You’ve Got It Or You Don’t
January 17th, 2006By Jude T. Feld
Summer sale time is rapidly approaching. The Fasig-Tipton Kentucky July Selected Yearling Sale, Saratoga Selected Yearling Sale and the granddaddy of them all, the Keeneland September Yearling Sale – a true barometer guaging the state of horseracing – will all be taking place in the next three months. Owners, trainers and bloodstock agents will be scouring catalogues and pounding the stable areas looking for the next two-year-old champion, a Derby winner or just a nice little horse to have some fun with.
At the sales, if you eavesdrop on the participants, you’ll here expressions like, “nice hip,” “good shoulder,” “toes out,” “great eye,” “big walk,” “huge over-stride,” “offset knees,” and “clubbed foot.”
Then, there’s the esoteric term that always sends me scurrying to my catalogue.
“Presence.”
This is the attribute of a horse that cannot be measured or x-rayed. It has to be felt in your heart and your gut. It is what draws your attention to one girl on a beach of thousands, one puppy from a litter of twelve and one colt from a catalogue of 5,110 yearlings.
Successful Thoroughbred owner Michael House described it this way:
“Jeff Mullins and I walked around the sale from barn to barn and looked at a whole bunch of horses,” House said. “We formulated our short list, but we kept coming back to this one filly. She had long legs and looked really athletic. She had a beautiful face and a nice walk but a lot of the other horses on our list had comparable attributes. In the end, we both decided there was just something about her we liked.”
That folks, is “presence.”
For the record, the filly Mullins and House picked out was Sweet Fourty, winner of the 2006 WinStar Sunland Park Oaks.
When you are at the sale, and you hear a bonafide horseman talk about a horse with presence, it would pay to find out the hip number. Locating presence is what separates successful owners, trainers and pinhookers from everybody else, but the great thing about presence is that horses of all price ranges have it or lack it.
I have looked at multi-million dollar yearlings who had all the presence of a pig in a sloppy barnyard. But on the other side of the coin, I once found a $750 filly with considerable presence at a two-year-old sale several years ago. She rewarded my eye by breaking her maiden at first asking in a maiden allowance race at Santa Anita. Because presence is the one quality in a racehorse that cannot be quantified, recognizing it allows the person with a small bankroll a chance at glory.
Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas, one of the most successful yearling purchasers in the history of our sport refers to presence as “seeing the cat.” The late, great Charlie Whittingham called it, “The look of eagles.” Former Daily Racing Form handicapper and Thoroughbred owner Jack Karlick calls it, “class.”
In the 1964 film musical Robin and the Seven Hoods, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin sing a song written by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen called “Style.”
“You’ve either got or you haven’t got style.
If you got it, it stands out a mile.
With mother of pearl kind of buttons,
You look like the Astors and Huttons.
You either got or you haven’t got class
How it draws the applause of the masses.”
It’s great to buy a horse with short cannon bones, a 45 degree angle to his pasterns, straight through the knees with a broad chest, good shoulder and great hip, an ass like a Mack truck and a beautiful head, but if you want one to draw the applause of the masses, look for one with presence. It shouldn’t be too difficult. Find the one you can visualize wearing a garland of flowers.
A horse with style, stands out a mile.
