Читать книгу Horse Trader: Robert Sangster and the Rise and Fall of the Sport of Kings - Nick Robinson - Страница 10

John Magnier was twenty-three years old on the day he first shook hands with Robert Sangster. Thus he was eight years junior to the heir to Vernons Pools. In terms of birth, that is. In terms of horses, John was about one hundred and forty-eight years older, since the Magnier family of Fermoy, County Cork, traces its roots in the serious business of breeding racehorses to at least 1800 and probably back into the previous century.

John’s father Michael Magnier stood the great steeple-chasing stallion Cottage at the family’s Grange Stud on the outskirts of the town. Cottage it was who sired three Grand National winners including Sheila’s Cottage and Lovely Cottage in 1946 and 1948. He also sired the immortal Cottage Rake, trained by Vincent O’Brien to win those three Cheltenham Gold Cups in succession 1948–50, while R. Sangster was grappling with elementary French a few miles to the north at the Leas Preparatory School. John’s grandfather Thomas Magnier owned the fine Irish stallion Edlington who won fourteen races in the 1880s and was then occupied in the traditional way as a ‘travelling stallion’, being ridden along the lovely valley of the River Blackwater beyond Fermoy and covering the racing mares of the local Irish farmers. Like John Magnier himself, old Edlington had a firm sense of place in this world and spent many weeks on an annual sojourn at the Duke of Devonshire’s great estates surrounding the castle of Lismore.

Home to Edlington was nonetheless Fermoy. As was the Grange Stud to Cottage. Green God would live about four miles away at Castle Hyde Stud, which had been purchased by John Magnier a few months previously. Green God was a lucky horse because in this deep, quiet Irish country grooms and stud owners alike understand the high-mettled racer perhaps as no other breed of men on earth. To the uninitiated, a thoroughbred stallion can look very fearsome, standing glaring in a paddock, his breath coming in short snorts, perhaps pawing the ground, irritated at being disturbed. Some farms in Kentucky and Australia carry the stark warning: STALLIONS BITE. beware. It is thus a source of absolute wonder to watch a gentle Irish groom unlatch the gate, close it quietly behind him and stroll out to the beast, muttering softly: ‘Will you come over here now? And stop your showing off. I’m not planning to chase you … Come here now.’ It is even more amazing to watch apparent anger fall from the stallion. To see him dip his head, almost as an apology and then walk sheepishly up to his man, his head held low like an old dog. John Magnier can charm a stallion like that. If Robert Sangster lived to be a thousand years old he could never learn it. Nor could most people. You have to be born in Ireland to achieve that degree of harmony with a fighting-fit stallion of the blood.

Even the language of the two men, that late afternoon at Haydock Park, was different. Robert is always inclined to talk in terms of great victories, courage, jockeys, bets and values. John Magnier is much more of the horse. His judgments are punctuated by the phrases of the horseman: ‘If you look at him in a certain light he can really fill your eye’, ‘For a sprinter he stands over a lot of ground’, ‘For a son of Red God he has quite a kind look to him, but at a certain angle you can see a touch of the devil in his eye’. Those are the timeless words of the stallion master, bred into the man as profoundly and surely as the speed, gallantry and temperament is bred into the horse. In John Magnier’s case, it was bred into him for just as many years. When he stands and looks at a racehorse going into action, he is not looking entirely at him. He is looking, in his own mind, at the foals of a future generation: ‘Will I always be looking for mares with better knees than he has?’, ‘Will he want medium to small mares given his own imposing height?’, ‘He was sweating when he went to post – is there more of Red God’s temper about him than I can see? Will I spend half the year looking for mares of a quiet, calm temperament for him?’

Always a thousand questions. Usually considerably fewer answers. He and Robert Sangster had many things to say to each other but largely in a different language. And yet there was a quick and early bond between them. That bond was money. Robert, having inherited his first one-third of the Vernons empire, had a considerable amount of it. John had long had far-reaching plans to make a considerable amount of it but, in broad terms, it occurred to him that he could go further, faster, with some serious Sangster money behind him. In turn, Robert did not care how far John went in the stallion business, nor how rich he became in the riveting business of syndicating expensive stallions, just as long as he took him, Robert, along with him. Great partnerships have thrived on less worthy premises. This one was destined to go every step of the way.

The two men talked for a long time at Haydock and, aside from the Irishman’s enormous knowledge of breeding, he demonstrated to Robert an equally grand knowledge of the actual racing. John Magnier’s family stronghold of Fermoy was a mere twenty-eight miles across the Cork–Tipperary border from the south of Ballydoyle, the sprawling training complex which was home to two of the last four Derby winners, Sir Ivor and Nijinsky. It was also the home of Robert’s boyhood hero, Vincent O’Brien, who had prepared them both for glory. The Magniers and the O’Briens, both originally Cork families, had known each other for generations. Indeed John’s mother was matron of honour at Vincent O’Brien’s wedding. John’s keenly observed views on the various merits of the two Irish-based Derby winners were completely absorbing to Robert. John’s words were glossed by the fact that here was a man who was not simply fiddling about trying to win a sprint handicap at Haydock. Here was a man to whom racing at the very highest classic level was the principal arena in which he intended to participate.

There are many owners and breeders who have a fairly shrewd idea of what is going on in a training stable, but John Magnier possessed insights which no one had ever expounded to Robert before. He had, perhaps, only a vicarious proximity to racing’s Hall of Fame, but he had talked with the natural authority of a young man who knew the O’Brien family and nothing seemed to intimidate him. He would, he said, given half a chance, have dived at the opportunity to stand the great Nijinsky at stud in Ireland. As he mentioned on that afternoon, ‘Jesus, Robert, he was sold to an American syndicate for $5.5 million, which is only about 2.2 million Irish punts. With 40 shareholders, that’s only £55,000 a share. That seems like a lot of money, but it’s not. I’m laying you dollars to doughnuts right now that Nijinsky’s first-sale yearlings, on the market in Kentucky in 1973, will fetch $100,000 each. I would not be that surprised if they fetched up to $200,000 each. How the devil can £55,000 be expensive when your first yearling will – at least in my view – damned nearly get you out of your investment? After that you can breed to him every year for the rest of his life. Free.’

Robert Sangster has never forgotten that conversation. Magnier’s cool belief that he should actually have bought the great Nijinsky from the platinum billionaire Charles Engelhard and run his stud career in County Cork was tantamount, in Robert’s view, to calling the Queen and asking her how she felt about raffling the Crown Jewels. Top stallions, Robert believed, went to Kentucky, where the big dollars lived. That was the modern pattern. There was not enough money in Ireland to buy a leg in most of them, never mind the entire horse. In addition, things looked like growing worse because, in John Magnier’s view, there were signs of a serious upswing in world bloodstock prices which were being driven by a run of star racehorses: aside from the recent US-bred English Derby winners Sir Ivor, Nijinsky and Mill Reef, there was the crack English 2000 Guineas winner Brigadier Gerard, who had never been beaten. In the United States yearlings by sires such as Buckpasser, Raise a Native, Dr Fager and Northern Dancer had all gone close to $200,000. What bothered John Magnier was that Ireland, and England, might be left behind in the world bloodstock league. This would be something of a mortal blow to him, since he envisioned himself at the top of that league, not in some halfway house.

Magnier’s view of the future, his slightly roguish charm, his deep, conspiratorial Irish voice, the muttered tones whenever he mentioned specific amounts of money – all of this appealed enormously to Robert. Because this was a man who was not just nattering about the industry, this was a man who had just laid a king’s ransom on the line for a horse called Green God. Robert had watched it, comprehended the risk and admired from afar as Magnier and his friends had somehow bounced out on top, with the best of the deal. When they parted in the early part of the evening, he and John shook hands again, resolving to stay in touch and to talk more. Neither one of them, however, had the remotest idea of the ferocity of the financial rollercoaster ride upon which they would ultimately embark.

Through the following spring the whole of Ireland was discussing the chances of Vincent O’Brien winning a third Derby in five years with his American-bred bay-colt Roberto, owned by the Ohio construction millionaire John Galbreath. John Magnier told Robert all about it, how fast, though slightly unpredictable, Roberto was. But, generally, they all thought he would get home at Epsom. On Derby day they were proved right, Roberto made it by a short head, ridden by Lester Piggott.

That same day Robert said on the telephone, only half jocularly, that he supposed John would be out there trying to buy Roberto for God knows how many millions, but the Irishman replied very seriously:

‘I’ll give you several reasons why not. Firstly, Mr Galbreath has just a little bit more money than Croesus and he never sells anything, far less his first English Derby winner. Secondly, he has already announced the fact that the horse will stand at his own Darby Dan Farm in Lexington, Kentucky. And thirdly, there’s just a little bit too much fire in Roberto’s make-up for me. I think he might produce a lot of very hot horses which might be difficult to train.’

In the same phone conversation, however, Robert agreed to make the trip to the Keeneland Sales in Kentucky in July, where he would team up with John Magnier’s Irish friends and have a proper look at the world market. There was now little doubt that Robert was determined to enter the breeding industry in a major way. Before he went to Keeneland he talked the entire subject through with his father, who affirmed what Robert had always known: that he would support financially his hard-working son and heir in all of his serious business ventures. Robert was already making a success of his Swettenham Stud breeding operation and Vernon was wisely of the opinion that he would not interfere until the former heavyweight champion of the Berlin Brigade made a mistake of unreasonable magnitude.

Robert arrived at the Keeneland Sales as a near-total stranger. There were one or two English trainers and bloodstock agents who knew him, but as far as the big buyers and sellers were concerned, the name ‘Sangster’ was not poised on the lips of the mighty. John Magnier casually introduced him to Vincent O’Brien which was much more of a thrill than Robert ever admits, and he also fell into conversation with the big English owner-breeder Charles St George. The upshot of that morning’s discussions was that Robert ended up taking a share in a yearling Vincent was buying for St George and which would subsequently be named Cellini. The colt was by the great American stallion Round Table, from one of the finest families in the American Stud Book, his dam being the brilliant racemare Gamely, a US National Champion and winner of sixteen races. The second dam – the yearling’s grandma – was Gambetta, granddam also of another great American racer Drumtop. Gambetta was also a half-sister to the stallion Ridan, and to the Champion Two-Year-Old filly Moccasin, and to the dam of Vincent’s current best two-year-old Thatch. There are no better families than that in the entire world.

The yearling was a strongly-made individual and Vincent was very taken with him. Robert conferred with John Magnier who became, he recalls, just a tad poetic. ‘I think it was Damon Runyan who said, Robert, that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. But that’s the way to bet! And Vincent wants to bet. Get in.’

Robert got in. Vincent was forced to $240,000 against determined bidding from the English trainer Bernard Van Cutsem and the French trainer Alec Head.

‘Christ!’ said Robert as the bidding spiralled.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said John Magnier. ‘He’s a very tough-looking individual and the pedigree is outstanding. The horse is a sound investment, I’m sure of that. He’d be cheap if he could win a decent race. Vincent knows that’s a real stallion’s pedigree.’

Robert was enthralled by all of this. He understood the economics with total clarity. He knew his father would approve, because this horse was already the property of a syndicate: he, Robert, was in for a share; St George was in; and Captain Tim Rogers, another Irish stallion master, was also in. The risk was already spread. What do you want, a third of a potential classic racehorse and future stallion perhaps to be valued in millions or three prospective handicappers at Ayr? Robert was very certain of the answer. Ayr had been fun, but he had, irrevocably, moved on. As he and John Magnier talked long into the night after that first day at the Keeneland Sales, they both knew with immense sureness that the answer to all of the thoroughbred breeding conundrums rested with the business of syndication. Big partners, with big money, going for the best horses together. And, in the opinion of John Magnier, Robert was the man to head it up, to become the international salesman.

But to this, Robert had a rather uncharacteristic reaction. He felt, still, that he was just too much of a new boy. All the discussions he had had over so many countless hours with John Magnier had underlined, in his own mind, how much he had to learn. With Magnier he often felt as he had once felt with Nick Robinson – ‘Bloody ignorant, since you mention it!’ – and he was uncertain of his credentials.

‘How could I, for instance, telephone some Greek shipping billionaire and suggest he throws in a couple of million dollars and buys into half a dozen yearlings with us? Who am I? Robert Sangster, football pools operator, won a few handicaps at Haydock and Ayr … flattened Tiny Davies! Ask yourself, John, who am I? I mean, Vincent could call them and everyone would know he was the greatest horse trainer in the world. But I am nothing like qualified. I lack horse credentials. They would not even bother to talk to me.’

Magnier pondered the problem. Robert, he thought, had a point. His Liverpool-based friend had big money, tons of charm, a gambler’s instinct and a top-class business brain. He also had considerable experience now in the racehorse business. But he was not a born and bred racing man. And it might show. ‘Perhaps’, he suggested, ‘Vincent could get you elected Honorary President of Ireland or something. You need to be at least that important!’

For a few weeks in the latter half of 1972 they shelved their plans for an international syndicate, while they concentrated on the racing. Their attention was caught for the time being by a potential stallion for which John Magnier had an obdurate, unreasonable obsession. The word ‘interest’ could not even remotely convey his passion for the slightly disappointing chestnut sprinter Deep Diver, owned, like Green God, by David Robinson. A brilliant two-year-old winner at Royal Ascot, Deep Diver had run well a few times, but had not hit the jackpot at three. John Magnier was sure he would improve and he tried to get in and buy him before anyone agreed with him about the horse’s potential. He approached David Robinson who would not sell yet. Nor would he utter anything other than vague telephone numbers about price. Then Deep Diver came out and won the Nunthorpe Stakes at York, by two lengths from the brilliant filly Stilvi. He ran the feet off a top-class field and smashed the track record while he was about it.

John Magnier did not know whether to say: ‘Wonderful. I knew he was that good’ or, alternatively, ‘Damn it. That’ll put the price up to £250,000.’ Robert says he settled for the latter. Again John Magnier enquired about buying the horse, but David Robinson would not deal until after the running of the Prix de l’Abbaye, the top sprint race in France run at Longchamp in Paris in early October. There Deep Diver would face the reigning European sprint champion Home Guard on ground perhaps faster and drier than he really enjoyed. But the race turned out to be literally ‘no contest’. Deep Diver burst out of the starting stalls like a howitzer and opened up such a massive early lead nothing ever got near him. Home Guard was four lengths away at the finish.

Now John Magnier went into serious negotiation. He was determined to buy Deep Diver and determined to raise the money. He called Robert again, told him they may have to go to £400,000, but it was still cheap. ‘This is the fastest horse in Europe,’ he said. ‘And he’s the fastest by a very long way. His sire Gulf Pearl was fast, and tough enough to win the Chester Vase. Deep Diver himself ran eleven times as a two-year-old. No one can say if a horse will make a stallion, but at £400,000 we will either make serious money or at worse get out with a small profit. I’ll fill him at £3500 a cover.’

Robert knew how to do the sums now. With forty-five mares to the horse in each of his first three seasons at £3500, there would be a grand total of £472,500. That would more than cover purchase price, keep and insurance. There would be a few bonus breeding rights for the main shareholders, perhaps five a year, and, if the stallion hit with a couple of fast horses in his first ‘crop’, the shareholders would all be on the gravy train. If none of Deep Diver’s offspring could run by the end of year five, well, he would be sold to Japan for a song. But for a profitable song.

Robert laid out a business plan and went to his father. Vernon grasped the facts extremely swiftly and agreed on the strategy. Robert could put up the original money and, as the paymaster, have a strong say in the sale of both shares and one-time breeding seasons. Two weeks later John Magnier agreed terms with David Robinson. Deep Diver, purchased for £400,000, would never run again. He would report for duty at Castle Hyde Stud in County Cork. Robert Sangster’s money and John Magnier’s vision had combined for the first time.

Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic a further phenomenon was in the process of breaking out. It came in shades of bright, burnished copper, and it went by the name of Secretariat, a colt already considered by all of the top judges to be the fastest two-year-old seen in the United States since Native Dancer twenty years before. By the time John Magnier had bought Deep Diver, Secretariat had won seven races in four months, including three at Saratoga, and two more Stakes at Belmont Park. He was already the hottest favourite for the 1973 American Triple Crown in living memory.

In the November of the year, John Magnier told Robert Sangster on the telephone from Ireland that if Secretariat should triumph in all three American classics next summer, the US public would go berserk over the first Triple Crown winner since Citation in 1948. ‘There will’, he said, ‘be a massive upsurge in interest in horseracing.’ They both knew that seven weeks after the final leg of the Triple Crown – the Belmont Stakes in New York – the first yearlings by the English Triple Crown winner Nijinsky would come under the hammer at Keeneland. ‘I am telling you’, said John, with some alarm, ‘that prices will go higher and higher. Christ! I’ve just paid a one hundred per cent premium for Deep Diver against what I paid for Green God one year ago. Do you have any idea what could happen in this industry in the next few years?’

Robert did not. But he caught the drift. He was becoming aware of the great fear of John Magnier: that in five years’ time it will be impossible either to buy, or even retain for breeding, a top-class American-bred stallion in southern Ireland, or even England.

‘They’ll freeze us out,’ said John. ‘The sheer weight of their dollars will dominate the industry. Big prices for yearlings always mean big prices for stallions. Over here we will find ourselves looking at second-line stallions, and they in turn will produce second-line racers, which will in turn make third-line stallions. In this business you have to get the best, and breed the best to the best. There is no other way. And I am afraid the Americans could cause us to become strictly a third-rate power in the bloodstock business.’

Once more Robert and John reconvened in southern Ireland. They spent time going to visit Deep Diver and Green God at Castle Hyde, and they went over the list of shareholders. The entire business was sound, and again they talked long into the night, once more agreeing that the answer was to form powerful syndicates that could take on the Americans financially at the breeding end of the industry. But like all major business reviews, they were apt to simplify what was already easy, and complicate what was already confusing. The issue was the same. Robert remained the obvious man to head up the sales operation to the big potential investors. But he needed credentials. Four weeks later, from a rather unexpected quarter, he got them.

At the conclusion of their meeting in Portman Square on II December 1972, the Jockey Club announced the election of three new members. The first was the tall Old Etonian Champion Amateur Steeplechase rider Christopher Collins, heir to the Goya perfume business; the second was David Alan Bethell, the fifth Baron Westbury MC (confidant of the Royal Family, former Captain in the Scots Guards, twice wounded, North African campaign); the third was the Cheshire Regiment’s former private soldier and scourge of the rails bookmakers, Robert E. Sangster KO (Heavyweight Campaign, Berlin). Proposed by the local Liverpool peer, the Earl of Derby, and seconded by the third Viscount Leverhulme, a near-neighbour from the Wirral, Robert was elected, unopposed, for basically the same reasons as Chris Collins. After the nasty scare the Members had received over Christopher Soames’s blackballing five years previously, the Club had agreed to bring in new blood, young men of vision, who were important investors in bloodstock and seemed likely to show an interest in the administration of racing in Great Britain in the coming years. Under this new post-Soames regime, the Jockey Club had recruited several racehorse owners and breeders who had demonstrated outstanding abilities beyond the paddocks: Sir Robert McAlpine of the giant construction company; the stockbroker John U. Baillie; the Midlands industrialist Brian Jenks; the De Beers Consolidated Mines (diamonds) director Sir Philip Oppenheimer; the electronics mogul Sir Michael Sobell. And now they had Robert Sangster, untitled, uncommissioned, unconnected and unpretentious – embryo bloodstock adventurer par excellence.

Robert did in fact know dimly, somewhere in the back of his mind, that his fellow stewards at Haydock Park were planning to propose him for membership, but since everyone knew – post-Soames – that you were unlikely to be thrown out these days once proposed and seconded by persons of high rank, he never gave it much thought. News of his election came as rather a surprise to him. But he and John Magnier knew simultaneously that their number one problem was solved. In the world bloodstock business, there is no higher form of credential than to be recognized as a Member of the English Jockey Club. This remains true in all racing countries from Tokyo to Longchamp, from the Antipodes to Santa Anita. Membership denotes total respectability, total honesty, total uprightness. Besides, a meeting with such a man might secure you an invitation to the Jockey Club Room at Newmarket, or Epsom, or perhaps even Royal Ascot. Members of the English Jockey Club are well received everywhere, and in Australia and the United States they are quite often feted.

What the Members did not however fully appreciate was Robert’s former close association with a bookmaker – his own family credit account division which Robert shut down before it became a total embarrassment both financially and socially. And nor were they fully appraised of his most recent venture which saw him as the owner of a financially doomed bloodstock agency in Newmarket which was currently acting as a paper-thin shield for a pile of debts that stretched from Deauville to Saratoga. In the fullness of time, Robert would describe his involvement in this absurdity as: ‘A bit hasty!’

The Newmarket Bloodstock Agency was its name and it was presided over by the tall, balding Richard Galpin, a man whose charm and relentless salesmanship hid a business brain which was apt to function in a rather unorthodox manner. His personal memoirs might easily have been entitled, What They Would Never Dream of Teaching You at the Harvard Business School. Within a few weeks of his Jockey Club membership being finalized, Robert had bought up the shares vacated by Richard’s cousin and become, in effect, the owner of this most shaky enterprise. His decision to become the head of a bloodstock agency was probably encouraged by the fact that his old friend Nick Robinson had elected to part from his family firm, following the death of his grandfather Sir Foster. Robert decided that he and Nick had better run the bloodstock business between them and Nick was duly appointed chairman.

‘It was’, Nick recalls, ‘one of the most nerve-racking periods of my life. Five minutes on the phone with Richard would give me an instant headache. And if I hung up on him, he’d ring right back and keep on talking as if nothing had happened!’

Within a few days of taking over, Nick Robinson reported to Robert that all was not absolutely ideal with the new agency. Because, not only did he own the company, he also owned twenty horses in Australia which Galpin had bought speculatively the previous year. Unsold by the Agency, they were currently in training, at high cost, now at Robert’s expense. ‘Worse yet,’ Nick added, ‘Galpin wants to go back to Australia and buy some more!’ Robert replied in rather colourful language, which meant, broadly, that perhaps Richard should rethink his Antipodean strategy.

The ensuing few weeks were full of rancour. Nick had decided to go to the upcoming Fasig Tipton Sales of two-year-olds-in-training held annually at Hialeah, in Miami. No expert in the subtleties of conformation himself, he received a five-minute lesson in a bloodstock agent’s technique from Galpin. ‘Feel his legs, like this. Then get up and say something, like “Well, they’re not perfect, but neither were his father’s, and that didn’t stop him running, did it?”’ Without any huge confidence Nick departed for Miami, with a local trainer, Ian Walker, leaving Galpin in charge of the office. Over the next few days he would ponder long and hard as to why the normally shrewd and sure-footed Sangster was fooling around in this chaotic enterprise anyway.

Nick arrived at the sales in Florida and reported immediately to the Fasig Tipton office in order to establish his credentials, as the new chairman of the Newmarket Bloodstock Agency. His reception was inordinately frosty and he was told that the head of the sales company, the rather pompous John Finney wanted to see him. Nick was taken to the back row of the empty sales ring and asked precisely when the Newmarket Bloodstock Agency intended to pay for their purchases at the Saratoga Sale in New York the previous August. It was the first indication Nick had received of any debt problem Robert might have inherited from the previous owners: problems with unsold horses were one thing, but these debts were completely unaccounted for. A thousand little red lights started to flash before Nick’s eyes.

He called Robert immediately, direct from Finney’s office, and recounted the problem as succinctly as he could. The facts were relatively simple. Galpin had bought a very expensive horse for the tight-fisted London electrical tycoon Sir Jules Thorn, a man notorious for claiming a six-month credit line to anyone to whom he owed money. That included industrial suppliers, accountants, trainers and definitely bloodstock agencies. Sir Jules was famous for it. In this case however his reluctance to pay Galpin had been almost fatal because Galpin had bought in dollars and billed Sir Jules in English pounds. During the six-month suspension of payment, the dollar had firmed and the pounds with which Sir Jules had paid Galpin had not covered the dollar amount owed to Fasig Tipton. The shortfall ran into several thousands. Galpin had pleaded with him, but Sir Jules had not grown as rich as he was by listening to the bleatings of penniless agents. Unsurprisingly, he informed Galpin the problem was not his. Thus, in the usual way of such men, he had no further interest in it and would not pay another cent.

Robert’s options were narrow. Either he could pay Finney and allow Newmarket to continue to trade in bloodstock, or he could request Nick to return home and wind up the company, and try to sue Sir Jules for the loss. Robert bit the bullet and paid. And Nick, slightly shaken by the experience, settled down to inspect the two-year-olds, and perhaps buy a couple for an English client. His peaceful perusal of the barns and their expensive occupants was, however, short lived. In the middle of the sales that evening, the tannoy system suddenly paged him: ‘Mr Nick Robinson of the Newmarket Bloodstock Agency to the office, please.’

Nick, who was becoming increasingly underwhelmed by the entire exercise, duly presented himself at the office where he was confronted by one Monsieur Olivier Victor Thomas of the French sales company, Office du Pur Sang. This particular Frenchman was not merely angry. He was shaking with rage.

‘You!’ he yelled. ‘You represent l’organisation des criminels.’

‘Who me?’ said Nick.

‘Newmarket Bloodstock! Ha! I spit on Newmarket Bloodstock!’

‘Oh Christ,’ said Nick, and added that he would prefer to discuss anything of this rather disagreeable nature somewhere less proximate to the officials of Fasig Tipton. They retreated to a little office above the open-air bar where most of the English bloodstock agents had congregated. ‘Newmarket Bloodstock is a disgrace,’ bawled the Frenchman.

‘Sssshhhhhhh,’ said Nick, acutely conscious that all eyes were now upturned from the bar below as he and Monsieur Thomas gave a passable imitation of Romeo and Juliet having their first row. ‘Monsieur Robinson!’ thundered the Frenchman. ‘We do not like people who do not pay for their horses. Your organization is a disgrace and you will be blackballed from French racing. Not one of your bills from the August Sale at Deauville has been paid.’

Down below a few sniggers had turned into full-scale laughter. The agents and trainers were falling about at the plight of the rookie bloodstock agency chairman, even though they all knew the debts were obviously Galpin’s not Nick’s, nor, clearly, Robert’s. The grandson of Sir Foster Robinson sighed the sigh of the profoundly depressed and headed for the second time that day to a telephone to call Robert. Then he realized it was three o’clock in the morning in Liverpool, and instead booked the call from his hotel for three a.m. Miami time. Robert took the news with immense irritation. ‘Jesus Christ’ was his precise phrase. Nick told him glumly that he knew Galpin was a bloody fool all along. But once more Robert agreed to pay the debt and to call the Paris office of Pur Sang to guarantee the credit of Newmarket Bloodstock.

When the chairman arrived home he called a meeting in Newmarket with Galpin and informed him that these kind of amateur dramatics were going to have to stop. Galpin pleaded to be allowed to attend the sales in Sydney where he believed he could make the kind of buys that could get the agency back on an even keel. Robert weighed up the cost and decided he either had to let Galpin try again or close the place down. Once again he was tolerant and agreed that Galpin could go as long as Nick was informed as to his precise activities in the sales ring. On that Nick was crystal clear.

‘If you sell all of the Australian horses we have in training you may buy one,’ said Nick. ‘That’s all. Not two, not three, just one.’

With that Galpin set off for the Land Down Under. All was calm for three days. Then one evening Nick was still poring over the office accounts at 10 p.m. when the telex machine in the corner began to rattle. ‘Guess who?’ sighed Nick to himself and, walking over to the noisy modern communicator, read to his utter horror the following words: ‘From Richard Galpin. This is a list of the yearlings I have purchased at Sydney today … Lot 21 … Lot 57 … Lot 102 …’ There were about ten purchases in all, but to Nick they looked like five hundred. He simply could not believe it. He let out a yell of anger that might almost have been heard in Sydney, grabbed the phone, called Robert, and then called Galpin instructing him to return home forthwith, if not slightly sooner.

This really was the end. Nick called Lester Piggott’s wife Susan, who was fast making a name for herself as an extremely efficient bloodstock agent, and offered her Galpin’s job. Robert, appalled at this opening venture as the owner of a Newmarket bloodstock agency, called a meeting at his London office. Present were Galpin, his wife Vivien, Derek Lucie-Smith, the company’s accountant, a director Keith Tamlin, Sangster and Robinson. Galpin opened with a rambling account of the great opportunities in Australian bloodstock. Robert, furious at the way his money was pouring in, and out, of this enterprise, demanded to know why Galpin had not carried out the very clear instructions given to him. Galpin rambled on some more, finally suggesting, with a marketing flourish, that Robert invest in six massive billboards to be erected at regular ten-mile intervals all along the London-Newmarket road. ‘That will increase our business,’ he declared.

Robert’s eyes rolled heavenward and his right foot shot out and slammed Nick in the shins. ‘For Christ’s sake, put the boot in, old friend,’ he groaned. ‘I think this man is crazy.’

Nick did his best to force Galpin to resign, but to no avail. Then Galpin went berserk, shouting and screaming, waving his arms, threatening Nick, threatening Robert with law suits. Nick was pretty angry himself, and his shin still hurt. But Robert went ice-cold silent and he stared hard into the eyes of Richard Galpin, who continued to rant and rave. There was no one to inform him that blind fury was not a good way to subdue R. Sangster and, in the regrettable absence of Tiny Davies, he kept yelling. When he finally subsided, Robert told him quietly: ‘Don’t shout at me again, Richard. You’re fired.’

The terms of his departure took many weeks to be settled and in the end he agreed to buy out Robert on a pay-back guarantee of £100,000 to cover the debts Robert had paid for him and the shares. It would take several years, but Robert was happy to cut loose from the agency. As they left the final meeting together Nick said quietly, ‘I never thought I’d see you that tough and that determined. But I shouldn’t hold your breath for your money.’

Robert grinned and said, ‘Don’t worry about Galpin. I know he’s a bit unusual, but there’s a touch of genius about the man in selecting horses. Remember he bought Solo Stream for me. And I have a lot of patience. He won’t owe me £100,000 for ever. That I can promise you.’

Richard Galpin never paid any of the money back, but in 1979 he had a two-year-old colt in training with Ron Sheather named Flash N Thunder. It won its maiden by four lengths and then finished a close second in the Prix Eclipse at St Cloud to earn a nine-stone rating in the Free Handicap. Flash N Thunder was thus valued at around £100,000 – and from out of the blue Robert claimed the colt from Galpin in settlement of the old debt. He relocated this fast three-year-old in Lambourn with Barry Hills who sent him out to win the Duke of York Stakes at the York May meeting. He was placed at both Royal Ascot and Goodwood, and Robert finally got his money in full when Flash N Thunder was sold to stand as a stallion in Greece. Eight years later the Newmarket Bloodstock Agency Ltd was declared insolvent in the Royal Courts of Justice in London, and compulsorily wound up.

With the Agency now out of the way, Robert began to concentrate more on the purchase of yearlings. His relationship with Eric Cousins was now on the wane, despite Eric training for him a first Royal Ascot winner with Cade’s County in the Norfolk Stakes in 1972. Eric’s principal talent and interest was the improvement of handicap-class horses from other trainers. At this he was supreme, but it was a policy guaranteed to keep him permanently in Division Two, where Robert no longer wanted to reside. And when Cellini began to please Vincent O’Brien in his early work at Ballydoyle, the die was cast for Robert. He was definitely going to stay in the Irish camp and moreover he was going to the Keeneland July Sales with his Irish friends in the summer of 1973 – and he was going to get involved in something big.

In the spring of the year, Secretariat did what no American racehorse had done for twenty-five years, winning the Triple Crown – the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont – with three track-record-breaking performances, the latter by an unprecedented thirty-one lengths. In one week Secretariat appeared on the front cover of Time Magazine, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated. He even made the centrefold in Vogue. No one could remember such adulation ever being lavished upon a racehorse – not for Man O’ War, not for Equipoise, not for Citation, not for Native Dancer, nor for Kelso. Not even for Secretariat’s own father Bold Ruler. With the row over Watergate threatening to dislodge President Nixon, it was as if this nearly unbeatable big chestnut colt had come along to provide a hero when everyone felt they needed one. All over New York there were even blue bumper stickers demanding: ‘Secretariat for President!’

When Robert, John Magnier and Vincent O’Brien met up at Keeneland they found themselves in the bull market to end all bull markets. Prices for yearling racehorses were rocketing as owners, trainers and agents battled it out in the ring for the next Secretariat. As John Magnier had forecast, yearlings by Nijinsky fetched huge amounts, two of them selling for around $200,000. A Northern Dancer yearling fetched $200,000, with four more making well over $100,000. Two by Raise a Native made around $200,000, with two more above $100,000. But the colt everyone wanted was one of the last sons of the late Bold Ruler, from the French mare Iskra. Tom Cooper of the Irish branch of the British Bloodstock Agency considered the colt the best-looking horse in the sale, and Vincent O’Brien agreed with him. Robert asked John Magnier what he would cost and the Irish stallion man replied, ‘I would say it’ll take a half million dollars to buy him.’

‘Is that a lot?’ said Robert.

‘No,’ said Magnier.

Robert told Vincent they would go to $500,000 for the son of Bold Ruler. And, further, Robert had a plan to blow all other bidders out of the water: he would cut them off before their prime with one massive bid which would, hopefully, frighten them all to death.

The usual procedure for auctioneers is to start off by saying something like: ‘Now here’s a top-class colt, as you can all see. Who’ll gimme a half-million for him … all right, what about $300,000 … OK $200,000 … $100,000 … start him at $50,000 … and $50,000 I have!’ But on this particular evening Robert Sangster planned to curtail that little scenario. The auctioneer had no sooner demanded ‘Who’ll gimme a half-million for the son of Bold Ruler … ?’ when Robert upped and bid the full amount. The auctioneer could hardly believe his eyes. He hesitated and then said quietly: ‘$500,000 I have.’

This bid was only $10,000 short of the all-time Keeneland record and Robert, not absolutely certain how they were going to raise the $500,000 at this point, sat and waited for the shock waves to subside. He watched the auctioneer demanding a higher bid and was stunned when suddenly he got it. Jim Scully, bidding for the Japanese syndicate headed by Zenya Yoshida, replied with a devastating bid of $600,000. Vincent moved over towards Robert and John Magnier and urged them to try one more. ‘Jesus,’ said Vincent, ‘he’s the most beautiful colt. Let’s go higher.’ But Robert was very, very nervous. He sat with his head well down, saying nothing, refusing even to look up, as Scully landed the fine bay son of Bold Ruler for the greatest amount of money ever bid at Keeneland.

Secretly he was extremely relieved, but Vincent O’Brien was disappointed. John Magnier was very much within himself, turning the problems over in his mind. Late that evening he told Robert, ‘This sale is running thirty-three per cent up on last year. Secretariat has driven everyone mad. You can already see that Nijinsky was syndicated cheaply at $5.5 million. Personally, I think the Bold Ruler was cheap. Look, bull markets tend to run for quite a while. Here we had two of the best judges of a racehorse in the world Vincent and Tom Cooper telling us to buy. When we come here again, we have to be much more serious, much more organized. We have to come with several million raised from a syndicate so that nothing frightens us off. We must be in a position to back our judgment.’

Robert too was thoughtful. He resolved to look carefully into the fates of the big-priced Kentucky yearlings, to see what they were really worth at the end of their careers, and how many people actually made money from them. In his heart he believed in the philosophy of John Magnier – that you have to back the judgment of your team. Otherwise, why bother to come? And in the next twenty-four months he would have much time to ruminate upon the night they failed to buy the Bold Ruler yearling. The Japanese named him Wajima, and he won nine races, beating the Kentucky Derby winner Foolish Pleasure twice. Once he beat the immortal Forego, in a head-and-head stretch-battle for the Marlboro Cup at Belmont Park. Wajima won nearly $600,000 in prize money alone. He was syndicated as a stallion in 1975 for $7.2 million.

Back in England, Robert was delighted to hear that Cellini was in great form at home. In the next few weeks he won his first two races in Ireland. In Vincent’s view he was one of the two best colts in the country – and that judgment was proved to be sound when Cellini came out and won the 1973 Dewhurst Stakes at Newmarket, England’s premier two-year-old championship, in October. Whether or not he ever won another race, this tough son of Round Table had to be worth $1 million as a sire back in Kentucky. Whichever way you looked at it, Vincent had been right to pay $240,000 for him. And John Magnier’s advice to Robert had been correct: with his first major share in a top-class expensive American yearling, Robert had quadrupled his money.

The following eighteen months was a period of consolidation, during which time Vincent O’Brien, John Magnier and Robert Sangster formulated a serious game plan. It was John Magnier’s opinion that top American-bred stallions were already beyond their reach. He pointed out over and over again, ‘You cannot buy such a horse after his career in the States because they all go to Kentucky for huge amounts of money which we could never pay. And if they race here in Europe and win at the highest class, the Americans quite simply buy them back. They can always pay more, because their stallion fees are so much higher. Any well-bred yearling in America is worth more than his counterpart here because he can win so much money in the States. We do not have the prize-money structure to copy them. They will always have too much cash.’

As the 1974 season wore on, a mood of resignation was beginning to set in. John Magnier and Vincent were deeply unimpressed with the current crop of horses running in Europe, with the possible exception of Dahlia, the brilliant French filly who was superior to all other horses of both sexes, but was unlikely to make much of a stallion. John Magnier also liked the tenaciously tough Ascot Gold Cup winner Sagaro, who he thought one day would sire some good national hunt horses. Basically, he thought the entire answer to the breeding of fast horses over the next two decades rested very firmly in America. The problem was, how to get his hands on them.

Robert Sangster recalls with total clarity the moment Magnier solved the puzzle. He and John were having a quiet drink at Goodwood, right after a tough-looking American-bred colt by Vaguely Noble named Ace of Aces, owned by Nelson Bunker Hunt, had humbled the best milers in England to win the Sussex Stakes.

‘Look at that,’ said Magnier. ‘You could have bought him as a yearling for $30,000. Now he’ll probably be syndicated for upwards of $2 million to go back to Kentucky. I’m wondering if that might not be the answer: to raid the sales in the United States for yearlings, which cost one-twentieth of the price of stallions and hope to get it right once every four or five times. That way we’d own the stallions before they retired – and no one could get them away from us.’

He may have said something like it before, and he certainly refined the raw intellect of the thought many times again, but Robert Sangster says that was the moment, the moment when both he and John Magnier knew that at last they had a strategy to take the world of thoroughbred breeding by its neck and shake loose the key of gold. Robert recalls vividly the warm glow he felt as he pondered John’s words, the warm glow every businessman knows when he has been presented with a winning idea.

‘I poured myself a generous glass of Roederer Cristal,’ says Robert, ‘and I inhaled it as if it was draft lager, and I kept on saying over and over, “I like it, John, I like it, I really like it.”’

‘Baby stallions, Robert,’ said Magnier. ‘That’s what we’re after. The trick is to be absolutely professional about it. And remember, professionalism is about the total elimination of mistakes. It has nothing to do with money.’

Robert did venture the opinion that it would not be much fun if none of them could run. ‘We’ll have good times, and we’ll have a few bad times,’ replied John memorably. ‘But the good times will finance the bad. The trick is really very simple. We gut the catalogues from Keeneland and Saratoga as if they were fresh haddock. We’ll fillet out only those yearlings whose pedigrees are those of a stallion. There will be good racehorses out there in which we have no interest. We will not even bother to look at yearlings which do not have an unmistakable stallions’ pedigree. With Vincent, we have not only the finest classic trainer in the world, we also have the finest selector of a yearling, the man who bought Nijinsky among others. We also have the best possible advisors, Irishmen of the blood, who will spot faults, help Vincent, rally round to help us get it done. And when we go in to buy, we buy, never mind Yoshida, Scully or anyone else.’

Robert felt all of the old sense of adventure and gamble welling inside him. This was going to be nearly as good as Chalk Stream winning the Liverpool Autumn Handicap. He returned to Liverpool, to the office and to his breeding books. All through the winter of 1974–75 he studied the fates of the ten highest-priced yearlings of the past ten years, one hundred in all. He studied their racing careers and their stud values, and he reviewed some truly spectacular disasters, yearlings which had cost fortunes and could not run a yard. There were many which were not quite good enough but did not lose money, but there were also some spectacular successes.

His chart was huge and the permutations many. But however often Robert returned to the drawing board, there was one single conclusion which could not be diminished: the only man who could have made real money from buying such yearlings would have been the man who had bought them all.