I need to apologize to all those I have accused of buying “empty mares”. I have been critical of Starlight and others as they pay relatively high prices for horses where the mare never ran an good race or never produced a decent foal. I was wrong to be critical of this strategy. It is now in fact the strategy I prefer.
This is complicated, and it took a while for me to understand. It is interesting how thinking about spending your own money crystallizes your strategy.
When you first approach the terrifying idea of buying a horse that has never had a saddle on here is what you think:
Let’s find a decent sire and then find a mare that run some decent races, and has hopefully produced some decent offspring. It would would be even better if they did both. Let’s find a mare that was a runner and a producer.
That sounds very logical. But unfortunately, it is most likely the wrong strategy. You have to pay “too much” for these obvious horses. The better strategy is to buy horses where the mare was not much of a runner and not produced any great runners. In fact it is better if they do neither. At first this seems stupid, but it is actually very smart.
Let’s consider a very important example. Just a month ago I was critical of Centennial Farm buying hip #97 at the Saratoga 2021 select sale.
They paid $250,000 for a Street Sense filly. The stud fee is $60,000. The mare was unraced and her two previous foals have earned less than $100,000. How could they pay so much for such a miserable mare?
One month ago I thought this was a terrible purchase. Now it is one of my favorites.
Please take a moment to stare at that pedigree and think about it. Then also consider the following example:
A Horse to Think About
Hip #486 in the upcoming Keeneland sale:
The colt is a son of the $30,000 sire Kantharos. The mare (a daughter of the marginal sire Kwafain) earned a respectable $102,000 but her 4th foal is the great Gamine.
How much should you pay for this horse?
If you pay only $300,000 you should really be worried the price is TGTBT (to good to be true)
If you pay $900,000, well then you just paid nearly $1 million for a son of Kantharos out of a lousy Kwafain mare.
It seems the best policy is to avoid buying horses where the mare has previously produced a nice offspring.
Instead, concentrate on buying horses where the mare was neither a great runner or producer, like the Street Sense example above.
Buying A Race Horse 