Keeneland Coup All in a Day's Work for O'Callaghan

Peter O'Callaghan sells horses. That is to say, he gets them sold. Not because of any kind of unusually slick sales pitch, or complimentary coffee and cookies at the Woods Edge barn. He gets them sold for two reasons: first and foremost, because of an innate eye for the arc of development implied in the weanlings he examines every winter; but also because he resists the kind of stubborn reserves that can leave a pinhooker with too many balls in the air.

“Your clearance rate, in our business, is just vital,” the Irishman said, taking a break from showing his wares at Keeneland. “You have to keep selling. If you're coming out the right side of them, as long as you're getting one or two good ones along the way, you're making money. We're very pragmatic. I think we RNA'd one horse in the ring here last year. We will RNA, with one or two, but you don't want to be gathering them up. Whatever you paid for them, that was nine months ago. If it doesn't play out on the day, you have to accept it. In our experience, our first loss is our best loss.”

As such, even the spectacular touch that lit up the opening session of the ongoing September Sale needs placing in perspective. Yes, the unprecedented $400,000 punt O'Callaghan took on a colt from the first crop of American Pharoah (Pioneerof The Nile) in the same ring last November was lavishly vindicated when Godolphin paid $2.2 million for Hip 91. And yes, there have been several other profitable transactions since, notably $1,025,000 from Stonestreet Stables for the Ghostzapper (Awesome Again) filly O'Callaghan presented as Hip 740, who had been another white-knuckle $335,000 docket at the November Sale. But there will also have been hits to absorb among no fewer than 58 lots catalogued from Woods Edge across 11 sessions. And, while a net profit this time appears guaranteed, it could easily go in the next pile of chips.

Certainly O'Callaghan is not deceived that bigger and bigger investment, at the foal sales, will lead inexorably to bigger dividends.

“The American Pharoah was the most we ever paid for a foal,” he said. “But you know what, with these weanlings you can't have too many of those big price-tags in your barn. At $400,000, you're cutting out a lot of people on the selling end. Really the market for those good weanlings is either side of $200,000. Much past that, you're cutting out so many people that can potentially buy your horse. And last November was particularly tough. It seemed like every good foal cost $200,000, where in other years they just came in a bit less. It you can stay south of 200, you're giving yourself a chance. But this year the whole thing was a bit steeper.”

O'Callaghan was duly at full stretch for the son of the Triple Crown winner consigned last fall by Darby Dan. One more bid, in fact, would have denied him the second foal of the multiple graded stakes-placed Kindle (Indian Charlie).

“That was our absolute limit, no question,” he said. “Another bid and we were done. We knew we'd probably have to give $350,000, and a couple of bids-and we were on the wrong foot. At $375,000 you either leave him, or you bid $400,000. Which we did, and we got him. It was kind of a unique opportunity. He was a beautiful specimen by a great racehorse, the greatest we've had here since Secretariat. And he had a lovely female family: a fast mare, by Indian Charlie, out of a Carson City mare. So it was speed, speed, speed all through the bottom side.”

“He was the first Pharoah in the ring [at that sale], but we also felt he was the best one. We weren't sure we'd have a chance to buy him: there's a lot of racing money in the weanling market, particularly in November. So all you can do is be prepared, go in there knowing what kind of level you might still have a chance of making some money. If a big end-user came in over the top of us, so be it. So we just went in and stretched for him.”

For those who faced a similar test of their own resolve and resources, when the colt returned to the ring last week, there was an additional incentive in the proven benefits of the Woods Edge regime. O'Callaghan, after all, processed such future stallions as Drefong (Gio Ponti), Eskendereya (Giant's Causeway) and Street Boss (Street Cry {Ire}) through this same auction.

That record is unsurprising in a member of the extraordinary family that has produced two authentic rags-to-riches stallions back home in Ireland: his father Gay, mother Annette and brother David stand Dark Angel (Ire) (Acclamation {GB}) at Yeomanstown Stud, while his uncle Tony, aunt Anne and cousins Roger and Henry have Kodiac (GB) (Danehill) at Tally-Ho.

“We grew up around horses, me and my brothers,” O'Callaghan reflected. “Our father is a gifted horseman and taught us from a young age what a good horse looks like, and also taught us the value of a horse-both from a purchasing and reselling point of view. He bought horses here in Keeneland for years, to bring home, and always thought it a great market. So he suggested I come out here to work for a season. I enjoyed it so much I decided maybe we'd rent a little place, see if we could buy a few foals, a few mares, see how it goes. Instead we ended up buying this beautiful farm. The first year went badly, very badly. But the second year went really well, and then it just snowballed. And now I'm embedded so deep in it all: we have another farm, we have a lot of friends here, and the next thing you know you've been here 17 years.”

His father and brothers travel over to Fayette County to contribute their own expertise and foot-slogging to the arduous ritual of prospecting each new crop of weanlings.

“We cover a lot of ground, you know, we work it hard,” O'Callaghan said. “There's no one formula. We look for good strong horses that are balanced and correct and move well. You're always looking for a little bit of X-factor, but as weanlings we find you can't be overcritical. As long as they have some good basic structure, a lot of the other stuff can develop the right way for you: you know, the little bit of quality, the little bit of something extra.”

O'Callaghan is increasingly incorporating homebreds into his draft, to ease the pressure of restocking. In purchasing foals, without seeing their dams, you only ever get half the picture-for better or worse. As O'Callaghan says, sometimes an animal will be “not quite finished;” sometimes, equally, it will simply be presenting a family look.

“We've sharpened it up pretty well, though,” he said. “I'd like to think we're getting better all the time, at identifying what we think could make a really nice yearling-and a really nice racehorse. Because at the end of the day, it's the racehorses you need for your brand. We're definitely on a good roll with that now, selling a lot of winners the last five or six years. We're not trying to buy 'fixer-uppers,' you know. We're trying to buy legit horses that have a chance of making into yearlings that will make into racehorses.”

And perhaps that famous family instinct is as much about knowing when to leave things to nature, as sensing when she can be given a helping hand.

“Time is a great thing for these horses,” O'Callaghan said. “There's only so much you can do with your feeding and your working. Every month for these horses, at this stage of their life, is important. If you can get them on an upward trajectory, they'll be getting better every month. That's why the fall is such a great time to sell yearlings: they've had that summer's grass, and time to develop before you have to start getting into them.”

Which is another reason for being realistic when it comes to the sales. The horses have to respond to the program they're on. Unless there is a short-term veterinary issue, O'Callaghan is prepared to accept that a horse might simply be less than he had hoped. (Not least because he dislikes the idea of treating breeze-up sales as a clearing house for unwanted yearlings. He thinks you need a specific type of horse for such a specific job.)

“No doubt about it, your biggest lessons come from your mistakes and your failures,” he said. “Whether you're breeding or trading or training. Successes are great, but you can't dwell on them. I always think about the ones I got wrong a lot more than ones I got right. And I think most people who are successful in this game think the same way.”

“So we're trying to learn, year on year; we learn as a group, we makes mistakes every year, but we learn from them quickly, and don't blame each other. If something goes wrong, we just take it on the chin and move on. And if it goes well, we don't get too high about it either. You have to stay pretty even about the whole thing. Because it's never over the line until it's over the line. You can never get too high on any horse, be it the week of the sale or two months before, until he's sold.”

O'Callaghan continued, “Same in the racing game. You go through a lot of tough phone calls, a lot of disappointments along the way. But there's no other sport that gives you the satisfaction of a good racehorse, there really isn't. You work a lifetime for a horse like Dark Angel. It's no accident that it happened to Gay. He's been through a lot of them, you know, to find Dark Angel. The horse is an incredibly humbling animal. They just bring you to your knees. But when they're good to you, they're really good to you.”