VERSAILLES, Ky. — Flightline had placed on 100 kilos in the 5 months since the finish of his brief but astonishing racing career. He was nonetheless gentle on his ft, although, as he high-stepped into a breeding shed final month as if he had been on a crimson carpet. A mare named Bernina Star shuffled earlier than him.
Her bloodlines had been aristocratic, her racing report spectacular. After her profession, she fetched $1.2 million at public sale to do what she was about to do.
Bernina Star whinnied. Flightline rocked excessive onto his again legs. The two tangoed and tangled, oblivious to the man holding the mare’s tail or the two different chaperones circling this tryst.
Soon, Flightline’s tail dropped like a flag on a windless day. He fell again to earth. It was time for a tub, after which a night time out in the bluegrass.
If the Kentucky Derby is taken into account the most enjoyable two minutes in sports activities, this was maybe the most profitable 52.48 seconds in sports activities. Bernina Star’s proprietor paid $200,000 for (not fairly) a minute of Flightline’s time.
That payday explains why the biggest horses in racing — together with, in all chance, the winner of Saturday’s Derby — are destined to have brief careers, and why followers can’t get pleasure from the finest horses for lengthy. The economics of recent horse racing virtually assure it.
On the racetrack, it took Flightline two years and 6 undefeated races to earn $4.5 million in purses. Doing what got here naturally twice a day in the breeding shed, he matched that whole in 11 days, doubled it in 22 and, with 155 mares in his date e-book, could have generated $31 million in earnings by the finish of the five-month breeding in July.
In a sport perpetually troubled by doping scandals, the frequent and mysterious deaths of its athletes, competitors from other forms of playing and waning curiosity amongst followers, it’s a counterintuitive selection to retire him. Just final November, at 4 years previous, Flightline was the most enjoyable thoroughbred in the world. He had received all of his six races by a mixed 71 lengths and introduced giant crowds to see him soar round racetracks like Pegasus.
Imagine LeBron James being pushed into teaching after his second season in the N.B.A. The racing trade has accomplished one thing like that with Flightline.
“You can work through it and justify it by recognizing that he’s a special talent and you hope he can replicate it and produce fast horses in the future,” stated Terry Finley, the founder and president of West Point Thoroughbreds, one in every of the 5 entities that owns Flightline.
But Finley conceded that this considering comes at a value to fan enthusiasm: “No, it’s not good for the game.”
The Sport of Kings and Diamond Jim Brady
Thoroughbred racing in the United States has a wealthy and tawdry historical past that has usually mirrored that of the nation. In 1823, Eclipse met Sir Henry in a match race that pitted North versus South, an early window into the regional bitterness that will lead to the Civil War.
The sport has produced people heroes like Seabiscuit throughout the Depression, ethereal wonders like Secretariat, the 1973 Triple Crown winner, and Runyonesque gamblers like Pittsburgh Phil and Diamond Jim Brady and modern-day race fixers who obtained corralled by the feds.
If there may be a precept that unifies the sport, it’s the inclination — no, dedication — to all the time take the cash.
In Central Kentucky, the cash is atop purple-flowered bluegrass that’s framed by plank fences and pulled like a canvas over gently rolling hills. Farm roads weave between weather-vaned barns and stately properties. In between are horses so far as you’ll be able to see.
Foals determining the stilts which can be their legs. Hungry weanlings trailing after their full-figured moms. Broad-shouldered stallions languidly patrolling their expansive paddocks like beat cops lengthy after everybody has gone house.
Flightline lives at Lane’s End Farm in a five-acre paddock, a tiny patch of garden on a 2,000-acre unfold.
He takes his flip in the breeding shed with 20 different stallions. Seventy-seven yearlings zigzag in paddocks like the rambunctious adolescents they’re. More than 200 mares — some pregnant, others nursing new foals — carry life to this horsy Brigadoon.
Lane’s End and its neighbors are at the middle of a $6.5 billion trade that places 61,000 individuals to work on greater than 831,000 acres. But for how lengthy?
Horse racing has been declining for a long time. In 2002, greater than $15 billion was guess on races in the United States; final 12 months, the deal with fell to $12 billion. In 2000, practically 33,000 thoroughbred foals had been registered, nearly double the quantity from final 12 months.
Still, the competitors to create a generational expertise like Flightline has by no means been fiercer.
Breeding to Race or Breeding to Breed?
Horsemen and horsewomen have tried for centuries to breed champion thoroughbreds, counting on a mixture of science, instinct and luck. “Breed the best to the best and hope for the best” has been the prayer murmured for generations.
In horse racing’s golden age, the Whitneys, the Vanderbilts and enterprise titans like the textile producer Samuel Riddle bred horses primarily to race. In 1919 and 1920, Riddle’s Man o’ War received 20 of 21 races. When Man o’ War was despatched to the breeding barn, Riddle restricted his e-book to about 25 mares a 12 months, most owned by him or his family and friends.
The 1941 Triple Crown champion, Whirlaway, made 60 begins in his profession. The first 11 Triple Crown winners collectively made 104 begins at age 4 or older, and received 57 of them.
In 1973, one in every of them, Secretariat, was syndicated for a then-record $6.08 million. He was retired as a 3-year-old after profitable 16 of his 21 begins, kick-starting the retail period of breeding.
The final two Triple Crown champions — American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify in 2018 — had been additionally retired at 3, however after working far fewer races than Secretariat. American Pharoah’s stallion rights had been purchased for $30 million after the colt went 9 of 11 as a 2- and 3-year-old. Justify introduced $60 million after solely six races, all as a 2-year-old.
Craig Bernick, president of Glen Hill Farm in Ocala, Fla., is from a distinguished racing household. He tries to adhere to his grandfather’s mannequin: Breed your mares, hold and race the fillies and promote the colts at public sale.
“He was a traditional sportsman,” Bernick stated of his grandfather Leonard Lavin, who based the magnificence merchandise firm Alberto-Culver, which Unilever purchased in 2010. “I wish there were more like him and I could be like that today. But now I must be more commercial. I need to invest in stallion shares and take some of my yearlings to auction in Europe.”
The hurry to get horses to the stallion barn has had unintended penalties in an agribusiness that’s contracting: accelerated inbreeding.
While the variety of broodmares has remained constant, the stallion inhabitants has dwindled. In 1991, Kentucky had 499 stallions whose books averaged 29.9 mares a 12 months. Last 12 months, Kentucky had 200 registered stallions who averaged 84 mares a 12 months. Many argue that this isn’t sustainable.
Three years in the past, the Jockey Club, which retains the breed registry, cited scientific research that confirmed the thoroughbred gene pool was getting too shallow, endangering the breed. It tried to cap the variety of mares a stallion might impregnate at 140. The rule was challenged in courtroom by three farms that collectively stood 16 stallions that bred greater than 140 mares every in 2020. One of the farms, Coolmore, additionally shuttles a few of its stallions to Australia to breed one other 50 to 100 mares in the Southern Hemisphere.
Last 12 months, the Jockey Club deserted the rule after the Kentucky legislature, swayed by lobbyists for some business breeders, proposed a invoice that prohibited the cap and would have put the state racing fee answerable for the registry for Kentucky-bred thoroughbreds.
Bill Farish, the proprietor of Lane’s End, supported the rule though the farm stands stallions that breed greater than 140 mares.
“It’s just simple math to me,” stated Farish, who additionally has an curiosity in Flightline. “Maybe my brain works too simply. But if you have half the number of stallions breeding a similar number of mares, it’s got to be shrinking the pool.”
‘We All Know We’re Screwing It Up’
Mike Repole was on the cellphone. No, make that two telephones.
On one, he was barking orders at his bloodstock agent, who was in Ocala, bidding on a filly in a 2-year-old-in-training sale.
“Go to 280 K,” Repole advised the agent. “Good.”
Someone bid $290,000.
“Hit them right back,” Repole stated, his voice tightening. “Be quicker. Show them we want this one.”
Soon, the gavel dropped at $310,000 and Repole Stable owned one other horse.
On the different name, with a reporter, Repole tried to clarify the dysfunction of horse racing.
Repole grew up in Middle Village, Queens, and spent ample time on the rail at Aqueduct, the bluest collar of racetracks. He obtained into the beverage enterprise, constructing first Vitaminwater after which BodyArmor sports activities drink into manufacturers enticing sufficient for Coca-Cola to buy for practically $10 billion.
Repole has spent greater than $300 million shopping for horses. He has received dozens of the most prestigious stakes races — together with the Belmont on Long Island and the Travers in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He developed a colt named Uncle Mo into one in every of the sport’s most completed stallions.
On Saturday, he’ll host 75 members of the family and buddies in Louisville, Ky., at the 149th working of the Derby, the place Forte — a colt he co-owns — is the 3-1 favourite.
Repole is confounded by horse racing’s resistance to change and its unwillingness to embrace finest practices. For instance, if Forte wins the Derby — the first of the Triple Crown races — he’ll race two weeks later in the second leg, the Preakness in Baltimore. If he doesn’t, he’ll skip the Preakness to get some relaxation and return to the monitor 5 weeks later at Belmont Park.
“I’m all for tradition, but wouldn’t it be better for the horses if there was more time between races?” he requested. “If the Derby was in May, the Preakness in June and Belmont in July, you would have bigger fields with better horses to get fans excited.”
He has in contrast horse racing to a poorly run restaurant with a fabulous menu.
“You know the service is bad and you don’t like the room, but once you get there the food is just so good,” Repole stated.
He has campaigned for a nationwide league workplace — a central authority that would carry racetracks, house owners, trainers and breeders collectively on vital points.
“We all know we’re screwing it up,” Repole stated. “Horse racing is like a board game with no directions. I’m one of the biggest owners and I don’t know where to go when I have a problem. There is a selfishness built into the game. Everyone treats it like a secret club when we should be sharing and celebrating it.”
In six months or so, Repole and Forte’s co-owner, the Florida Panthers proprietor Vincent Viola, will determine whether or not to hold Forte on the racetrack or observe the sport’s unifying precept and take the cash by sending him to the barn.
A Comfortable Retirement
For Flightline’s house owners, there isn’t a wanting again. By the time Flightline’s first offspring hit the racetrack in 2026, he could have generated greater than $120 million in income.
If they’re quick and win races, his stallion charge is probably going to rise. America’s main sire, Into Mischief, is eighteen years previous and instructions $250,000 a mating. If Flightline is unable to constantly go on his extraordinary pace, his worth will likely be adjusted down.
Either method, if Flightline stays wholesome, he will likely be an equine A.T.M. for the ages.
In Flightline’s racing days, he was so excited to run that his coach had to take him to the monitor at 3 a.m. every day so he wouldn’t kick down his stall. Knowing this, the horse’s house owners went to nice expense to put thick pads in his retirement stall so he wouldn’t damage himself.
The pads don’t have a mark on them.
Flightline likes what he does — a lot in order that in the first couple weeks of his new profession, he refused to go away the breeding shed lengthy after goodbyes had been exchanged.
