Bloodstock Agent needs passion and calculation to put a price on flesh and blood

LOVE FOR SALE IN THE YARDS OF NEWMARKET

SIMON BARNES Talking horse THE TIMES, SATURDAY, 3 OCTOBER 1998

Phwoar! Well, Charlie Gordon-Watson said it was a bit like looking at a pretty girl. And sometimes when you clap eyes on a horse, you do feel that spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling. And no, it is not at all sexual: but it is certainly sensual.

Looking at horses, being with horses, is a highly sensual matter. All senses save taste are involved. It is a passionate business that involves both mind and heart, and I use the word business advisedly. It's been sales week in ol' Newmarket town.

It is a week in which the top operators can price the phwoar-factor down to the nearest thousand in a two-second glance at the sales catalogue and a five-second stare at a horse. And all around these rare folk, other people lose their heads, seduced by the constant parade of beauty, desirability. And dreams, of course. This is the land of dreams and every dream has a price.

The horses at the Houghton Yearling Sales were foaled last year. The colts are like spotty swaggering teenagers with their baseball caps on back to front; the fillies are like giggling girlies in the grip of the first hormonal storms. And who can say what a teenager will make of life, career, potential?

It is a wonderful place to walk. Every corner of Tattersalls, Park Paddocks, Newmarket brings you a new vista of loose-boxes. "All of them, please," you say to the groom, and the horses are paraded for you. Normally, they stand before you, side-on, for a few minutes, then they walk away from you and then back. This is too slow for Gordon-Watson. And then the next, until you have seen everything that the stud has to sell. And you make hieroglyphs in your sales catalogue, and look wise and poker-faced, and you say: "Thank you very much," and walk on to the next lot.

Me, I think they're all wonderful. I want them all, every one. I'm like an adolescent boy in a nudist colony. So are most potential owners. The trainers know better, but their business is training race-horses, not buying them. There were 246 lots at these, Europe's most expensive yearling sales, and some are a great deal better than others. The fun comes in guessing which is which. And the money comes from knowing which is which. I can't begin to work it out for myself, but I know a man who can. Which is why I was walking round the sales with Gordon-Watson. He has the sinister, vampiric job description of bloodstock agent.

He'll find you a horse, taking just 5 per cent of the sales price for the job. He will scan the chorus line of beauties and say that's the one for you. And more times than not, he is right. He'd better be. Once he starts picking duds, no one will give him 5 per cent of anything.

Every horse he looks at is a test, every horse he buys for someone is the nailing of his colours to the mast. Reputations in racing are volatile things; how could they be anything else in a volatile business? The jockey who blows a big race, the bloodstock agent who pays a top price for a horse that never sees a racecourse: these are things nobody in racing forgets. Racing's basic skill is a long memory.

The horsey world has always plumed itself on its mysteries, on the people who have magic in their hands, in their eyes, which is what the ghastly Horse Whisperer film was all about.

I have always believed that money is a talent, just like everything else. The world is full of great cooks whose restaurants closed because they couldn't manage the books. The world is also full of people who have no visible talent, but they have a way with money. They understand its mysterious ways, they can follow its elusive logic. Sometimes, but not always, these people are rather rich. Call them the money whisperers.

The role of the bloodstock agent is to combine these two enviable whispering talents. He needs a crystal-clear, intuitive understanding of money and a massive, comprehensive and instantaneous understanding of horses. Of every horse in the sale.

Start with massive knowledge. Gordon-Watson can look at the name of the dam and has no need to look farther back along the distaff pedigree. He knows it by heart and he understands it. He understands what the mixture of bloodlines means and what it should be worth.

He has a showman's streak in him. Wearing a bright yellow jacket, successor to a previous bright yellow jacket, you see him coming. He has created a mystique about himself: you can feel the grooms feeding energy into their horses so that they walk out especially well. Charlie's here.

Mystique in a bloodstock agent, like mystique in a horse, can be priced to the last farthing - once the horse has raced. A litany of success - six classic winners purchased at an average of £55,000 - makes Gordon-Watson a man to watch. This week he bought 20 horses for a total of £2.2 million. A while ago he bought a mare for the Lloyd-Webbers' stud. On Wednesday a yearling out of this mare fetched a coincidental £2.2 million.

But he is, he said, in a state of constant terror at every sales. He has to get it right - again - or all is lost. "I suffer from the most horrible stage-fright." he said. As do jockeys before a big race, as do performers at every sport before a great event. If they are any good.

It is a nerve-racking business; but then it is supposed to be. Every bit of racing is designed to be as nerve-racking as possible, from the auctioneer's prattle to the race-course commentary. Gordon-Watson is one of those sorts who always like to be surfing the biggest wave.

"Just walk him." Never mind the period of silent worship of the perfectly-formed yearling: Gordon-Watson believes that you can assess an animal from a walk, 20 yards away from you and 20 yards back. Every nuance of pedigree and confirmation is fed through the brain as the horse walks and it comes up with two answers: what the horse is likely to achieve and what it is likely to fetch in the sales ring. If the balance is favourable and he has a client with that price bracket, those ambitions, then he makes a good hieroglyph in his catalogue. "Thank you." And moves on. Horses at a walk, Gordon-Watson at a gallop.

This one will be fast, but he won't be tough enough to withstand the rigours of training. That one looks well, but doesn't have the look of his sire. This one is leggy, but that's all right, typical Sadler's Wells. Gordon-Watson assesses more than 5,000 horses a year in this way: "The more you look, the more you learn."

A mind apparently incapable of overload. His personal "disk-full" light never comes on. He has learnt to look at beauty without being dazzled. The pretty girl analogy only really works with the occasional one or two. With most horses, it is a matter of computation, a sum involving talent and value. The correct answer is the owner who is willing to buy on your say so.

Do I make it all sound rather passionless? For it is quite the reverse, Charlie Gordon-Watson may have a mind that works like a computer, but the computer is driven by passion. Passion for horses, passion for winners. How much is that dream in the window? Charlie knows.