So, here I was at Heathrow, waiting for my flight to Cincinnati.
The autumn was always the busiest time of my year anyway. Not just because of the ongoing racing, but mostly on account of the bloodstock sales.
It was when the annual fresh crop of yearlings go under the hammer in either the U.K. or Ireland, and it’s only then that I find out if my many months of talking and visiting the breeders has paid off.
By the time the sales started, I had compiled a long list of possible targets, so I spent many days inspecting and vetting each one, and then either I sat on my hands, or I raised them to bid in the auctions, hoping that I could secure the purchase within my budget.
All too often, the bidding went beyond what I was prepared to pay, leaving me rueing the outcome, but there were other times when I believed I had bought a future winner, and at reasonable cost.
At the end of the sales, I had fulfilled my aim of buying sixteen quality yearlings at a fair price, all of which I believed were excellent prospects, and now all I had to do was find the syndicate members to share their ownership.
They were the new blood — next year’s Victrix two-year-old racers.
At the other end of the line, most of the company’s current three-year-olds would shortly be going to the horses-in-training sales, to be moved on to new owners for further racing or to become broodmares or whatever.
It was like a constant conveyor belt of new blood in, old blood out, and it was the part of my job that I found most exciting, Derby winning excepted.
The previous week, I had held my annual yearling parade, and it had gone as well as I could have possibly wished. There was nothing like having had the Derby winner to bring in the clientele, and my books were filled to overflowing such that, for the first time ever, I had a waiting list of prospective members who all wanted to buy into the lifestyle and to chase the ultimate dream.
And I was delighted that Patrick Hogg, KC, was now a Victrix syndicate member, securing a share in one of my favourite purchases. I just hoped that I could repay his kindness by providing him with a future winner or two.
My flight was called over the airline-lounge public address system, so I started to make my way to the gate.
The previous day I had finally plucked up the courage to phone Toni Beckett, to tell her that I would be coming to Keeneland for the Breeders’ Cup races and that I hoped to be able see her there.
Far from receiving the brushoff that I had feared, she had been hugely excited.
‘Is your wife coming with you?’ she had asked warily.
‘No,’ I’d said. ‘In fact, she and I are now living apart.’
‘Yee-haw! So you’ll be staying at my place?’
I’d been booked into a suite at the Hilton Hotel, in downtown Lexington, all courtesy of the Breeders’ Cup organisation.
Bugger that.
‘I’d absolutely love to stay at your place.’
My flight touched down at Cincinnati airport at a seven o’clock, local time, on Wednesday evening, after an eight-and-a-half-hour hop over from London.
The long journey across the Atlantic gave me the time to relax, to unwind my mind from the stresses of the past months. There were no phone calls to worry about, no emails or texts demanding an answer, just a few glasses of an excellent Bordeaux to consume, along with some decent food and a chance to catch up on some sleep in my business-class flat bed.
Toni had offered to pick me up from the airport, but I already had a car arranged for me by Breeders’ Cup, so I told her not to bother.
The car took me to the Hilton, where I checked in to my suite and dropped off some of my luggage before exiting through a side door and climbing into Toni’s white Jeep Cherokee SUV.
Her two beds and a bath upstairs, and a kitchen and living room downstairs was part of a modern development on the western side of the city, just off Versailles Road, convenient for Keeneland Racetrack.
And we only needed the one bed, not two.
The Breeders’ Cup races are widely advertised as the annual end-of-year world championship of horseracing, and consists of fourteen different top-rated races over two days in early November, crowning fourteen different ‘world champions.’
Race distances range from just over five furlongs to a mile and a half. Five are for female horses only, two for males only, whereas the rest are for both sexes competing together.
There are five races scheduled for Friday, all for two-year-old ‘juveniles,’ three on the grassy turf track and two on ‘dirt,’ which at Keeneland is a blend of sand, silt, and Kentucky clay. And then nine more races on Saturday, all for horses aged three and older, five on dirt and four on turf.
All are designed to be truly ‘international,’ but in truth, most of the American horses run on the dirt, while the Europeans all prefer the turf. Potassium, however, was bucking that trend as a starter on the dirt in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, the most prestigious and the most valuable of all the fourteen.
He had made his own trip across the Atlantic almost three weeks ago, to give him time to recover from the journey and the time change, but more importantly, to get used to running on the dirt surface, something he appeared to enjoy according to the reports I had received.
Owen Reynolds had sent two of his stable staff over with the horse, and all three seemed to have settled in well in Keeneland’s own training centre, which was adjacent to the racetrack. Owen and our Derby-winning jockey, Jimmy Ketch, were also making the trip over, to maximize our chances of success.
Thursday was mostly taken up with media interviews and press photo shoots, culminating in a reception and gala dinner at the Kentucky Horse Park for all the international and out-of-town guests. All of them, that is, except the main stars of the show, the horses, who remained in their stables at the racetrack, totally unaware of all the fuss that was going on around them.
But Owen Reynolds was there, along with his wife, Eleanor.
‘Hi, Owen,’ I said, going over to him at the reception. ‘Good journey?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ he said. ‘We arrived this morning from New York. Eleanor wanted to go there for a couple of nights on the way. To go shopping.’
He rolled his eyes and I laughed.
‘Is Georgina with you?’ Eleanor asked, ignoring her husband.
‘No. Her father died, and she’s in Harrogate looking after her mother.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
A waiter came and refilled our glasses.
‘Have you been to see Potassium?’ I asked Owen.
‘Sure have. I went straight to the stables, even before checking in to the hotel. He looks in great form. Raring to go.’
‘Good.’
As so often in the United States, dinner was served early at six, so the whole event was over before nine, which was just as well as I was having difficulty keeping my eyes open during the final speeches because of the jet lag.
Toni picked me up, and I was asleep before we arrived at her place.
But she woke me up again.
Potassium’s race was the very last one on the Saturday afternoon, the climax, with all the other races acting as appetizers for the main event.
The organizers had invited everyone connected to runners on Saturday to attend Friday’s racing if they wanted to, but Toni had somehow wangled some time off — she said that all the ticketing was now complete — so we spent a while seeing some of the local sights and then went back to bed at her place, which was much more fun.
On Saturday morning, she had to go in to work early to make up the hours she had taken off on Friday, so she dropped me at the Hilton, and I arranged for one of the official cars to get me to the track by noon.