Renowned horse breeder Marette Farrell grew up in Ireland before making Kentucky her home. She has purchased many graded race winners over the years, including Convertible , Collected And Hard not to like . She spoke with BloodHorse about the importance of the Keeneland Yearling Market in September and the work she and her team put into researching before, during and after the sale.
Horse Blood: When do you start researching for the Keeneland September sale? What does your schedule look like two weeks out and what does the week before that look like?
Marette Farrell: Yeah, two weeks ago I was on a boat in Saratoga celebrating Zoe (Cadman)’s 50th birthday, but luckily I have an iPad now, so that works really well. I did some work there, and as soon as I got down here I tried to go to some farms in the morning and spend the afternoon looking at pedigrees. A week or two away from home doesn’t really make a difference to me, just trying to look at the books. I’ve got a pedigree list of mares and foals. I do a lot of matings, so I like to stay in touch with the farms. Some of them want me to be fully involved and want me to help with pricing when they sell, but I try to keep an eye on how they’re doing, how they’re selling. There’s a lot of it, but it’s a lot; we live on adrenaline.
When we are researching to sell, at the yearling sales, I always take notes. The iPad is very important to me. If I see a horse as a weanling, I will take notes and luckily I have a good memory. I remember horses very well. There are some weanlings that we may not have bought. But I will go and find them at the yearling sales. Then I will see if they have developed. Actually, that is true of the 2-year-old sales. The September sale has a lot of things. It is where information is gathered about the mares who will become good breeding mares, good racing mares, and eventually good breeding mares. Those notes and our memories will be extremely important. For me, it is not just about buying a horse; it is about having all this information. I can say that I really like this group of yearlings, they may not be new stallions, they may be proven stallions, but I like this group. So, we should go after that, and breed to that stallion. We’ve been really lucky to do that, and I’ll continue to do that.
BH:What are some characteristics you must see in a horse’s pedigree for it to be considered? What about conformation?
MF: The quality of the mare’s family and the depth of the mare’s family, the pedigree of the mare, the pedigree of the breeding mares. And then the stallions, I’m trying to expand that, we’ve done well when I expand that a little bit. But I’ve tried to stay within those parameters. The physicality is extremely important; you have to love the horse right in front of you. At the end of the day, that’s what the trainers see. They don’t care if the four Grade 1 horses are half-sisters or half-brothers. They either like the horse or they don’t. Like the athletes that we saw at the Olympics, they look like athletes. They look like top people, so it’s the same with the horses.
BH: You work with a variety of clients. Describe some of the challenges of buying horses for multiple clients, all of whom want a good horse.
MF: I try to keep things really tight. I work for a small group, a couple of different groups. The way I do it is I go out, I try to go out with a clean slate, and I have my pedigree list, but I want to love any horse that I’m trying to buy. And then I’ll sit down, and I can think as soon as I go out and look at the horse, “That horse would suit this person,” and I think that’s really important. There’s no preferential treatment for my clients, I really try to match the horse to the trainer—East Coast or West Coast, turf, long distance, sprint, kind of before. We talk a lot about that in the evenings, what suits each person. Today I saw a horse that wasn’t perfect in front of me, but I loved that horse. That horse may not be right for one trainer because they work hard, but it may be right for this one because he takes his time and lets the horse develop. It’s always a thought process. It’s an ever-evolving thought process.
BH: What were some of the most successful horses you bought as yearlings? Do you remember how strongly you believed in them?
MF:We bought (2015 Del Mar Oaks (G1) winner) Sharla Rae for $22,000. We bought some really good horses. The current 3-year-olds from ExLine Border Group, we actually bought five. Three are stakes, one is a graded horse (Laurent via Practical joke ) and the other two are listed as award winners (Flunky And Keep warm ). Convertible is another yearling we bought. Roadster actually had his first weaned foals this year, and one of the guys who raises some in Florida, and today showed me a picture of the two Roadster weaned foals he has, and they’re doing great.
He was one of the first horses of Quality Road . I can still see him walking up and down (outside the barn). He walked very nicely, very easy on the eyes. He stood on a lot of ground. Now that we know Quality Roads better, he has that Quality Road look, a tubular build, solid front end, solid rear end. He has a very good demeanor.
We don’t buy a lot (of yearlings). I really try to focus on horses that I like and try to buy them for people. Luckily, my customers really understand that. When I call, I really like this horse. Or, if I tell them about two horses, I don’t give them a list of 20, I give them two and I hope we get one of them.
Whether I spend $5,000, $50,000, $500,000, whatever it is, $5 million, I really believe that this can be a really good horse. I go in there believing that, the price doesn’t matter, I believe in the horse. That’s why I’m proud, our stats are pretty good. There are a lot of losses in the game, an average of 15%. So if you win 20% of the time, which is huge, then you lose 80% of the time. That’s a quote from John Adger that he really drilled into me, and it’s absolutely true. It takes a certain mindset to handle that, including me. I don’t handle that well, I’m very competitive. When I was younger, I played a lot of field hockey. I don’t like to lose. I want things to be right. All our customers understand that, we all get along. We all sit at the table, hang out together. It’s pretty open between people and I like that too.
BH: Do you have a team working in advance to shortlist horses? Besides sifting through a large pool of horses, how do the shortlisters help identify important horses to consider? How valuable is their input?
MF: They are great, I couldn’t do it without them. There’s Tescha Von Bluecher and Zoe Cadman, Matt Zehnder, Martin O’Dowd, who used to manage Runnymede Farm. Matt has been with me every step of the way when it comes to selling yearlings. We’re going 100 million miles an hour but he’s so calm and Zen, it’s amazing. We’ve worked together… for so long. We’re good friends and we have a good camaraderie. It’s fun. We know each other and I know how to interpret what they’re saying. We’re all equal spokes on the wheel. Everyone has their strengths and I really respect their opinions. Every evening we sit down and go over the horses we’ve seen that day and the horses that might be on our priority list. I take their opinions very seriously.
