Whitham Continues to Cultivate Legacy of Success

Clay Whitham's ties to Thoroughbred racing go back a generation to his parents, Frank and Janice, who grew up around horses in Kansas. That passion has continued as a family activity for more than 45 years. With a history of success with runners such as Hall of Famer Bayakoa, Fort Larned, McCraken, and Walkathon, the Whitham name now has its latest standout. Burnham Square won the Holy Bull Stakes (G3) by 1 3/4 lengths. That win has put the Liam's Map gelding squarely in the middle of the Road to the Kentucky Derby. Clay Whitham shares how Whitham Thoroughbreds decides which stallions to breed mares to, the surprise of Burnham Square, and more. BH: What do your operations look like these days? How many horses do you have? What is the state of business? CW: There's a lot of different ways people can be involved in the horse business. Our operation has evolved somewhat over time but has been primarily a breed-to-race operation. Currently, we have seven broodmares boarded at Maple Lane Farm in Kentucky. There have been times when there's been a few more, but just like everybody, expenses have gone up so much in recent years we did trim our broodmare band down from as much as 10 or 11, down to the current level of seven. BH: How do you decide which horses you want to run, which ones you want to sell, which ones you want to go straight to breeding with? CW: We take a look at the foals, and you get different years, different production out of mares. But we try to manage it by numbers. Our current program is to try to not put more than five horses into training depending on what kind of production we're getting. It's not unusual for us to sell a couple of yearlings, and to get ourselves down to the target number that we have. We currently have five horses that are 3-year-olds; we had five 2-year-olds last year that we retained to put into training. We're kind of right on our target number right now. Since we're breeding these horses, it all starts with the stallions that we decide to use. Since we're mostly a breed-to-race operation, we're not as limited or restricted to what kind of horses we breed to, because when we raise them, we're not as concerned about (who) they're attracting at the sale. But considering that, we do sell some and retain some. Ideally we'd like to fit both boxes. We are breed-to-race first, but we're mindful about the marketability of horses based on their sires. BH: Your mom, Janice, takes the lead on the mating pairing process and who's going to be paired up What does she look for? What do you look for in trying to make the right combination? CW: She's still very much involved and really enjoys planning meetings. It's something that she's always taken the lead on, and it keeps your mind working. It's a good thing for somebody to be working on. We certainly try to think about several different things when we're planning those meetings. The first is going down a list of questions; we try to keep in mind that we want to use a mix of proven versus unproven or new sires. One of the current big discussion points in the breeding industry is everybody wanting to go to first-crop sires. The thinking is they haven't proven they can be a sire yet, so you can't hold that against them. But we all know the numbers, the majority of them, probably eight out of 10, will not end up being successful sires, but they are kind of like a shiny new object to be opened up and checked out. Everybody's excited about new sires; they just came off the track. You've got champions and Kentucky Derby winners, and most of them are grade 1 stakes winners. They're very exciting horses to breed to so you have to fight a little bit the urge to want to go breed to these new sires. We do use a mix of proven versus new sires. And then we certainly look at the different pedigree tools out there. True Nicks happens to be one of the tools I know. There's a lot of different products out there. … We don't just use what it says, but we do use it as a tool, because it gives you a lot of information. Then we also look at the physical side of things, where we're raising multiple foals out of these mares, we try to get an idea of what would help them, either size them up or refine them, if they're kind of throwing coarser looking foals. A lot of variables go into that selection. BH: Who are some of the sires that, whether they're newer on the scene or have been around for a little bit, that you are a fan of? CW: Based off of the way things are running today, we're a big fan of Liam's Map. I think he's a good example of the kind of sire that we like to use. We do think about a budget; we don't have an unlimited budget. Even if your sire choice is Into Mischief, Curlin, Gun Runner, and Justify, you still have to choose which mares you're going to take to which of those sires. But we're not going to have a budget with those horses. It would run us out of the stallion budget. So I'm going back to Liam's Map. He's a proven sire. He's a successful sire. He's not just going to a new crop, a new stallion. But he's an intermediately priced stallion that is a really good-looking horse. He's has proven that he's a successful sire. I would just say he's kind of a template for the type of sire that we would like to use. BH: You've had a great start this year with Burnham Square in the Holy Bull, and he had a really solid 2-year-old campaign. Are you surprised at the way he ran in the Holy Bull and all the talk now of him on the Derby Trail? CW: He was a surprise to us. When you get something set in your mind and you start thinking where we've had these foals since they were born, we've already had them for their weanling year, their yearling year, 2-year-old season. We've had him three years, and he was not the most eye-catching of the foals. You always have your favorite out of every foal crop that you think is the best-looking foal and the best conformation. He was a little bit of an ugly duckling as a foal, but he's really grown up and then, he's been a big surprise to this. He wasn't the horse that we thought would necessarily be the most accomplished horse out of that group. It's been a real pleasant surprise. BH: There's been so much buzz about him. What would it mean to you and your family to have another Derby runner? CW: It's very exciting. It's part of why we own horses and race horses--having a good stakes winner. Clearly the Derby is over and above. Just having a good, nice runner, we want to have graded stakes winners. Our goal with raising foals, of breeding these mares, and deciding what mares to keep is to be able to produce graded stakes winners. The Derby is just that in spades. It's the cherry on top. He's already accomplished (that). BH: One of your more recent success stories, Walkathon, sold in November for $1.5 million, and she has deep ties to your family through Fort Larned and Bayakoa. Have you been keeping tabs on the start of her breeding career? CW: We certainly hope to be able to reach out and learn what (buyer) Grand Stud plans. …. We definitely want to keep tabs on what they're doing. Once you have foals and they start racing, then it's pretty easy to keep tabs through the information available. We took her to the November breeding stock sale. And we're very, very high on her. We always try to have a contingency plan in mind. If she didn't bring her reserve, we didn't want to be caught flat-footed. We were thinking about how we would breed her if we ended up retaining her. BH: What could this mean for your operations? She goes to the other side of the world, and if she ends up having some really successful runners, you've got to imagine people there are going to start looking at what you're doing and have a greater interest in what you might put in the sales ring. CW: I think it might be easier, to keep track of runners in Japan. For one thing, they're sending more and more horses to run outside of Japan, whether it's here or whether it's in the UAE or Saudi races. Nothing would be better than to see a foal from her come back here and run. That'd be great. BH: What haven't we touched on that you think would be important for our readers to know about you, your family, and what you're doing in the industry? CW: We all know it's a very tough from a financial standpoint, so you have to get a lot of enjoyment out of it first of all. From operating from a business side, we try to figure out the different opportunities we have for the program to help pay its way. That changes some over time. We try to be flexible; we sold Walkathon and she brought good money and she was a really successful race filly. We have to get our revenue from different sources. Just earning purse money, that's tough. Now, that's a really tough road to go down. So having some nice fillies and a stakes-winning filly and being able to sell them is a good way for us to monetize some cash flow for our operation. We do sell yearlings. We try to look at all different areas and be flexible to try to make this work.