Flat racing is all about sex

SEX. Football is about war, tennis is about duelling, and cricket is about pursuit and capture. But Flat racing is about sex. This elementary — perhaps I should say elemental — fact was brought home to me as I reminisce on the Yearling Sales at Santa Rosa Park three Sundays ago. Imagine this: The pre-sale ring is the place to be. There, the next half dozen lots parade, yearlings just beginning to feel their strength. They have been walked in hand for hours every day in preparation for this moment, fed and exercised to build the muscles, to bring out that swinging athletics walk, that comely sway of the hips.

And all of them naked but for a bridle, so that every nuance of conformation and musculature can be ogled and yearned for. And all around me, just about every other person I have spoken to in pursuit of stories for this column was doing exactly that, some of them even drinking while the horses paraded. I thought about swanking up to one or two of them and giving them a piece of advice. Lot one looks pretty ordinary to me. But lot two, the nice Freshly Squeezed filly; she looks a real little honey to me. What an eye for a horse I possess. Lot one, a bay colt by Bandsman, fetched $30,000 TT; lot two made $62,000 TT. But you see they all look gorgeous. You need a special eye to see beyond the dazzle of gorgeousness. Every single horse looks a winner, for that is what they have been bred to be. Or at least to look. And I fancied them all, every one of them. It was a bit like being an adolescent in a nudist colony. You don’t really have time or inclination to be discriminating, you are too busy looking around and saying “phwoar.”

One agent told me at the sales last year that spotting the right horse was like seeing a beautiful woman, not a matter of analysis of action, walk, poise, eye, expression, anatomy, mien. It was simply a matter of one instantaneous click, and somehow you know, you know even then, that some day she’ll win, again and again. Or he, of course. But it is the same sort of feeling, the same response to beauty. And every decent Darwinian will tell you that this response to that perfectly desirable person goes back to the urge to procreate, to pass on your genes. In the same way, the response to a perfect horse is about sex, breeding. For buying a horse is about more than winning. It is also about the future generations of champions, for horse racing is Darwin’s struggle for existence turned into the largest and most beautiful parlour game in the history of the world. The mood is one of politely restrained hysteria. Everything in the sales ring is designed to inhibit the process of rational thought. Surely no one, once inside, can make a calm assessment of mathematical and fiscal possibilities. The horses walk from semi-dark into the bright light and most squeal in excitement and distress, circling the ring in alarm as they greet this, the turning point of their young lives. It is the coming of age ceremony.

And as the horses squeal, the auctioneer gabbles a hysterical record of the horse’s charm and beauty and a brief glowing summary of its ancestry, and then commences the chanting litany of money. It is every bit as easy to follow as the changing odds in American racing with less than one minute before race time. Everything is designed to frazzle nerves and inject that manic spurt of adrenalin: the hand in the air, the lofted catalogue, and the nod. A demon has briefly taken possession of you and you have gone $5,000 TT over your agreed limit. I sneaked into the area marked “Bidders Only,” and was truly alarmed. The auctioneer seemed to look me straight in the eye the entire time. I suppose this is a knack that auctioneers learn at auctioneers’ school: How to look several hundred people directly in the eye at the same time. Quite a nice horse, too, a Kdanz colt, though I was not the only one to think so. Showing quite incredible restraint, I managed to avoid making even a deliberate twitch, and saw the animal knocked down for $22,000.

I found I was standing alongside some of the leading owners (Shaun Sammy, Neil Poon Tip, Charles James, David Ojar, Shaffique Khan, Bertwin Samalsingh and Douglas Bennett), all fans of this column. I asked them why they hadn’t bought the colt, and one said: “I don’t like.” Then the shrug, like a stage Frenchman, which he does so well, a man who relishes racing’s best ironies. “Other people, they like.” “Tell you what. In two years’ time, I’ll tell if you are right.” A shrieking laugh. “Then we will know.” What’s round the next corner? What’s over the next hill? The only way to find out is by going there.  And one of the great things about these owners is that he is never going to die wondering. As usual, he has spent heavy and deep, but if your ambition is global conquest, you need a bit of ammunition here and there. And there is plenty of logic and thought and knowledge, but it is, above all, the visceral response to a horse that guides top owners and their insider friends — as it guides everybody else who has ever had anything to do with any horse for any reason whatsoever.

And, of course, it is about sex, not simply the thunderous, earth-moving act of generation that takes place on the great studs of the world but in the river of genes, the endless river in spate, flowing and flowing on. I bumped into a breeder I knew in the bar: the horse has fetched a five-figure sum. Which was good, but not great. Somebody’s vet was unconvinced by an X-ray of the stifle joint, the one high up on the back leg, and advised against. “Which probably cost me fifty grand.” Two fillies went through the ring in quick succession, each one fetching more than $50,000. “And not a drop of Researching blood,” cooed the auctioneers. What, I hear you ask? Surely having Researching blood is a good thing, the best thing?

So it is. But breed from animals too closely related and you get the problems of inbreeding, incestuous liaisons, recessive genes. A near-perfect Bandsman — free filly is perfection itself for putting to one of Bandsman’s polyphiloprogenitive sons. Of course it’s all about sex, why else would we be here? Here at the sales or here on earth, for that matter. “Of course, you realise it’s a stitch-up,” an insider said. “You know about kickbacks, don’t you? And agreements not to bid, and agreements to bid the price up? And how to use the sales as a way of laundering money?

“It’s as ruthless and as cynical as commodity dealing . . . it’s just that the commodities are rather nice.” Cynicism and romance meet hand in hand; love and money meet in helter-skelter collision. This is the great marriage market of the horsey world, and every one is out for a suitable boy, a suitable girl. And they are, as I say, all gorgeous, every one of them. And in less than a decade, all of us who are saved plus a good many new insane hopefuls will be back looking at their progeny. Looking for the spark, waiting to hear that silent “phwoar.” The river of money and genes in full spate, and this is their confluence. Small Wonder that a half brother to the million dollar horse — Top of the Class — could fetch $132,000, albeit from a doctor. Let’s hope he does not need to prescribe medication in time to himself, if racing is true in its uncertainty. Check www.cornelis-associates for the best in website management and change management.