Renowned bloodstock agent Marette Farrell grew up in Ireland before making Kentucky her home. She has purchased many graded stakes winners over the years, including Roadster , Collected , and Hard Not to Like. She spoke with BloodHorse about the importance of the Keeneland September Yearling Sale, and the work that she and her team put into the research before, during, and after the sale.
BloodHorse: When does your research start for the Keeneland September Sale? What does your schedule look like two weeks out, and what does it look like the week before?
Marette Farrell: Well, two weeks ago, I was on a boat in Saratoga celebrating Zoe's (Cadman's) 50th birthday, but luckily I have the iPad now, so that works very well. I did some work there, and as soon as I came down here I tried to go to some farms in the mornings and take the afternoon to go through the pedigrees. The one to two weeks away really makes no difference for me, it's just trying to go through the books. I do a list of filly pedigrees and colt pedigrees. I do a lot of matings, so I like to stay connected with the farms. Some of them want me all-in and want me to help with the appraisals at the sale, but I try to stay on top of how they do, how they're selling. It's a lot but a good lot; we live on adrenaline.
When we do our research for the sales, at the yearling sales I'm always keeping my notes. The iPad is huge for me. If I saw that horse as a weanling, I have my notes on it, and luckily I have a good memory. I remember the horses very well. There are certain weanlings we may not have bought. But, I'm coming looking for them, at the yearling sales. Then I see whether they developed, or not. Actually, that holds true to the 2-year-old sales, too. The September Sale is so many things. It's a gathering of information for fillies that end up being good broodmares, good race fillies down the road, and eventually broodmare prospects. These notes and our memories are going to be extremely important. It's not just about buying a horse for me; it's getting all of this information. I might say I really liked this group of yearlings, they might not be new-season sires, they may be proven stallions, but I like the group. So, we should come in behind that, and breed to that stallion. We've actually had luck doing that, and I'll continue to do that.
BH: What are some of the traits you must see in a pedigree for a horse to be considered? What about conformation?
MF: The quality of the female family and the depth of the female family, where it sources from, what broodmares it sources from. And then the broodmare sire, I'm trying to open it up, we've done OK when I've opened it up a little bit. But I've tried to stay within those parameters. The physical is super important; we have to love the horse that's right in front of us. At the end of the day, that's what the trainers see. They don't care if its four grade 1's that's half sisters or half brothers. Either they like the horse or they don't. Like the athletes we saw at the Olympics, they look like athletes. They look like top-class people, so it's the same with horses.
BH: You work with several clients. Describe some of the challenges of buying for multiple clients who all want a good horse.
MF: I try to keep it quite tight. I work for a small group of people, a few different groups. The way I do it is I go out there, I try to go out with a clean slate, and I have my pedigree list, but I want to love whatever horses I'm going to try to buy. And then I'll sit down, and it might hit me right when I'm out there looking at the horse, "That one would suit this person," and I think that's actually really important. There's no preferential treatment with my clients, I really try to make the horse fit the trainer—East Coast or West Coast, grass, distance, sprinter, earlier type. We talk a lot about that in the evening times, what suits each person. I saw a horse today that's not perfect in front, but I love the horse. That horse might not suit a certain trainer because they train hard, but maybe it might suit this person because he takes his time and lets the horse develop. It's always a thought process. It's an evolving thought process the whole time.
BH: Who are some of the most successful horses you've purchased 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 with the ExLine Border Group, we actually bought five. Three were stake horses, one was grade-placed (Laurent, by Practical Joke ) and the other two were listed stakes winners (Flattery and Stay Hot). Roadster is another yearling we bought. Roadster actually has his first weanlings this year, and one of the guys has some in Florida, and showed me today a photo of two Roadster weanlings he has, and they're smashers.
He was one of the earlier horses by Quality Road . I can still see him walking up and down (outside the barn). He had a beautiful walk, very easy on the eye. He stood over a lot of ground. Now that we know Quality Roads better, he has that Quality Road look, a sort of tubular look, a strong front end, a strong back end. He had a very good demeanor about him.
We don't buy a lot of volume (in regard to yearlings). I really try to zone in on the horses I like, and try to get them bought for my people. Luckily, my clients really understand that. When I make the phone call, I am really liking this horse. Or, if I tell them about two horses, I'm not giving them a list of 20, I'm giving 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 actually believe that this could be a really good horse. I go up there believing, it doesn't matter what the price is, I believe in the horse. That's why I'm proud, our stats are pretty good. There are so many failures in the game, the average is 15%. So if you win 20% of the time, which is huge, you lose 80% of the time. That was a John Adger saying he really ingrained in me, and it's so true. It takes a certain mindset to handle that, including me. I don't handle that well, I'm very competitive. When I was young, I played a lot of field hockey. I don't like to lose. I want it to be right. All of our clients get that, we all get along. We all sit at the table, hang out together. Everything is pretty open between everyone, and I like that, too.
BH: Do you have a team working ahead to short-list horses? Besides winnowing a large pool of horses, how do the short-listers help in identifying important horses to consider? How valuable is their input?
MF: They're huge, 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 is with me every step of the yearling sales. We go 100 million miles per hour but he is unbelievably calm and Zen, which works brilliantly. We've all worked together...since forever. We're good friends, and there's good camaraderie. It's fun. We know each other and I know how to interpret what they say. We're kind of all equal spokes of the wheel. Everybody has something that's their strength, and I really respect their opinions. Every evening we sit down and we go through the horses that we saw that day, and the horses that might be on our preferential list. I value their opinions highly.
