Op/Ed: Dan Liebman

[Wandering Eyes]

In July 1985, the morning after he had sold a world-record priced yearling colt, I spent some time with the late Warner Jones, then the owner of Hermitage Farm.

I always had a great relationship with Warner, so before he would discuss the $13.1-million hammer price, he took advantage of my being captive in a room with him to vent on a subject of great importance.

“Look at this,” he said, taking from his pocket a story from Daily Racing Form, my employer at the time.

“The horse is mentioned, the trainer is mentioned, the jockey is mentioned … but no mention of the owner,” Warner said, shaking the paper at me. “How the hell would this game exist without the owners.”

Of course Warner was right, this day the owner in question being his good friend George Bunn, more known globally for the coffee makers bearing his name than his equine exploits.

And though this column has nothing to do with owners, it makes the point that when wise men speak, it is smart to listen, no matter the subject.

And though Warner Jones had plenty to say about selling an eight-figure yearling, and was still basking in its glow, he was the man at the lectern.

I finally got around to the matter of breeding, not just how one goes about breeding a horse that sells for $13.1 million (consigned by Warner but co-bred with Will Farish and W.S. Kilroy) but the process of mating one’s mares.

“It really is quite simple,” he explained. “I look at what has worked in the past and try to repeat it.”

As I started to ask another question, he added this: “Simple, but not easy.”

As I sat there stewing over that, Warner continued.

“We all look at genetics, inbreeding, think about taking a stout mare to a speedy stallion, but I really do study what has worked for me in the past and see if I can repeat it.”

Gee, that seems so simple.

Simple, but not easy.

I was reminded of that exchange with the former Churchill Downs board chair when I read a fascinating story in the Thursday Thoroughbred Daily News by Chris McGrath.

That interview with Hill ‘n’ Dale Stud owner John Sikura contained this statement: “You can have all the opinion you want; you can’t predict success. But you can react to it. Once it works, then you go back. Or… you can stay in your ways, and never win, and be irrelevant. That’s a choice as well.”

So, once it works, then you go back. Exactly as Warner Jones had told me 33 years ago.

Warner Jones, during a half-century of breeding, was certainly never irrelevant. Though younger and in the game fewer years, the same can be said of John Sikura.

The $13.1-million sale of Seattle Dancer, a half-brother to Seattle Slew by Nijinsky II, helped Warner Jones set more than one record that July. He sold eight yearlings for $19,470,000, most for a consignment in the history of that storied sale.

John Sikura has some records of his own. His Hill ‘n’ Dale, as agent, sold the highest-priced broodmare prospect every auctioned at Keeneland, Playful Act, in 2007 for $10.5 million.

The operation also sold the top-priced broodmare at Keeneland in 2015 and 2008; the second highest-priced weanling colt ever sold at the sale (2015); the top-priced colt at the September sale (1990 and 2011) and the leading filly at the September sale (1985, 2002 and 2013).

Sikura’s comments to McGrath about stallions, their influences in Europe and the U.S., and his historical perspective, are great reading.

He makes it sound so simple.

Simple, but not easy.

At each Keeneland sale, I would find time to sit and chat with the late Bob Courtney, a man with whom I had great affection and admiration.

One day roughly 20 years ago I asked him a question.

“If you were new in the game and had $100,000 to invest, who would you give it to?”

Bob didn’t hesitate.

“John Sikura,” he said.

Simple … and easy.

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