Keeneland Breeders' Spotlight: An Apple From a Blooming Orchard

It was 2007: compared with a year or two later, not the best timing in terms of what was on the market and how much it would cost you. “And it was a little bigger than we wanted,” admits Larry Doyle. “But once we had the farm, well, we had to fill it.”

That might sound a bit cart-before-horse, as a strategy for repurposing 330 acres of cattle pasture for the rather more expensive models that nowadays graze KatieRich Farms outside Midway, Ky. But Doyle accepts that the Thoroughbred game is played to different rules to the one by which he made the money required.

“That's what I love about this business,” he says with a chuckle. “I make my money on Wall Street. But that's too easy. That's tic-tac-toe. This? This is hard, this is challenging. On Wall Street, you always look for that 20% return, year on year. Here, people try to improve on a 30% negative return. So it's always something to weigh. But sometimes you're a lot better off being a riverboat gambler than an accountant or financier!”

It was as a born “numbers guy” that Doyle was first intrigued by the handicapping side of the Turf, fatefully led astray by his older brother when growing up in Babylon, Long Island. But when the first horse race you ever see happens to be the 1973 Belmont S., then there will always be unquantifiable elements in the equation. All Doyle knows is that he's still paying his dues, and enjoying every minute.

And if Secretariat was hardly a representative introduction to the game, then nor was the first yearling Doyle bought, who won a stakes. “They put the needle in my arm quite early!” Doyle says. “It was easy, right? No way back after a start like that.”

Remarkably, things quickly became better yet–and that's why we're talking, a couple of decades later, on the eve of the Breeders' Cup. Because the KatieRich homebred American Apple (American Pharoah), who lines up for the GI Juvenile Turf Sprint on Friday, is a daughter of only the third horse Doyle ever purchased. Whatever she can do at the adjacent racetrack, moreover, she's already highly eligible–as winner of the GIII Matron S. and half-sister to a GI Kentucky Oaks-placed millionaire–to improve the balance sheet when offered as hip 234 in the Keeneland November Sale, just a couple of days later.

American Apple's dam Miss Mary Apples (Clever Trick) was bought in the same ring in 2001, with Doyle's buddy Chris Connors, for $37,000 at the September Sale.

“She was just a gorgeous yearling in Book 5,” Doyle recalls. “When she won on debut at Keeneland, she went off favorite and that was just on looks. Then she went up for the Fashion S., where against the track bias she ran down a big Lukas filly and lost by a head. And then we took her up to the [GII] Schuylerville and again ran a close second. The money they were throwing at us then was just crazy. I remember talking to a bloodstock agent about the offer and he goes, 'Kid, 11 times out of 10, you take that deal.'”

Ah, yes, but remember that the numbers guy was using a different abacus for the ponies. The Schuylerville winner dropped dead a week later, after all, apparently clearing a path for Miss Mary Apples in the GI Spinaway S.

“Unfortunately she came up with a throat problem that needed a surgery,” Doyle recalls. “So maybe not taking the money looked a bad deal then. But she came back the next year, placed in a few stakes, and then just became a very productive mare. She threw off 11 winners, plus one filly that didn't win but went on to produce [GISP] Parlor (Lonhro {Aus}). Miss Mary Apples was a great mother, very protective, and we only lost her last year three months after she delivered American Apple.”

And nor did she protect only her foals. Though KatieRich is always striving to make commercial sense, this mare simply didn't produce commercial foals. Time after time, that proved a win in the longer game.

“We got her pregnant to Empire Maker, $100,000 stud fee,” Doyle recalls. “We put her filly through the sale, she didn't make $85,000, so we brought her back. That was Miss Red Delicious: she won stakes herself, her daughter [Nootka Sound (Lonhro {Aus})] won a graded stakes, and another one Zapple (Ghostzapper) won her debut by nine lengths this summer. Then Miss Mary Apples had a filly by Curlin, another $100,000 stud fee. But she was small, didn't bring $75,000. So we brought her home, too, and that was Lady Apple. Won a million and sold for $1.2 million. Any time we tried to sell something out of that mare, they just didn't look precocious enough. But then they would blossom.”

By the time American Apple came along, then, the lesson had been thoroughly absorbed. She was never put through the ring at all.

“She'd only have been weaned three months, she was immature, she had a pot belly,” Doyle reasons. “So we ended up holding on to her–and here we are at the Breeders' Cup. She's always been brilliant in the morning. Gerardo [Corrales, jockey] told us in early March, 'This is my Breeders' Cup horse.' And we were laughing at him.”

The real thrill about the whole ride, with this filly, has been the early boost to the career of the program's 28-year-old trainer Daniel Leitch, who took over when Mark Hubley–who goes back a long way with Doyle and his brother, and indeed trained Miss Mary Apples–stepped back into the role of managing consultant only a year or so ago.

“Danny's been with us since he was working weekends at 15,” Doyle's wife Karen notes. “And he's always been the same, even now he stops at the barns after training in the morning to see if he can help out in any way. We were so happy for him when she won the Matron, I still get chills thinking about it.”

“Yes, he's just a solid, solid citizen,” agrees Doyle. “Always a helping hand, great personality, always upbeat. His confidence in this horse has never wavered. I'm 64, I've been around a bit longer, and I would say, 'All right, kid, we'll see. And he's like, 'We've got this!'”

After a couple of starts on dirt and a two-turn experiment on grass, American Apple won a valuable sprint maiden at Kentucky Downs.

“We had no reason not to believe that she'd run on dirt,” Doyle reflects. “I just think she needs a pace to close into. She has this burst of speed, that's why she's better suited to grass. We still think she can run long, but going short is just the way the races have played out for us. After she won at Kentucky Downs, we opened the condition book and there was only one place to go; and then it was the same after we shipped to New York and won up there. She's made the choices for us, really.”

American Apple | Horsephotos

The tougher choice, naturally, was to put her into the sale. But those numbers do have to stack up a little.

“This is just hedging,” Doyle says. “I'm a trader. A horse isn't worth what you think it's worth. It's worth what they pay you. But if you don't do it, you'll pay. And if you do, you can get rewarded. Remember, I have three half-sisters. We have stakes-winning daughters of the sisters. So the family is going to be well represented [in the program], and her mother's legacy is going to live on for many years.”

Zapple is another already promising to contribute. After her dazzling debut she tried stakes company, but came out with a few cuts and has been recuperating on the farm. She'll be resuming soon, and overall KatieRich–named for the Doyles' two children–appears to be evolving with persuasive energy: these days there's a sales prep division, there's training and pre-training, there's constant upgrading of stock.

“I think we're looking for different types of mares, to breed more two-turn horses,” Doyle reflects. “But basically we just want to keep learning, to get a better and better product out there. At the age I am, probably I'd be looking to breed to race a bit more, going forward. I think we've got some nice foundation mares. In terms of numbers, we're up a little high at 33, so we actually have nine going into the sale. But meanwhile we're keeping daughters, we're breeding them to nice sires, it's just time to look down the road a little bit.”

One intriguing measure of that perspective is that Doyle elected to retain an Uncle Mo colt–out of the Phipps mare Enhancing (Forestry), and therefore a half-brother to farm graduate Instilled Regard (Arch)–as a $475,000 RNA at the September Sale.

“I think that's a potential sire,” he explains. “Though it was me really stepping out, for a big colt, because it's selling those horses that pays the bills. But right now I feel let's take a shot with this one, and see how we go.”

Karen adds with a laugh that she was not present on that occasion to restrain her husband, and “didn't hear from him for two days after, either!”

But Doyle has been at the game long enough now to make calculations of this kind.

“My brother Jimmy owned a piece of a horse with Mark maybe as long ago as 1983, and I went in a few years later, in 1992,” he recalls. “I had no right to own a horse in those days. But I started the first internet mutual fund, and after that took off around 1999, 2000, I was able to go back to what I had seen years before, when I got an entry-level job with Thomas Mellon Evans on Park Avenue. He bred Pleasant Colony, and I got to meet with his bookkeeper and learn a bit more about ownership. He was very big into getting good mares. I didn't have the money then, to put it to use, but I was learning a lot.”

The physical imprint of the farm over the past 15 years, under Robert “Elmo” Richardson, has reflected conspicuous flair and ambition. But the real bedrock, not least given that the Doyles still spend much of their time in New York, is the caliber of the people.

“I had a very experienced horsewoman come to the farm, helping out for a while,” Doyle says. “And she was saying, 'Oh my God how do you get these people?' Everything's working well: you drop anybody in, they know how it works. We now have another very gifted young horseman in [farm president] George Barnes: he and Danny are working very well together, and that's so nice to see. And that has all been Mark and [farm manager] Tammy Ingebritson, it really has: they're the whole foundation of this farm. They have helped me to do this without mistakes, to have enough good sales along the way. That way we hope we can stick around and hopefully someday get a big horse.”

Who's counting? The numbers guy, that's who. Hence this filly being up for sale. But it's not just about the bottom line: he's counting on people, and on the intangible magic of the Thoroughbred.