Sport: Bluegrass Auctions for Bluebloods

When the rich try to hit it big—or in their case, bigger—they do not go to their neighborhood parish house to play bingo or purchase lottery tickets in a cigar store. Instead, they travel to Kentucky in the summertime and, midst all the splendor of the bluegrass, they buy thoroughbred race horses.

On the surface, such a venture seems nothing short of fiscal madness. For every dream horse like Seattle Slew (auction price: $17,500; payoff on the Triple Crown races alone: $462,380), there are thousands of also-rans and tens of thousands of never-rans. As a rule, only 5% of the more than 30,000 thoroughbreds foaled each year will ever earn their keep on a race track. Fully 65%, in fact, are high-priced, slow-footed dreams deferred that will retire without a single trip to the post. But if the pie is quite high in the sky, the tax shelters are very down to earth, so the wealthy gather every July in Keeneland and Lexington for the Keeneland and Fasig-Tipton Select Summer Yearling Sales. Dripping jewels and dropping the names of noble bloodlines—both human and equine—they have spent nearly $35 million this year on 623 unnamed, untried colts and fillies.

There were old railroad money and new fast-food money, Saudi sheiks and Japanese transistor magnates, Texas oilmen and British noblemen, not to mention the usual clutch of Whitneys and Vanderbilts. Around the barns of the great breeding farms—Spendthrift, Claiborne and the like—and under the canopies covering the caviar at auction-weekend parties, the talk was peppered with the names of sires: What A Pleasure, Round Table, Sir Ivor, Northern Dancer. A casual comment about one filly brought the quick question: "How was she bred, ma'am?" The equally quick answer: "By Secretariat out of Crimson Saint by Crimson Satan, seven wins in eleven starts for over $90,000." That yearling was gaveled off at Keeneland a few days later for $275,000; another, by Bold Bidder, went for $400,000, just $5,000 shy of the record for a filly.

Preston Madden of Hamburg Place ushered prospective buyers past ferns and bunting into an air-conditioned, mirrored tack room. As butlers proffered champagne from silver trays, Madden screened footage of his past turf champions. Tom Gentry, the showman of the bluegrass, hawked his yearlings like a carnival huckster, giving away Tom Gentry T shirts, Tom Gentry hats and Tom Gentry Slush, a rum and lime concoction. Seth Hancock, breeder for Claiborne Farm, conducted business more sedately. His yearlings were paraded six at a time before sharp-eyed trainers searching for tiny flaws: a foot that was slightly crooked, a back with too much sway, undersized hindquarters, oversized hocks. No frills, just fine horseflesh.