Mr. A. E. Bowler, a well-known promoter of amusement enterprises in Auckland. Mr. Bowler himself later announced that he had a buying commission from an American at present in the United States Armed Forces ; he did not know, however, whether the American would want the colt, and if he did' not Mr. Bowler would keep possession. In any event, the colt will remain in New Zealand until after the war in the charge of Mr. Winder. Like Topsy, the yearling sale has “ growed ” from very small beginnings ; in 1927 at the first sale 49 yearlings brought £17,161, with a top price of 1,025 guineas for a bay colt. At the second sale, in 1928, the great Phar Lap, a chestnut colt by Night Raid from Entreaty, was bought by Mr. A. J. Davidson, of Sydney, for 160 guineas ; he was to win in stakes for his owners £70,000, a pleasant return on the original investment. Since that first sale nearly 2,000 yearlings have been sold for almost £500,000 —the exact figures are 1,934 yearlings and £441,085. Moreover, it is hard to see where or when the sales will stop growing ; 1943 was a record with 39,592 guineas given for 157 horses, 1944 another record with guineas paid for 161 yearlings, and, of course, the 1945 figures were better still with 33 more yearlings sold, another 23,000 guineas spent. Only one record remains now to be broken : the auctioneers have still to sell a better horse than Phar Lap at a lower price. There, no doubt, is the dream of every buyerthe purchase of a second Phar

Lap. It is a hope the auctioneel' is always ready to encourage; for every horse he has a special plea. Some, to use his own veteran phrase, are bred in the purple ’’; upon their pedigree he gives little lectures, with the usual references to the untold thousands earned by the “ own brother ” to this colt or that filly and to the performances on the course and at the stud of sire and dam, of grandsire and grandam through Heaven knows how many generations. Of the others, less promisingly bred, he knows how to talk. His patter here is different; . unblushingly he contradicts flatly his arguments of a few bare minutes before. ‘ ‘ Never mind lineage, think of the individual. Look at the stance of him. That chest will never let you down, plenty of room to breathe there ; here’s a colt in a thousand. Back your own judgment ! ” The fascinating thing is that that is just what these quiet, men around the ring are doing—backing their own judgment, and backing it not for a few pounds but for many hundreds of pounds. And the risk they take is a long-distance risk. It will be twelve months at least until the horse is raced as a two year old ; it may be three years or longer until the wisdom of the purchase is proved. They are quiet and efficient, these men who take such risks. About the ring there is much bustle and more noise, but it is not the buyers who make it. They are so quiet, so undemonstrative, that an outsider cannot see who is bidding—here a catalogue is quietly raised and another £IOO goes on to the price of a colt which perhaps already stands at £SOO or £6OO ; from' another direction there is a slight nod and the price is up another £SO ; a raised pencil somewhere towards the back of the crowd and it’s up another £IOO. In a matter of minutes it’s all over. The Foxbridge colt was sold in under seven minutes ; bidding began at 1,000 guineas and raced through the hundreds to 3,000 guineas before the crowd caught its breath. Another Foxbridge brought 1,500 guineas in three minutes. Of course, it is not all so easy as that. It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that the Foxbridges were sold before they entered the ring. There are fashions in racehorses just as there are fashions in

hats, and Foxbridges are in the fashion just now. It is a fashion, however, that has a . solid basis of performance and ■pedigree, which is more than can be said of hats. The black colt which brought the top price was by Foxbridge out of Ann Acre and a full brother to Bridge Acre and Al-Sirat. Zetes, for whom 2,400 guineas, the previous record, was paid at the 1929 sales, was by Limond from Water Wings ; and Oratorian, for whom also 2,400 guineas was paid in 1930, was by Hunting Song from Oratress. In other words, they had the trade-mark of quality—but these are big sums of money to pay for one colt who may break a leg or sicken and die before he has time to prove himself on the course or at the stud. It’s a chancy business, and it is not surprising that during the eighteen years of the sale only seven horses have brought over 2,000 guineas. The Foxbridges dominated the sale. The fourteen colts and the five fillies sold brought in all 23,610 guineas ; only six sold at under 1,000 guineas, and one, a black colt out of Gay Blonde, brought I >7s° guineas, with Mr. Andrew Grant, of Fairlie, as the buyer. The top price for the Foxbridge fillies was 1,300 guineas, which was brought by two, one out of Card Player and one out of April Fool. This bidding is easy to understand. Foxbridge for five years has led the winning sires list in New Zealand, and he still leads it. At the Auckland Cup meeting he was represented by the winners of the Auckland Cup, Railway Handicap, Great Northern Foal Stakes, Queen’s Plate, Christmas Handicap, and Nursery Handicap. The catalogue carried this enticing note about him : “ Half brother to Cresta Run, winner of three races valued at £14,540, including One Thousand Guineas in record time, and Imperial Produce Stakes. Sire of Foxmond (Great Northern Oaks), Fearless Fox (Queensland Derby), Lou Rosa (Great Northern Foal Stakes, Royal Stakes, &c.), Regal Fox (Great Northern Derby), Black Ace (A.R.C. Welcome Stakes, 1944), Bridge Acre (Wellington R.C. Guineas, 1944), and Al Sirat (Wellington Racing Club Karitane Handicap, 1944), &c.” His stock would certainly seem to be a good buy.

Foxbridge was not utterly alone in his glory, however. Robin Goodfellow provided six fillies and six colts which brought 7,500 guineas and included the top-priced filly, a chestnut out of Sunny Maid, for which Mr. C. C. Davis, of Christchurch, paid 1,550 guineas. His top-priced colt was also a chestnut, this time out of Horomea. For it Mr. F. Firetti, Taita, gave 1,375 guineas. Secondhighest price of the sale was the 1,800 guineas given for a brown colt by Bulandshar out of Kana, with Mr. W. Owen, of Christchurch, as the buyer. Another Bulandshar colt from Portadown brought 1,500 guineas, and altogether nine colts and two fillies brought 8,695 guineas. There were only four offerings of Balloch stock, but they sold very well, three colts from Anteroom, Numulus, and Nassau bringing 1,600, 1,000 and 1,400 guineas respectively and a filly from Wyndale 1,400 guineas. Thus four Balloch yearlings earned 5,400 guineas. Six Coronach colts brought 4,205 guineas and two fillies 1,900 guineas, 6,105 guineas in all; and 12 Nizami fillies 7,020 guineas and three colts 920 guineas, a total of 7,940 guineas. One Nightmarch filly out of Praise brought 1,500

guineas and another by Variant 650 guineas, with a total for three fillies and two colts offered of 2,360 guineas. Yearlings like these almost sell themselves. With others the auctioneer has to fight for every guinea. The story he tells is worth listening to. He begins with typical buoyant optimism, and proceeds to his final “ All done ? Can’t dwell. Must sell ! ” through a bewildering variety of moods. He is alternately reproachful, threatening, coaxing, sometimes angry and, as a last resort, pathetic. The buyers are always shy and difficult. Very seldom do they begin the bidding at anything near the market value of an animal, although once the bidding is begun it goes on very swiftly in the case of a popular breed. The auctioneer starts the ball rolling with his few comments and a suggestion as to the price : “ Wonderful family, gentlemen, wonderful family.” Then, briskly, “ Well now, where shall we start ? 1,400 guineas, 1,200 guineas, a thousand ? Come now, gentlemen, we’ve got to start somewhere. What about 500 guineas ? Thank you, sir, it’s far below his value, but we’ve got to start somewhere.” Soon enough, if the auctioneer is lucky, the price is up to 950 guineas,

and then his cry becomes “ Even it up, even it up, make it the thousand. What’s an extra 50 at this price ? ” and, the cunning of this is amusing, “ No need to count the cost now. It’s against you, sir. Surely you’re not going to let a 1,000 guinea colt go for want of a miserable fifty.” Usually he gets his thousand. But he will fight just as hard for 150 guineas, labouring his way through rises as small as £2. 10s. And there lies the great secret of his art ; he knows when to reduce the rises from 50 guineas at a time to 25, to 10, to 5, and in the last resort to £2. 10s. Very seldom is- he beaten ; it is a rare occasion indeed when a yearling is led out of the ring unpurchased to the accompaniment of his firm comment: “ I’m not hawking him, gentlemen. It’s a rotten price we’re getting, and I’m not going to hawk an animal like this. You’ll have to do better if you want him.” The scene as he sells is fascinating. In the ring is the yearling, shy, sensitive, leggy, and beautiful. His coat glistens in the rain or shines in the sun ; sometimes he jerks impatiently at his lead as his staring eyes show his dislike of crowds. In the ring, too, stand the spotters, three of them, to watch the bidding, shout the rises to the auctioneer, and identify the purchasers. Tucked away in a corner ready to leap forward the moment his services are needed is the small boy with his bucket and broom. Round the small ring is gathered the crowd, some sitting on the tiered stands, others moving restlessly about. Facing the semi-circle is the auctioneer in his small raised stand, microphone in front of him, loud-speakers at each side. In the rear, an anxious figure tucked away in a corner of the tiny contraption, is the breeder of the yearling on sale at the moment. With him the auctioneer consults occasionally, offering a word of congratulation or putting a question, to return with the decision to sell or not to sell. This is the tense moment for the highest bidder ; the yearling will be his at the price he has offered, it will be passed in, or if the owner and auctioneer decide to try a little longer he may, if he wants it badly enough, have to give another 50 or 100 guineas and his bargain

may become expensive. So in this brief interlude there are three anxious people, buyer, seller, and the auctioneer who doesn’t want his sale to lag. It is in these few seconds of decision as though the actors on this small stage were frozen into their typical attitudes. The spotters peer anxiously round the buyers ready to shout to the auctioneer should a catalogue be raised or a head nodded. The clerks below the box continue making their notes, professionally imperturbable. The reporters at the long table to the fight of the box and below it are mildly amused by the tricks of the trade which they have seen practised too often for them to be any novelty. Then the silence is broken either by a new bid—and that happens quite often by the horse being passed in. That pause may be worth quite a few guineas to the owner. It is good. tactics. From the more light-hearted and lessdignified members of the crowd there sometimes comes a ribald piece of advice. It is a curious mixture, this crowd. Scatterred through it are numbers of country people, most of them in what has become almost the uniform of the sheep-farmer come to town tweeds, always good, usually well cut, and sometimes with that pleasantly worn appearance, a rather careless soft hat with the brim down all round, and so on. With them are wives or daughters or just friends, some in j hodpurs and stock, others in tweeds or, if the day is fine some sort of linen frock. Then there are the racing folk, smarter, nattier, with something about the tilt of the hat, some extra stripe in the suit, some rakishness about the pin in the tie that makes them unmistakeable. There is even something about the tone of the voice. And to finish it off there are the curious odds and ends which any crowd produces a few art students struggling to get the long legs of the yearlings to look right in their rough notes, a few men in uniform, most of them obviously absent without leave, the inevitable Waac with even a Waaf and perhaps a Wren, and the boy with the bucket and broom who carefully follows the careless yearlings round the ring. On a fine day it is a very pleasant scene indeed ; there is about it all the atmos-

phere of a fair with something, too, of a small country show. On a wet day, like the first day of this year’s sale, the whole affair becomes bedraggled, and if the day is hot as well as wet the discomfort reaches its peak. The hills which rise up on both sides of the Trentham racecourse seem to compress the small wet valley into an oven, the noise becomes irritating, the auctioneer seems to be fighting the weather and the buyers as well, and there is no humour and little fun. The tarpaulins over the stands leak here and there, and underneath, the packed spectators squirm in sticky discomfort. There is one note of colour. An elderly patron, immaculately clad to the point of foppishness, is wandering around the ring carefully protecting himself against the rain with a bright red and yellow beach parasol. The only refuge seems to be the bar, which is very small, very crowded, and only moderately convivial. In the corner stand three casks with, on top of them, a crate of soft drinks, and with these cluttered adjuncts of drinking it is almost impossible to move. Outside it rains harder and harder, and through the rain comes the insistent, tireless voice of the auctioneer. Sometimes, when the bidding is slow, his staccato trumpetings become like a needle stuck in a gramo-

phone record : “ 130 I am offered, 130, 130, 130, any advance on 130, any advance, any advance, 130 it is, 130 it is. Can’t dwell. Going to sell.” At last, with a sigh of relief, “ Sold ! ” Then it starts all over again. Still, it’s a human little cubby hole, the bar. And so useful —on a fine day a refuge from the heat, on a wet day a refuge from the rain, always a refuge from something. The last lot sold, the captains and the kings of the racing world depart in the large and shining motor-cars which grace the entrance to the stables, and the humbler patrons by train and bus. The scene now is a bit empty and depressing. All that is left are a few recollections already dim and faint, a few mental snapshotsthe wistful comment of a breeder who had sold a colt for 1,500 guineas, ‘‘l’d like to have raced him myself,” the bonus of £SO that went to the colt’s stable boy, the hard-luck racing tales of the less-prosperous veterans who travelled by train, the murmered reflections of a tired soul worrying about the next race meeting : ‘‘So and so ought to pay a hatful if he wins. Bill might give me the tip if I can find him ” ; the irritated comment of a disappointed breeder : ‘‘We might get decent prices if we could get rid of these . blasted Foxbridges ” ; and the fact that the beer was free.