Bluff and double bluff: inside the world of the bloodstock agents

The chestnut colt ambling around the sales ring at Doncaster is a flatly imperturbable contrast to the man 20 metres away who is trying to buy him.

"Still seems very cheap. He'll probably hit the early 30s . . . right, we're about to go," says Billy Jackson-Stops, the bloodstock agent who has been thinking about the horse for much of the morning.

The briefest raising of the hand, oblivious to those standing behind in the Goffs UK auditorium but enough to catch the eye of the auctioneer, and we're in at £34,000.