Can AP Indy colt balance the books?
The old adage is that the best way to walk away from horse racing with a small fortune is start with a large one.
Benjamin Leon Jnr would seem to have the first part of the deal done as, three years ago, he traded in part of his healthcare company for $400million. Now he will see if he is to become one of those for whom the high-risk world of bloodstock sales proves to be bad for his health.
On Sunday night Leon, a 65-year-old who arrived in America in 1961 from Cuba, signed the cheque for a yearling colt at the opening session of Keeneland September Sale, where dreams can be bought – for a price. In this case it was the small matter of $4.2million (about £2.7million) for a colt by AP Indy, the Belmont Stakes and Breeders’ Cup Classic winner of 1992, out out of multiple Grade One winner Balance, a half- sister to Zenyatta.
Whether the yearling will ever manage to balance the books for Leon will be a question hanging over his head from the moment that his trainer, Todd Pletcher, takes him out on to the track for a first workout to the time of his first race. And Pletcher knows a thing or two about how disappointing that can turn out to be.
In January 2006 the main players behind the Coolmore Stud group paid out a jaw-dropping $16million at the Fasig-Tipton Calder Sale for a two-year-old who was named The Green Monkey. Having put that many greenbacks on the table there were concerns that, for a variety of reasons, Pletcher could not get him to the track until the September of his three-year-old season and by the November went into a less than glorious retirement following one third place and two fourths in three career runs. He was retired to stud at an original fee of just $5,000.
Coolmore were among the underbidders this time but Leon, a recent convert to racing who has been building up his racing and breeding interests, was determined to win this one. “I always had the dream of someday maybe being able to get into the Thoroughbred family, not on a quantity basis but on a quality basis, to do it right,” Leon said. “That’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to come up with a small herd of top-quality racing and breeding horses.”
The bay colt was the second AP Indy colt that Leon has bought for seven figures at public auction this year. The other was the $1.2 million son of champion sprinter Maryfield that topped the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga select yearling sale last month.
“If you want quality, you have to pay for it,” Leon said of his latest recruit. “Todd thought he was the best horse in the sale; he has the pedigree to be a superstar, he's got size and looks, he's got everything. And if the other guys bid $4.1million, or whatever, it was nothing for me to go another $100,000. The whole thing was just fun.
"We couldn't find anything wrong with him, including the pedigree, and you need that in order to become a very good stud in the future," Leon said of his latest recruit, but his next sentence summed up what can appear to non-believers to be the economics of the madhouse. “And now he's got to do what he's gotta do to get there.”
Just what this colt will have to achieve to recoup the initial outlay will be to win at least one of the major races in the racing calendar, which sounds easy enough but has proven beyond some of those for whom big prices have been a precursor to bid disappointments.
Four years ago, at the corresponding sale, Sheikh Mohammed put in the winning bid of $11.7million for as colt whom he would name Meydan City and was last seen finishing seventh of eight in a handicap at Nad al Sheba in February 2009.
However, the sheikh’s relentless enthusiasm is – like Samuel Johnson’s view of second marriage – a triumph of hope over experience. In 1983 he announced himself to the bloodstock world when he laid out $10.2million for a son of Northern Dancer.
Snaaafi Dancer was sent to John Dunlop but never to a racecourse with his trainer apparently describing the horse as a lovely mover tight up to the point when he started to gallop.
The Roma poet Virgil once wrote: “Fortune sides with him who dares”.
If nothing else Leon has been daring, time will show if he wins.
Tags: