Debate about selling British and Irish horses abroad is unnecessary navel-gazing

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In this despatch he (strongly) questions those who feel the selling of British and Irish horses isn't good for our industry – subscribers can get more great insight from Martin every Monday to Friday.

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It was interesting to hear Ed Walker wade into the debate over whether too many good horses are being sold abroad in the Racing Post’s latest What A Shout video.

"My worry is that it's going to have a massive impact on the quality of the horses in training," he said. "Not necessarily right at the top, but that sort of Group 3 to Class 2 handicap level where we're losing horses.

“Owners are quite rightly deciding to sell them because they can't win the money they are being offered.”

His words echoed those of John Gosden, who told Lee Mottershead in an interview earlier in the year: "We're in danger of becoming a nursery. Too many nice horses are being sold to America and Australia. It's sell, sell, sell.”

I recently stumbled upon an article by a noted racing journalist who was broadly in agreement with the two trainers.

“One after another of our best horses are purchased by foreigners, and leave our shores to improve the breed on the continent and in other parts of the world,” they wrote, before reflecting on one particular case that “it seems to me that parting with outcrosses in this manner is suicidal to maintaining our pre-eminence as breeders of bloodstock.”

Those strong sentiments belong to John Fairfax Blakeborough, and were published in his ‘Sporting Diary’ in the Whitby Gazette. In 1911.

Harry Carr, writing in the Belfast Telegraph not long after the record-breaking sale of the leading British-trained two-year-old Vaguely Noble to American owners in December 1967, was also worried about an imminent degradation of the racing industry.

“British bloodstock is still hugely in demand, but how much longer will it be this way,” he asked. “How much longer can we afford this steady outflow of our choicest stock?"

In his speech at the Gimcrack dinner of 1949, the Aga Khan III aired concerns that sound eerily familiar in the present day.

According to a contemporary account, he lamented that “prize-money for most of the races run in England was ‘a miserable pittance’ compared with what was offered in France”.

The report continued: “He predicted that within the lifetime of most of the old men there, the thoroughbred breeding industry, in which Great Britain had the monopoly, would disappear unless the racing authorities acted.”

I could continue to give more such examples of prophecies of doom for British racing. A trawl through newspaper archives reveals that the sport has suffered from existential angst not just for decades, but for centuries.

In the early 1900s there was panic over the success of French-breds in Britain, and by the middle of the century the concerns had moved on to how American-breds were regularly beating our best. As far as I can tell by browsing through old newspapers, there has been fretting over a supposed general weakening of the breed since the 19th century.

And yet here we are in 2021 and British bloodstock sales are still the scene of fevered demand from international buyers, as we saw at the Tattersalls August Sale last week and will no doubt see again at this autumn’s yearling sales.

Despite the persistent pessimism over whether exports would dilute bloodlines or make racing less competitive, those owners and trainers from around the world who converge on Newmarket each time an auction is held don’t seem to mind the domestic product too much.

And why shouldn’t the industry be happy to sell so many horses abroad? Many of the runners in question fall between two stools, being too good for handicaps but not quite good enough for genuine Group races, and many of them are geldings who can’t improve the breed here. The revenue generated by their sales can also be reinvested in buying more horses and continuing to support breeders and trainers, of course.

Furthermore, when items of the family silver have been sold overseas, they have been relatively easy to retrieve, even if it is at some expense. It was a mistake for Makfi to be sold inexpensively out of Britain to France as a two-year-old, but after he proved himself to be truly top-class he was re-purchased to stand in Britain. The dam of Excelebration was even sold to India before her star son emerged, but was still able to be hastily repatriated.

Makfi: sold but retrievedCredit: Aga Khan Studs

More broadly speaking, progeny of top international sires (many of whom descend from horses exported from Britain and Ireland at some point in the recent past) can readily be brought here. Look at the rash of runners by the late Deep Impact in Britain and Ireland in recent years: they might seem something of an exotic novelty, but the sire was out of the Irish-bred mare Wind In Her Hair and his damline is as British as queuing.

All that is not to dismiss legitimate concerns about the export of smart domestic performers, and we certainly shouldn’t become complacent about the prestige of British and Irish racing and therefore the value of our stock.

Clearly, prize-money desperately needs to improve, and field sizes in Britain have been worryingly small, although the latter issue appears to have more to do with the crackpot way in which the fixture list is compiled than anything else.

But so much of the continued debate about the sale of British and Irish horses abroad seems to me to be unnecessary navel-gazing.

Surely a healthy export market is a good thing? The alternative of little or no demand for British and Irish runners would be much, much worse.

Get involved!

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