American-Bred Roaring Lion Takes on the Epsom Derby

On Saturday, Roaring Lion will attempt to become the first American-bred Epsom Derby winner in 15 years. Lucas Marquardt sat down with Taylor Made's Vice President of Sales and Operations, Mark Taylor, who raised and sold Roaring Lion, about what he was like as a young horse and if the American-breds-abroad trend figures to continue and grow stronger.

LM: What do you remember about Roaring Lion as a young horse?

MT: Roaring Lion was born here on Taylor Made and grew up here the whole time, and we ended up consigning him for Jan Naify of RanJan Racing at the September sale, and he was picked out by David Redvers for Qatari Racing. But, my recollection of Roaring Lion was that he was always a beautiful mover. That was kind of his claim to fame. He was a well-balanced horse, well-made, had a lot of quality. And he's another horse that we've had here just for great breeders that we've been blessed to represent. That's the main thing that keeps Taylor Made going, is just we represent a lot of really great breeders, and I think Jan Naify is one of those. And right from this family, a lot of good horses. So it was a pleasure to have him here and it's really fun looking back and just remembering these horses. They were right here in your care and then they're going on to compete on the world stage. So it's pretty neat.

LM: Can you describe him physically?

MT: I would describe Roaring Lion as kind of a typical Kitten's Joy. He didn't have overly bulky muscle to him, but he was very well put together. He had good length of neck, good shoulder. I actually looked up all of our notes on him, and they were very consistent throughout his whole life. My brother, Frank, dealt with him a lot more when he was a young baby, and then I kind of picked up once he was a yearling looking at him more often. But he had a beautiful frame to him. Not overly bulky. He was pretty correct. He wanted toe in just a touch. All of our notes said, “Just toes in a touch on one front,” but it was inconsequential. But just beautiful flowing walk, a lot of class.

On our scale, like a B+ is a very nice horse. Like, you've gotta be … to get an A, it's a rare thing. So he was a B+ almost the whole way through. He didn't really go through a lot of dips or low points or whatever, just always very straightforward. I was actually disappointed that he didn't bring more money. And I credit David Redvers for finding value at $160,000.

But it goes to show you; he was by Kitten's Joy. Some American trainers kind of stereotype them as turf. And then, he was out a Street Sense mare, and I think on the surface, maybe a lot of Europeans thought, “Oh, that's got a little too much dirt to it.” Actually, if you dig deeper-and maybe that's what David saw–there is a lot of grass quality.

But I think he was kind of one of those tweener horses that if you would've had that exact same physical and he would've been by an American dirt horse, he might have brought twice as much money. That's just kind of my gut feeling.

I was a little bit surprised by his precocity. He never struck me as a horse, growing up, that I thought was gonna be a real early developer. He didn't look like he was going to be immature or anything like that, but I thought he might need a little more time. Just Kitten's Joy, the bottomside just kind of screams it's gonna be better [as a] 3-year-old. So I was very impressed that he was a Group 2 winner at 2. I mean, he came out of the box. Won first time out (video), he looked really good.

LM: Why do you think there seems to be this current trend towards more international participation on the part of American-bred and -sold horses.

MT: I think we're in a really great time right now in international racing. With just the way transporting horses has become more efficient and easier, and horses can run in different places, I think it's opening up people's eyes to racing around the world and people wanting to participate more. And I think that's really true with American owners right now. You've seen a lot more American owners wanting to go over and run at Ascot, to try to take on the Europeans on their home turf. I think the pendulum's always swinging with the international thoroughbred, and that's one of the most fascinating things about it. When I was young, my father was working for John Gaines at Gainesway, and that was their bread and butter. They had horses like Lyphard, Riverman, Blushing Groom, Vaguely Noble, Green Dancer. And they were great European horses, great turf sires, that were also very commercially popular in America. And that was just the norm. In fact, that was the main thing that was happening is the Europeans would come here to buy the yearlings, buy these world-class turf stallions. But you saw horses like Blushing Groom, his first crop in America, he has a Kentucky Oaks winner. And he came up with all kinds of good dirt horses and had been a huge dirt influence.

And so that's what I think we need more of, is that interchange of bloodlines. You look at Scat Daddy now. He was a son of Johannesburg that didn't work out here in America, and he raced in America, but then he starts standing here and he ends up becoming this awesome international stallion. War Front's the same way. So I think now you're starting to see more American owners going to Europe, even going to Australia, buying horses, participating in the sales, participating in the racing. I think it's really a healthy thing. But it's all predicated on getting stallions that can compete in those places. For a lot of reasons, economic and otherwise, we really didn't get a lot of good turf prospects over here for several decades. Now we're starting to get some of those, and Scat Daddy's the number one, but you look at Kitten's Joy, and Roaring Lion's a prime example. Kitten's Joy is an incredible turf stallion. He's a great stallion in general.

But now we're starting to get some horses over here. It was a tragedy we lost Scat Daddy, but we're gonna develop more of those. There's gonna be more of those horses coming down the pike, and I think it's really a great thing for everybody involved, Europeans, Americans, and all over the world just sharing the bloodlines and competing. Sometimes they get stereotyped, “Oh, that's just dirt.” Well, go try him on grass and see what happens.

LM: It feels like just a few years ago, people were saying the American product was broken. Do you have the sense that's changing?

MT: Well, the international opinion of the American thoroughbred I think has always been very strong, and I think that we're known as the number one-source of quality speed around the world. But I think we have taken a black eye because of the medication policies, and you know, I think some of that is justified, some of it isn't. And that is such a complicated issue, that it's hard to dissect it completely. But if you notice, I think when we started to really get bludgeoned by the foreign media, in a certain way that's what triggered our owners to want to go over there and compete and say, well, maybe we need to find out. And when they did that, they've had a ton of success.

So I think that if you're competing here in America, and Lasix for instance, is legal, then you're going to run on Lasix because you want it to be a level playing field. But if you take our horses out of that scenario and go run in Europe, as long as we have a level playing field there, then I think we can compete. And we're trying to work our way through the medication issue, and I think eventually we're going to get there. But I think that at the end of the day, everybody knows that of all the places you can raise and produce a Thoroughbred racehorse, central Kentucky is right at the very top. That's not to disparage any place else in the world, there are lots of good places. But if you look at just the success we've had here recently, we've got about 100-acre patch of land that Ashado was raised on, Speightstown was raised on, Acapulco was raised on, Roaring Lion was raised on. The list just goes on and on. And it's a lot of good horsemen around this area, really good land, and great bloodstock. So that's been going on for a long, long time, and it's going to continue. We've got t continue to get better, make our product more appealing to the international market all the time. But we've got a very strong heritage here, and it's just something we're trying to build upon.