By Bruce Schoenfeld

On a warm Sunday morning last September, twin alabaster-white 747s bearing the flags of the United Arab Emirates sat on a runway at Lexington, Kentucky's Blue Grass Airport, looming over the passing traffic. Both had arrived the previous day bearing Sheikhs from Dubai's ruling Maktoum dynasty, brothers who had come to Lexington to spend as much as $100 million on year-old colts. By Thursday morning, once the best-bred horses had been disposed of, the planes would be gone.

Since 1981, when he paid $3.3 million for the yearling that became Irish Derby winner Shareef Dancer, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum and his brothers Hamdan and Maktoum have been spending lavish sums of money on untested colts with impeccable bloodlines. Some of the more than $1 billion investment has been made in private deals, but most top yearlings are sold at public auctions. And the intimate, classically styled Keeneland, the Fenway Park of American racetracks, handles more of the best horses than anywhere else.

Until 2003, Keeneland held two auctions: a brief, high-end sale in July – "The Tiffany sale," as veteran trainer and owner Arthur Hancock describes it – and a high-volume sale in September. But as the Maktoums' responsibilities at home escalated (Sheikh Mohammed is the United Arab Emirates' defense minister, while Sheikh Maktoum was the ruler of Dubai and the prime minister of the UAE before his sudden death in January at 62), their presence at the July sale became sporadic.

Accordingly, Keeneland brought the mountain to Mohammed, combining the sales into a two-week event held each September inside the state-of-the-art sales pavilion adjacent to the Keeneland grandstand. "The Super Bowl of sales," says trainer Bob Baffert, who also buys horses for investors.

Sixteen Kentucky Derby winners have been sold at Keeneland through the years (including four of the last seven that have appeared at public auction), and 16 more winners of the English, Irish or French derbies, and the winners of five of the eight races at the 2004 Breeders' Cup. And since the auctions were combined, the sales figures have more than surpassed that of any previous year's total activity. Entering last September, the records for number of horses sold (3,370), total gross ($324.9 million), and average price ($96,411) all had been set at the 2004 sale.

Since every bidding war requires at least two participants, it hasn't been just the Maktoums driving up the numbers. In recent years, their most likely foil has been an Irish conglomerate called Coolmore, run by billionaire John Magnier. The son-in-law of the storied Irish trainer Vincent O'Brien, Magnier once owned a third of the Manchester United soccer team. Like the Maktoums, he breeds and runs his own horses – and like them, too, he can't resist stockpiling colts and fillies with the best bloodlines. "We are in the business of racing and breeding the best horses," says Richard Henry, who has served as Coolmore's mouthpiece for nearly two decades. "And if you don't have enough at home, you go to the well."

When the desires of Coolmore and the sheikhs overlap, the usual result is a sum paid by one or the other that can be double or even triple what similar a horse might fetch. "What every consignor hopes to have is the Maktoums and John Magnier going after your horse," says John Adger, who buys and sells horses for Stonerside Farms. "Then, anything can happen."

Nearly everyone agrees that the infusion of such astonishing amounts of capital into the bidding process is not only helpful to the sport, but necessary. "This can be a good business," says Hancock, who has won more than his share of major races. "But there's that old Hank Williams song, 'The Picture of Life's Other Side,'" says Hancock, who underscores the precariousness of the business with anecdotes about expensive breeding fees ending in lame offspring and other financial disasters.

Baffert puts it more bluntly. "If the Maktoums and the Irish got out of the business," he said, surrounded by the maze of stalls that held more than 5,000 horses during the course of this year's sale, "this place would look like New Orleans after the flood in two months."

* * *

When new participants arrive, they are often astonished to learn the scale at which both Coolmore and the Maktoums operate. Adger, who has worked with various patrons for four decades, now buys – and sells, for nearly all buyers are also sellers – solely for Stonerside's owner, Robert McNair, who is wealthy enough to also own the National Football League's Houston Texans.

Though McNair had been to a racetrack only a few times in his life, his first horse, Strode's Creek, placed in the 1994 Kentucky Derby. For better or worse, such beginner's luck inspires businessmen to continue in what can be a humbling business.

At Keeneland that July, McNair gave Adger what he believed was a generous $2 million budget with which to buy horses. Dropping McNair at the airport before the sale began, Adger saw the twin 747s taxiing down the runway. "By the way, Bob, your competitors just landed," he said. McNair, who had flown in on his small corporate jet, looked at the runway and burst out laughing at the resources of his competitors. "I suppose," he said, "it's all relative."

Adger tells that anecdote surrounded by buyers and sellers – nearly everyone who does one also does the other – in Keeneland's Phoenix Room, where a lavish luncheon buffet is laid out each day of the sale. He can laugh now about how comparatively underfunded he'd been at the start because at least two of McNair's horses scheduled to be sold this year are all but guaranteed to elicit interest from the Maktoums or Coolmore. If both parties decide to bid, a combined sum of more than $10 million seems a possibility.

Why should a pair of year-old horses that have never stepped into a starting gate be any more valuable than the other 20,000-odd colts born in North America the same year? Genetics, mostly. The more successful a stallion and mare have been at racing and in previous breeding trials, the better the chances something good will result from their union. Nearly every horse paraded through Keeneland on the first few days of the sale looks like a champion, with bright eyes and a strong walk. "But when you pay a lot of money, what you're buying is breeding," Baffert says. "I mean, would you rather go out with Bo Derek's sister, or Bo Derek's maid?"

Veteran horsemen agree that bloodlines aren't everything. "You take a horse like Bold Ruler," says Hancock, the veteran trainer and owner, referencing the renowned 1950s racehorse who later sired Secretariat. "His brother and sisters couldn't outrun a pig." Still, a colt by a proven winner, especially out of a mare that has been similarly successful at racing or breeding, is the best bet that you can find these days to develop into something profitable. (Often, a horse's assignations after it has stopped racing far out-earns its racing income.) The most successful sire of recent years is Storm Cat, a grandson of the great Northern Dancer. Now 22, Storm Cat won an estimable $570,610 during his racing career, but only truly began to show his value after it ended.

As of last fall, Storm Cat had sired 1,050 foals, 746 of which made it to the starting line at a thoroughbred track. Their $67 million in total winnings only includes North American tracks, and also leaves out the millions in stud fees earned by his descendants. Owners of top fillies pay tens of thousands of dollars to get them locked in a barn with Storm Cat so he can do his business. Several dozen Storm Cat yearlings come on the market every year, and 20 are available at this sale. McNair is fortunate enough to be selling two of them.

Adger has pegged one of those as a horse that could easily top the sale if both the Maktoums and Magnier show interest. The horse's mother, Ajina, had been acquired from the estate of the late Alan Paulson, the former owner of Gulfstream Aviation. A granddaughter of Racing Hall of Fame member Alydar (a horse that won 14 races from 1977 to 1979, but is known best for finishing behind Affirmed in all three Triple Crown races), Ajina had won seven races and $1.3 million in a two-year career, including the Breeders' Cup championship for fillies, so this colt has winning bloodlines on both sides.

It also has a personality so distinct that some members of the Stonerside staff wonder if the decision to sell him is a wise one. "This is a special, special horse, one of those horses that you dream of," says Bobby Spalding, Stonerside's farm manager. "I remember him as a foal, just two or three days old, moving around, showing curiosity. If he hits, he'll be a $50 million stallion. It's sad to see him go." But part of Adger's job for McNair is to raise horses to be sold as yearlings, hedging his bets by getting a guaranteed multi-million-dollar return.

Until the Wednesday afternoon before the sale, this Ajina colt – horses aren't usually named until they begin their racing careers; sheikhs and anyone else who might spend several million dollars for one usually prefer to name it themselves – had never left the Stonerside property, located across a stream from the fabled Claiborne Farms in Paris, Kentucky, north of Lexington. That day, it was moved by trailer to the Keeneland stables of a local selling agent. Beginning Thursday morning, any potential buyer could walk up to the stable and ask to see the colt, which had been given the catalogue number of 136.

From Thursday through Monday, the colt was led out from its stall for inspection 132 times. Visitors included Baffert, trainers Todd Pletcher and Hidetuki Mori, and jockey Jerry Bailey. John Ferguson, the Englishman who examines and bids on horses for Sheikh Mohammed, visited for the first time at 6:40 on Saturday morning, having arrived in Lexington the previous night. He visited again at 11:10 a.m. the same day, and then at 2:40, and then at 8:06 p.m. On Sunday afternoon, he brought Sheikh Mohammed to see. Both came by again early on Monday.

Ferguson knew what he was inspecting. He and the Ajina colt had become old friends. He had visited the horse at Stonerside several times over the previous year. "I saw him when we were there last October," Ferguson says. "I saw him again in January and in April, then June and July." Each time, what he saw made the horse rise in his esteem. "Very few yearlings go through a permanent upward rise," he says. "They'll thrive, then stand still for a while. The Ajina colt was a horse that was very strong all the way through to his prep for the sale. I always liked him. And it was a horse that Sheikh Mohammad particularly liked."

Coolmore's Magnier seemed equally interested. Demi O'Byrne, Ferguson's counterpart at Coolmore, was among the first to ask for a look at the horse at 8:51 a.m. on Thursday. He returned three times more on Saturday. The parade of visitors continued into Monday morning. John Kimmel, a trainer buying horses for newcomer Lee Einsidler, who'd sold his share of Grey Goose vodka for hundreds of millions of dollars and was ready to bid on horses in a big way, walked off with stars in his eyes.

"There are 20 Storm Cat colts in the sale, and maybe eight of them are superior horses," he said. "We can't compete with the Sheik Mohammad and Coolmores of the world, but they can't buy all the colts, can they? Maybe we'll get one that slips through the cracks."

* * *

The bidding procedure at the Keeneland sale tends to baffle anyone who hasn't seen it before. At art or wine auctions, bids are made using numbered paddles, but buyers can choose to remain anonymous. At Keeneland, the purchaser of a horse is required to record his name. But during the bidding, it is almost impossible to identify the participants.

Instead of numbered paddles, prospective buyers participate in the auction by using subtle hand or eye signals. Bids are picked up by spotters standing at the front of the room and called to the auctioneer on the podium. Some of the biggest bidders – Magnier and Sheikh Mohammad among them – are often not inside the pavilion at all, but elsewhere on the grounds with their own spotter monitoring them. It's possible to have a dramatic bidding process that leads to a record-breaking sale without either participant having set foot in the room.

The reason for such subterfuge becomes obvious when you think about it. The men who really know horses – trainers such as Hancock, Baffert and D. Wayne Lukas; the Maktoums' Ferguson; Coolmore's O'Byrne – have spent weeks poring over the catalogues, then long days visiting horses at their stalls. "Those two or three minutes have been months or months in the making," says Keeneland's CEO Nick Nicholson. If their bids were recognizable, it would be simple for a deep-pocketed novice to piggyback on the learning of one of these experts, then outbid him. At Keeneland, too, consignors have the right to bid on their own horses. If a consignor knew that Sheik Mohammed or Magnier was after his horse, he'd likely continue to raise the bidding – just as if Donald Trump decides he absolutely must have your house, you'd probably ask something more for it than market value. It behooves buyers to remain incognito.

Yet when Coolmore and the Maktoums hook up in a war, the whole room somehow seems to know. The bidding proceeds rapidly, with little hesitation. The horses are usually the bluest of the bluebloods, and the sums transcend what most others are willing to spend. That happened when one of Stonerside's colts topped the sale at Saratoga last summer, fetching $3.1 million from Coolmore, and it happens now at Keeneland with the first of Adger's two Storm Cat colts. A grandson of Seattle Slew and a son of the great A.P. Indy, it sells for $3.4 million to Sheik Mohammed. Adger watches with equanimity. Then he leaves for lunch.

The Ajina colt is scheduled for sale that afternoon. As it is led onto the stage, perfectly groomed and glistening in the lights, an air of expectation fills the room. "A lot of folks have been waiting on this," the auctioneer says. "To get a sale-topper," Adger whispers as bidding commences, "you need a good piece of paper," meaning the breeding. "You need a horse that vets properly, nothing wrong with it. But you also need two bidders that will go to the moon to get that horse." By all appearances, the Ajina colt is just such a horse. Bidding proceeds promptly to $3 million, with action coming from bid-spotters throughout the room.

But at $3 million, the bidding stalls. Adger thinks that one of the two major players isn't participating – and that the other has outbid everyone else. In fact, this is exactly what has happened. "He's a nice horse, but he didn't suit our program," O'Byrne would say later, explaining his failure to bid on behalf of Coolmore.

Adger's disappointment is palpable. The following day, a horse with no better bloodlines will smash the Keeneland record and sell for $9.7 million to Sheik Mohammed. For now, Mohammed has managed to get this one at what turns out to be a bargain price. "I liked that Ajina colt more than the one that went for $9.7," Baffert would say.

By early summer, the Ajina colt still hadn't received a name. At some point soon, it will begin racing on European tracks, as will the $9.7 million horse. Like every horse, their value will decline precipitously each time they doesn't win, but increase exponentially each time they do.

By the time the same participants gather at Keeneland this month to bid on this year's crop of yearlings, it should be possible to make a preliminary judgement on Adger's decision to sell the Ajina colt, Ferguson's decision to buy him, Coolmore's to pass on the bidding, and Maktoum's to spend almost $10 million on a colt most observers rated no better than several others in the auction. With all its intrigue and circumstance, the sale is just a glorious prelude to the real action. "The sales are a means to an end," Ferguson says. "Racing sets the pecking order, racing is the order of merit, racing is what we are all about."

That will come soon enough. By Thursday morning, the twin 747s have departed, leaving a lonely vista in the morning dew. For those who eagerly follow the high-stakes bidding of the Keeneland sales, the excitement is over for the year. But for Sheikh Mohammed and anyone else who managed to get a coveted yearling, it is only beginning.

(This article originally appeared in Golf Connoisseur Magazine)

 
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