Man With The Midas Touch

Analysis of the most active buyers at the Tattersalls October Sale over the last five years shows Charlie Gordon-Watson at the top of the tree.

Pacemaker, October 2000, by John Boyce

Ever wondered who to entrust with your yearly purchase? Well, wonder no more - at least as far as buying an October yearling is concerned. Appointing an agent to act on your behalf always requires a leap of faith. The key ingredient between agent and client is trust, but there has always been precious little evidence to show which agents are more effective than their rivals. Knowing that your agent has an acceptable success ratio certainly goes a long way towards cementing that trust.

Our study of Tattersalls' October Sale examines the records of those agents and buyers most active during the last five years. There are, of course, provisos to our findings; suffice to say that we have examined buyers of 30 or more yearlings to see how their purchases have fared in the black-type races. The tables supporting our survey rank bloodstock agents in four categories: the percentage of black-type winners and placed horses to purchases, and the percentage of Group or Graded winners to purchases.

Table 1: How the October Buyers Performed from 1995 to the Present
Ranked by percentage of Group Winners

The clear leader among the October buyers is Charlie Gordon-Watson. With seven Group winners from 154 purchases, his is the best performance of any agent or buyer in this category. Gordon-Watson's £6.6 million outlay over the last five years has netted him such equine stars as Desert Prince, left, (62,000 guineas), Seazun (60,000 guineas) and Fly To The Stars (125,000 guineas) - all Group One winners in Britain.

To put Gordon-Watson's tally into context, bear in mind that the October sale has produced 56 Group/Graded winners in the last five years from a total of 3,952 graduates. That's a percentage of 1.42. Put another way, Gordon-Watson was responsible for 3.9 percent of all purchases and 12.5 percent of the Group-winning graduates.

Don't run away with that idea, either, that such records can be compiled simply by spending large sums of money. If you assess Gordon-Watson's record by his total spend divided by his total number of black-type horses, it stands comparison with all other big purchasers.

Given that he is one of the busiest 'one-man-bands' at the sales, it is all the more remarkable that Gordon-Watson has maintained such an exalted strike rate. Only the BBA (303 purchases), CBA (131), Peter Doyle (116) and the BBA (Italy) (103) were as active during the period under review.

Last year, when we reviewed the Houghton Sale agents, one man, John Warren, stood out for his ability to select top horses without breaking the bank. At the cut-off point for this research, Warren was nipping at the heels of Charlie Gordon-Watson on our percentage of Group winners table. His score of 4.3 percent was achieved with less than half the purchases of Gordon-Watson even though their average price is almost identical. Warren, who has enjoyed great success buying for Highclere Thoroughbreds, was the successful bidder at 66,000 guineas for the Gimcrack winner Bannister.

Rather surprisingly, it is Arturo Brambilla, listed on the tables as BBA (Italy), who holds third place on the Group/Graded-winners-to-purchases table. Brambilla has seen four of his 103 purchases develop into Group winners. Their average purchase price is £15,871 and all eight have earned their black-type qualifications in Italy, with Sweet Ludy, a 20,000-guinea buy, graduating to Grade Two success at Hollywood Park and Del Mar.

Fourth on the Group/Graded winner table is Shadwell Estate, which has been quite shrewd with its October Sale investments. Hamdan Al Maktoum's management company also leads the categories by black-type horses to purchases (13.5 percent) and black-type winners to purchases (9.6 percent). The fact that its 52 purchases averaged £70,956 — more than any other buyer at the sale — tells its own story. That said, Shadwell did extremely well to pick up the Mill Reef Stakes winner Indian Rocket for 36,000 guineas, as well as the Kevin Prendergast-trained Quws, an Irish Group Two scorer, for 53,000 guineas.

Table 2: October Buyers Ranked by percentage of Black-Type Winners to Purchases

The Greenham winner Barathea Guest, also third in the 2,000 Guineas, is the star among 30 purchases made by Tim Corby of Equine Services, who are fourth on our Group winners and black-type winners table. At 70,000 guineas, Barathea Guest was one of the more expensive buys for Equine Services, the bulk of whose purchases were below 15,000 guineas. All told only 17 of the October Sale's 434 buyers over the last five years exceeded the sale's Group winner percentage of 1.45.

Turning to the black-type winner table, it is again important to bear in mind that only three percent of October graduates go on to become stake winners. Outside the first three — Shadwell (9.6 percent), Warren (8.6 percent) and Gordon Watson (7.14 percent) — the surprise packet is undoubtedly Bozzi Bloodstock, which has conjured five black-type winners (6.5 percent) from 77 purchases.

Table 3: October Buyers by percentage of Black-Type Horses to Purchases

True, all except for Irish Group Three scorer Athlumney Lady have been in Italy, but over half of the yearlings were secured for less than 10,000 guineas. With an average cost of £122,920 per black-type horse — the best ratio of any buyer of 30 or more yearlings at the October Sale for the last five years. Marco Bozzi clearly spends wisely.

If you prefer a trainer to make your purchases, several have beaten the odds quite handsomely. Paul Cole (13.3 percent), in second place, splits Shadwell and Charlie Gordon-Watson on our black-type winners and placed horses table. Jack Berry, now retired, also enjoyed plenty of success at the October Sale, signing for 33 yearlings since 1995, among them four black-type horses. Berry's best purchase was the 1998 Royal Ascot winner Rosseli, who cost 32,000 guineas. Although none of Mark Johnstons' 55 selections from the October Sale on the last five years have attained Group-winning status, five (9.1 percent) have earned black-type, including the Listed winners Atlantic Destiny (26,000 guineas) and Sinon (14,000 guineas).

Whilst we recognise that this study only covers only one sale, it nevertheless gives a valuable insight into the task facing any buyer and the odds of success. It must also be noted that the study assumes that the buyer of each lot is the one who actually selected the yearling for purchase. Equally, however, a buyer may have simply done the bidding — and later found that they had bought a black-type horse.

The study uses black-type as its yardstick. Again, it is accepted that distortions can occur when relying on black-type as the defining factor. Where possible, we have highlighted such distortions and are satisfied that the four different tables of assessment allow for plenty of expression of an agent's talent.

And finally, this study is strictly concerned with buyers of 30 or more yearlings at the October Sale since 1995. There are, of course, many more success stories among buyers who bought less than the qualifying figure. The cut-off point for performance was the conclusion to York's August meeting.