Maybe what we should be looking for is the average horse. Maybe we should not be chasing the dreams of hot new sires like Connect and Gormley, or even Honor Code and Cairo Prince. Maybe we should be looking for for sires that are fading, but not complete failures.
Maybe that sire is Exaggerator.
He is a son of Curlin, so he could be a late developer. His broodmare sire is Vindication (the last great son of Seattle Slew). He was a late runner (a plodder), for 2nd tier connections, but did win the Saratoga Special and the Haskell. He was kind of a strange horse, but he is Curlin on sale for $15,000, instead of $175,000. His stud fee was cut from $25,000 to $15,000, but the guys at Winstar are not complete idiots. Exaggerator was the 9th rated freshman sire, but has moved up to 4th in the short 2021 year. Maybe his best offspring have yet to race.
Maybe we should be looking for average mares, that were bred to our unexciting sire,
Any mare with graded stakes running ability might just be too expensive. Those mares jump off the pedigree page and usually get bid to extreme valuations. On the other hand do you really want to buy a horse produced by a graded stakes winning mare for just $25,000? If you do, you better check because it just might be missing a leg.
Even more important you have to be careful of the completely unaccomplished mare. In the wacky world of equine bloodstock, this is exactly the type of mare that the Liz Crow’s of the world are looking for. They do not want to have to pay for pedigree, so they go out of their way to buy horses from unraced mares, or mares with short careers. They want to pay $100,000 for a horse that looks great, but the dam has absolutely no racing history. They also like to find “young” mares that have not produced any great horses so far. You might actually have to “pay up” for any mare that has produced a stakes winning offspring.
Maybe that average mare is also by a 2nd tier broodmare sire. The daughters of Giant’s Causeway and Bernardini will usually bring handsome prices even if the mare was not much of a runner.
Maybe we should be looking for a mare that:
- Ran 47 times, with 7 wins and 10 seconds
- Ran a 97 Equibase figure on her best day
- Sold for a respectable $60,000 as a yearling, and $120,000 as a 2-yr old
- Is by the decent stamina sire Mutakddim, a son of Seeking the Gold
- has produced 4 winners from 5 foals, each winning at least $60,000
- one daughter won a small California stake, and ran in the G1 Ashland
Mutakaway is in fact very average. She is not spectacular, but she is very solid.
If you ask TrueNicks you find the nick rated C, but you need to look a little further. To get enough data TN uses sons of Curlin mated with daughters of Mr. Prospector, this is a very broad group. It does include a guy named Vino Rosso, which is not bad.
Mutakddim had many great horses in Argentina, but only one great daughter in the US, the $1,000,000 winner Lady Tak. Who did thte smart guys at Hill N’ Dale breed Lady Tak to, why Curlin of course, and produced a nice filly named Casual that ran a 104 Equibase figure in her first start at Oaklawn.
Hip #106 at Ocala is a daughter of Exaggerator, out of mare named Mutakaway. She is consigned by a small operation called Black Type Stables. The filly was RNAed for $19,000 as a weanling, and $50,000 as yearling. Black Type has won 12 races in 69 starts, but did not race in 2020 and had one small winner in 2019. Maybe these guys want $100,000 or they will race her themselves, but maybe they are short on cash and would sell her for $35,000 if she only works 10.2.
This is a fascinating horse. Maybe this is exactly the type of low risk horse that a small buyer should be looking for. While the crowd is chasing the next Derby winner, maybe “average” is what I should be looking for.
Buying A Race Horse 