A new lease of life for Horsetrader, the seminal text on the breeding business

by Racing Post
28 August 2023

Good Morning Bloodstock is Martin Stevens’ daily morning email and presented here online as a sample.

Here he speaks to Adam Sangster and Patrick Robinson about the legacy of Horsetrader – subscribers can get more great insight from Martin every Monday to Friday.

All you need do is click on the link above, sign up and then read at your leisure each weekday morning from 7am.

There is no book on my shelves that has been as well thumbed, and has acquired so many dog ears and such a cracked spine, as Horsetrader. None I’m owning up to here, anyway.

Written in the early 1990s by renowned author Patrick Robinson with Pacemaker magazine publisher and racing syndicate pioneer Nick Robinson (no relation, just an odd coincidence), it describes how Vernons Pools heir Robert Sangster teamed up with John Magnier and Vincent O’Brien to buy the best stallion prospects at the Kentucky yearling sales in the seventies and eighties, driving prices to unheard of, and ultimately unsustainable, levels.

Horsetrader is, without a doubt, the seminal text on the modern breeding industry; the landmark study into how we got to where we are. It also happens to be a rollicking good read, full of gripping sales-ring battles, amusing anecdotes and poignant reflections.

The index alone is a godsend. Many’s the time I’ve made myself sound more knowledgeable than I actually am by scouring those back pages when writing historical articles, finding the references and shamelessly cribbing the information I need.

The only problem with Horsetrader is that it’s so hard to find. I bought my copy on Ebay when I got my first job in bloodstock journalism, at Pacemaker funnily enough, at the behest of then publisher Milo Corbett. If I remember correctly, it cost around £10, which I thought was pretty steep for a second-hand paperback.

Little did I know then that I had bagged a bargain. The book, which has been out of print for decades, has rocketed in value almost as much as a Northern Dancer yearling colt. The few that come up for sale on Ebay now fetch more like £50 or £60. I’ve written my name in big block capitals in my copy, often loaned to friends and colleagues, as a security measure.

There is unexpected good news on this score, though. Horsetrader is about to become a whole lot more affordable and much easier to get hold of – and therefore hopefully more widely known – as it is about to be released as an audiobook for the first time.

The happy turn of events is the result of Sangster’s son Adam, principal of Swettenham Stud in Victoria, growing increasingly frustrated by the book’s unavailability and reaching out to the author Patrick Robinson, who was more than happy to help.

“It’s massively sought after here in Australia, just as in Europe,” says Sangster. “A lot of the big breeders and trainers have given it to their clients over the years, telling them this is how you go about buying yearlings and making stallions.

“Then in March a pal of mine said he wanted to read it too. I own only one copy myself, so I went to a local bookshop and ordered two of them. I got a call a few weeks later to say they had a couple of hardback copies in, and so I went down there to pick them up.

“I went to pay and the shopkeeper said ‘that’ll be $850, thank you’. I replied ‘Christ, $850 for two books?’

“He said ‘no, that’s the price for one’.”

Robinson has had similarly exasperating experiences of procuring copies of his own masterpiece for friends and acquaintances.

“I own a few mares and foals in partnership with Harry McCalmont of Norelands Stud, and he called me one day to say that another of his clients who keeps some mares with him was looking for a copy of Horsetrader, but couldn’t find one that wasn’t an exorbitant price, so could I help?” he says, speaking from his summer home in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

“I somehow managed to find one and sent it on, and it turned out it was for Anthony Oppenheimer. When the chairman of De Beers is unable to get the book because it’s too expensive, it rather sums it up.”

McCalmont forged a link between Robinson and Sangster, who were previously unknown to each other, that enabled the audiobook to get off the ground.

“The stars aligned,” says Sangster. “Long story short, it was during lunch with Jonathan Munz, who bred Giga Kick, that the idea came up. His CFO was there, who didn’t know anything about racing, but instantly suggested the audiobook idea when I was telling them how I was trying to get Horsetrader reprinted but to no avail.

“I still had no idea how to get in touch with the author, though, so I spoke to my brother Ben, whose godfather is Nick Robinson, and he told me how Patrick has some mares with Harry. Around that time Harry was down here looking at yearlings, so I got Patrick’s number from him and rang him, and we hit it off straight away.”

Robinson, who lives in the Cayman Islands for most of the year, jumped at the chance when Sangster put the idea to him.

He says: “Adam came to me out of the blue, and said ‘you were my father’s friend who wrote his life story, and it’s said to be the best book about horse racing ever written – to which I did a modest little cough as I didn’t know what to say – but it’s too bloody expensive for everyone to buy, so can we do an audiobook?’

“Adam explained that the audiobook format is especially popular in Australia, where people drive for hours on end to get from city to city, and that he wanted to put his proceeds back into the industry. So I said let’s do it.”

The audiobook of Horsetrader has consequently been in production for the past few months. Sangster tells me it is being recorded by noted voice actor Chris Tester, and it will be the entire original text with no cuts or additions, which goes on for around 18 hours.

“Patrick’s really been versing the narrator to get the names right and everything spicko,” he says. “Chris is doing a really good job, he’s not just reading it aloud, you can hear him really getting into the story and becoming passionate about it.

“It’s the original book, word for word; nothing has been changed. A few people advised tightening it up, but it has to be the authorised story in its entirety, as it all links together. You can’t start just hacking things off, it wouldn’t make sense.

”Horsetrader 2.0 is expected to become available around the middle of next month. It will be distributed on the major audiobook online stores and priced at $24.95 (a little under £20), with Sangster’s share of any profits going to good causes within racing.

Robinson has been basking in warm memories of writing the book since receiving the surprise request to produce an audiobook version.

A lifelong racing fan, he cut his teeth as a journalist on the sports desk of the Daily Express, whose racing pages were graced by Clive Graham, Peter O’Sullevan and Robert Sangster’s great friend Charles Benson at the time.

He later published three art books containing the work of renowned equine artist Richard Stone Reeves – one of which, A Decade of Champions, was presented by Ronald Reagan to the late Queen on the occasion of his state visit to Britain in 1982 – and co-wrote Born To Win, the legendary Australian yachtsman John Bertrand’s bestselling account of his historic victory in the America’s Cup, and One Hundred Days, the biography of Admiral Sir Sandy Woodward.

He is now better known to the wider public as the author of a series of naval-based thrillers.

“It was 1990 and I’d just finished Sandy Woodward’s book when Nick Robinson came to my house – we both lived in Yattendon in Berkshire at the time – and gave me his idea to write the story of his best friend Robert Sangster,” says Robinson. “I’d do the writing, he’d do the research and Robert would put up the money, he said.

“I flew to the Isle of Man and met Robert, found we had much in common and much to talk about, and thus Horsetrader was born.

“We both had a big interest in boxing, we had a mutual friend in Charlie Benson, and I’d spoken to him several times before when I was writing the essays on horses that accompanied the pictures in the art books.

“It was all very agreeable, and after about a year of working closely together we got the book done. I suppose one could say it was a pretty major success. We remained good friends until the end of his life.”

Robinson might have been pally with Sangster but he didn’t flinch from writing about his failed personal relationships or financial missteps in Horsetrader.

“It’s not a hagiography, it mentions all the problems,” he says. “But he was a great man. He knew the bloodstock business was about to go bananas in the early 1970s, and was determined to take advantage of it. People might look at it and say ‘oh well, he had a lot of money’ but he also had a lot of brains. He got it right.

“He put his money where his mouth was, and I don’t think he got enough credit for that. He knew John Magnier was a great stallion master, he knew Vincent O’Brien was the greatest trainer there had ever been, and he said that’s who I’m going to back.

“When Robert read Horsetrader he was absolutely thrilled with it. You’ve got me, he said.”

Magnier, another long-time friend of the author who is of course featured extensively throughout the book, was apparently less demonstrative with his praise after publication.

“A few weeks later we were all having a drink after Punchestown – John, John’s wife Sue, Philip Myerscough, Nicky Henderson, all the usual suspects – and I said to John, ‘well, how did you like Horsetrader?’” remembers Robinson.

“‘Ah, I wouldn’t be reading that drivel you write about horses’, he said. I thought crikey, it can’t be that bad, it’s already on the bestseller lists. But Sue turned to me and said ‘Patrick, ask him how many copies of the book he’s got by the side of his bed.’

“So I duly put the question to John, and he replied: ‘twenty-nine, and I’m not admitting that to anyone else. I don’t need a visiting card any more. If anyone wants to know anything about me I just give them a copy of that bloody book.’

“We’re great friends, and I usually send two or three mares to Coolmore sires each year. I’m never far away from them.”

Robinson’s mares, owned in partnership with McCalmont, are Emotion, an Exceed And Excel half-sister to high-class racemare Enbihaar; Golden Bugle, a daughter of Golden Horn from the family of Classic victors Footstepsinthesand and Power; Hint Of Pink, a Teofilo mare who is dam of dual Listed winner Parchemin; Marie Antoinette, a daughter of Kingman and Oaks d’Italia scorer Contredanse; and Soltada, a Dawn Approach half-sister to Nunthorpe heroine Margot Did.

Emotion, who also hails from the family of top-notchers Amonita, Cox Orange and Vista Bella, has a No Nay Never colt foal heading to the sales this year.

“Seeing No Nay Never sire the Gimcrack winner [Lake Forest] last week pleased me no end,” says Robinson. “He’s such a wonderful sire, he gets high-class winners like that all the time.”

The man behind Horsetrader must have taken a leaf out of his subjects Sangster and Magnier’s cross-hemisphere breeding exploits, as he is getting in on the act too.

“Hint Of Pink was bred to Lope De Vega to southern hemisphere time in 2021 and sent down to Australia, where she produced a filly,” reports Robinson. “She’s now about to give birth to a foal by I Am Invincible, which as you can imagine is something we’re not altogether unhappy about.”

Listening to Robinson describe his breeding ventures in such vivid detail, with so much enthusiasm and humour, you can see how he was the right man to write Horsetrader.

“Looking back, it was a magical book,” he reflects. “That moment when John Magnier and Robert Sangster first met was a turning point in history.”

Horsetrader’s reinvention as an audiobook also has Adam Sangster in a reflective mood.

“The first time I read the book I got close to the end, to the chapter entitled ‘Running out of Cash’, and had to put it down as I thought it might be about the divorce and I didn’t want to read that,” he says. “I asked my brothers if they were going to read it, and we agreed we would, and fortunately it turned out to be about the financial situation in Kentucky at the time.

“When I was at school there’d been a few unauthorised biographies doing the rounds, and Dad was getting a bit narked off with the right version of events not being out there, which was where Nick Robinson came in to get the proper story told.

“Dad was such an amazing man, and a great father. He loved having people around him, sharing jokes and memories, and he loved Australia. We were lucky to have him. All of us children are still very close, and that’s testament to our parents.”

Sangster has living proof of his father’s influence on breeding on his farm, as Swettenham Stud’s most expensive stallion, Toronado, is descended from both Sadler’s Wells and El Gran Senor – two Robert Sangster colourbearers by Northern Dancer who feature prominently in Horsetrader.

“And do you know what?” says Sangster of the fully booked sire of Australian Group 1 winners Mariamia, Masked Crusader, Shelby Sixtysix and Tribhuvan. “You can see Sadler’s Wells in Toronado. He really comes through.”

The Swettenham Stud roster also contains a horse who serves as an oblique reminder of a stallion who arrives late on the scene in Horsetrader, in Ahonoora.

Prix de l’Abbaye hero Wooded, like Toronado, stood in association with Al Shaqab Racing, is by Wootton Bassett, who sired a high ratio of classy runners from small, indifferently bred early crops and was purchased by Coolmore in a big-money private deal, just as happened with Ahonoora in the late eighties.

“Fair play to Coolmore, they don’t often step out of the crease and buy something already proven from a different line,” says Sangster. “They’ve quite rightly put up Wootton Bassett’s price in Australia. It’s an unusual move as he hasn’t had any southern hemisphere-bred runners here, it’s purely on the back of what he’s done in the northern hemisphere.

“But the small sprinkling of European-bred horses who’ve been brought to race here are doing well, and I popped into Inglis the other day and the representatives who have been doing the yearling inspections in New South Wales were raving about his offspring, saying they’ve got absolutely everything you could want.”

Sangster has been receiving support for re-releasing Horsetrader in audio format from some of the most prominent names in Australian racing.

Gai Waterhouse reportedly bought 100 copies of the book for owners and staff after reading it herself the first time – so it was her who pushed up the prices – and has said she’ll do the same with the audiobook, and Winx’s owner Debbie Kepitis, daughter of the great breeder Bob Ingham, who raced in partnership with Robert Sangster in the 1980s before selling his bloodstock empire to Sheikh Mohammed in 2008, is all for it too.

“Debbie came to see the stallions for the first time last week and said something very poignant while she was here,” says Sangster. “She saw all the new operations setting up around Nagambie and told me the industry needs people like me to remind them of the history of breeding here, how it all started, and said I’ve got to keep telling the story, as otherwise people will forget it.

“That’s why I’ve been so keen to get Horsetrader out there again. It’s not for the money, it’s purely for the sake of educating the industry. People need to hear it.”

I read Horsetrader for the fifth or sixth time just the other month, to set the scene ahead of my first trip to Kentucky. It won’t stop me listening to the audiobook when it’s released, though. This really is a tale that bears retelling.

Even better, an audio file can’t fall apart like my physical copy of the book.

The Horse Trader audiobook is available for purchase by CLICKING HERE.