Recent events in the Inglis Sydney sales ring took me back to one day in 2005; back in the golden days when I would cross the Atlantic from Yorkshire to Kentucky with Mark Johnston each year for the revered Keeneland September sale. I spent most of my days in Keeneland scribbling notes on horses in the barns or straining eyes in the xray repository but on Day 2 of the 2005 Sale I, along with hundreds of others, snuck into the auditorium to see the sale highlight, a strapping colt by the immortal Storm Cat, go through the ring.
As the bidding rose quickly to seven figures a buzz of excitement rose from the crowd, which changed to audible gaps as the board flew past 5 million. And there was a stunned silence as the hammer finally fell, with Sheikh Mohammed’s winning bid a staggering US$9.7 million. (allowing for inflation, in today’s money that equates to AUS$25 million).
The Keeneland auctioneer, perched at his bench like a high court judge, asked the crowd to hold their applause until the colt had left the ring, but after the regal hooves had effected egress the auditorium erupted.
Just as the applause was dying down I noticed the man on my left, a laconically slouched chap in a stained t shirt and rather-holey tracky daks. Despite the downmarket wardrobe and droopiest of moustaches, he had the confident air of a man who could sum up a moment:
“Well” he drawled, “It’s only money!”
Of course you don’t want to know what Droopy Moustache thought, you want to know what happened with the horse. Racing as Jamil, he won 4 races including a Group 2 in Dubai and earnt today’s equivalent of AUS$550,000, before a moderately successful stud career.