Taking Stock with David Ingordo – Part 2

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As a follow up to my interview with David at Keeneland last week at the September Yearling Sales, he very kindly agreed to take me along with him one morning to assess some of his purchases before they ship out to California and Florida to be broken.  Between juggling calls and texts on two phones, David will look at every single horse he bought, now dispersed to various farms, as well as some home-breds and foals for his clients, making notes on all of them, and decisions on where they should go. Most will go to his training center in Ocala to be broken, just a couple will go to California if certain owners express a preference, and even fewer will stay here in Kentucky. When I admired one in particular and told David I could definitely see myself eventing on him (actually, I wouldn’t mind taking any one of them competing!) he laughed, but grimaced at the same time, and said if I ended up showing them, he hasn’t done his job properly! 

As many horses as we look at, David recalls every single detail about each one from the Sale, up to two weeks ago depending on when it went through, and notices even minute changes. My head is spinning by the time we sit down for lunch, but David will go on to more appointments in the afternoon, and he’s booked solid for the next few days until he’s seen each and every one. 
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This is a Latent Heat colt David bought, and described as ” a nice, scopey horse; plenty of size to him. He’s a little immature still, but he’s going to be a magnificent looking horse next year when he strengthens up and fills out.”
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Here’s a Candy Ride colt he bought for clients. “I’m really pleased with this horse, I like him a lot. He was a good buy, and he just looks like a racehorse. Good-footed, good bone, correct. Plenty of substance, he just has a good outlook about him to be a racehorse.”
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The Candy Ride colt with his good outlook
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This is an Indian Charlie colt, “a pretty nice, strong horse. A typical Indian Charlie – they’re big, strong, rugged-looking horses, but he had a little more scope and a little better angles to him than a lot of the Indian Charlies do, a little smoother. For a big, strong horse he wasn’t as coarse as some of them can be.”
Bernadini 1.jpgThe Bernadini colt: “He’s beautiful. He also cost a lot of money so he should be! That’s the kind of horse you’re looking at to be a Derby horse one day, a two-turn Classic individual.”
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“The individual horse has to be there, I don’t care what it is because if they aren’t athletic it doesn’t matter what their pedigrees are. A lot of horses can make their own pedigree if things go right for them. You might be able to pick out some faults in the pedidgrees of the fillies that we looked at but there’s not much wrong with the physical horses, and that’s what runs. I was happy that the market overlooked a lot of them.”
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“The Pleasantly Perfect/Antoinette filly (above) – her sister is a Grade 1 winner. If she was by a different sire she would have brought more money just because Pleasantly Perfect isn’t the most fashionable horse in the world. She’s a little light in the hip but really well-balanced; she was a good buy – the stallion gets runners, the pedigree’s there and she’s got the physical so for what we’re doing she was a great purchase because she’ll have residual value of probably half that even if she never ran a race, so when you figure her sister will probably bring two or three million dollars in November…to replace her with this filly is a terrific deal.”
With one of the best fillies currently racing in America, Switch, to his credit, who will run a couple more times before heading to the Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale, and of course the legend that is Zenyatta happily in foal at Lane’s End to Bernadini, I ask David if he prefers buying colts or fillies?
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Zenyatta – “being in foal agrees with her”
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“Well, of course I’ve done really well buying fillies. It’s balanced out colts and fillies on my resume, but overall I’d say I like buying fillies better for some reason. You can get a little more horse for a little less money. Everybody wants a Derby horse so they cost more. A colt can be a stallion, but if a colt and a filly win the same Grade 3 race with an identical pedigree, the colt probably won’t be worth as much as the filly for their residual value. Lots of colts can win a Grade 3. If you get a big, pedigreed filly that wins a Grade 3 she’s always going to have value as a broodmare, but if you have a big, pedigreed colt that wins that race he’s going to be standing in a regional market as a stallion. Trying to spend the client’s money in the best way I tend to focus on the fillies a lot of the times because you can get out of them a bit easier, but mainly people just want good horses.”
Although David has no ambition whatsoever to manage a farm, “I leave that to the professionals”, he originally intended to go into training, 
“I was set up to be a trainer. Training is no more difficult than what I do now – the lifestyle, the travel, the expenses and the disappointments, it’s all the same as training except in training you’d get more of a fuss made of you when you win, but I like buying and selling horses. I like the pre-training, and then handing them off to trainers.”
David has experienced the highs and lows of racehorse ownership, partnering on three Graded Stakes winners and briefly thinking he might have a legitimate shot at the Kentucky Derby until an injury ended that horse’s career. It’s definitely a huge thrill for him, and although the disappointment must have been just as crushing, he approaches the lifestyle philosophically, 
“With horses, if I get bad news in the morning I might be down all that day, but the next day you’ve just to get up, put it behind you and go back to work.  I try not to get too excited when things are going well, and I try not to get too depressed when they aren’t.”
When one of the fillies we look at comes out, David laughs ruefully, and tells me he must be getting old because he remembers buying and racing her mother (successfully, of course).
 Still in his early thirties, this is hardly the case but he started his career effectively in his teens, and success has come early.  I wonder if the quest to find another Zenyatta is what motivates David now, and with barely a moment’s hesitation he replies that there’ll never be another one like her. He tells me hopes he’ll find lots more great horses, even Kentucky Derby winners but he compares finding another Zenyatta  to having to find the next Triple Crown winner. Maybe he might just do that. 
Many thanks to David again for his time and patience; we’ll be sure to keep an eye on these graduates and keep you informed on their progress. Thanks for reading, Go Thoroughbreds, racing and eventing! 
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