Russell: How Our Business Depends On Pleasure

The wonder is that it works at all, never mind that it works so well. A catalogue of 4,644 yearlings, shaken through the Keeneland sieve, each with a bare couple of minutes to make or break a year's work. Auctioneers and spotters stand alert as meerkats, expected never to miss the slightest rustle in the grass. And every now and then somebody will claim that it was only a passing breeze, and decline to sign the docket; and then it's time to pore over videos, to negotiate, to flush out underbidders. Time, in other words, to go find Geoffrey Russell.

And, right there, you have one very good reason why the September Sale works as well as it does. Because in the genial person of Keeneland's Director of Sales Operations, buyers and sellers alike know they have a reliable fulcrum for every contention. Russell describes himself as both “police officer and fireman” for the whole process, which resumes in Lexington on Monday. He's been doing it a long time now-promoted to the role in 2001, when the position of Director of Racing was created for his boss Rogers Beasley-and there's scarcely a problem he hasn't been asked to solve. So to say that he is as trusted as he is seasoned is no mean compliment.

For a few minutes in his company is always sufficient to reiterate the twin passions that transparently animate Russell. One, plainly, is for the good name of Keeneland. But the other is for the sport itself, pure and simple.

“I'm an avid follower of all racing-exceedingly boring, in that respect,” he admits. “Before TVG and all that came about, the ladies in the office found it very fascinating that I would come out here on a weekend to watch races. But if I was in insurance, I would still follow horseracing. I'm very fortunate that my business is my hobby.”

And his service to Keeneland ultimately depends on that same horsefan's ardour. For the sales ring is not just about contests of money and ego; it's also about the beating heart of the sport, which binds people of all ranks. That's why Russell demurs if you talk about “crazy” prices paid at the top of the market.

“If you just watch the dynamics of when we sold Abel Tasman (Quality Road), for instance, then they're not crazy,” Russell explains. “It really was wonderful to see the amount of people that showed up to watch her sell. It just showed how much respect our industry has, and the fans have, for these horses. That, I enjoy.

“Zenyatta (Street Cry {Ire}) paraded here when she was retired. The plane was late, it was freezing cold, yet people drove down here from Michigan, everywhere, just to have a glimpse of her. They were four or five deep in that back ring. She was a queen and John Shirreffs led her round and stopped to let people pet her. And we've got to try and capture the magic these horses have, and pass it on.”

To see the ultimate racefan in Russell, however, you need to go to the Cheltenham Festival, the premier steeplechasing meet in Britain. He makes an annual pilgrimage in the company of an equivalent figure in the European business, Henry Beeby of Goffs.

On the eve of his first visit, Beeby's mother asked: “Are you excited?”

“Like child on Christmas Eve.”

Next evening at dinner she asked: “Did it live up to your expectations?”

“And I said, 'No,'” he recalls. “The poor lady was completely crestfallen. I said, 'My imagination's just not that good. It was way outside of what I thought it was going to be.' The roar of that first race, if you don't get hair standing on the back of your neck hearing that… I love it because it's relaxing. But it is also amazing how many Flat people are there, that you can talk to in a situation that's not a pressure cooker and have a beer and a chat.”

He is, after all, himself an Irishman–though that is not so obvious from his accent as it was when he arrived in the Bluegrass, intending no more than a three-month internship at Fasig-Tipton, back in 1982. He had zero background in the game, son of a Dublin insurance broker, but had become “besotted” thanks to a friend whose father had horses in training.

A summer working for one of Ireland's revered Cheltenham trainers, Edward O'Grady, was intended to purge his addiction. “I think my father thought that some manual labour would get it out of my system,” says Russell wryly. In the event, the kindness and insights of the O'Gradys only fanned the flames. And then he went to his first horse sale, at Goffs, and something sparked.

“I remember Sir Philip Payne-Gallwey buying the full-sister to Shirley Heights for 250,000 guineas, which would have been a record price, I think, in Ireland at the time,” Russell recalls. “His last bid was very demonstrative. And I thought, 'Now here's something I can do.' There was that theatre to it, and I've always loved pedigrees, and working out the equations: why is this one bringing this price and that one bringing less? Still trying to figure that one out, many years later!”

He had found his vocation. There would still be a marketing diploma, a season at Coolmore, even a stint at Elmendorf Farm after he came to Kentucky. But his initiation into the Lexington auction scene could not have been better timed.

“Farm life was just too quiet for me, way too quiet,” Russell says. “And the '80s here were incredible. I was very fortunate that I came here just as the commercial market exploded: all these people coming from all over the world to buy horses. I watched Seattle Dancer sell here, sitting on the fence as the horses walk out, to see the bid board. And Snaafi Dancer. If somebody moved too quickly in the back ring, the static electricity would have set the roof off here. It was unreal.”

Though still working across town in those days, in 1996 he switched camps to become Beasley's assistant.

“I'd worked at Fasig so long, it was family,” he admits. “But if you're in the horse business, you want to work for the biggest and the best. And this is the biggest, and it is the best!”

So how does he view the rivalry between the two houses? Friendly or cut-throat?

“Probably somewhere in the middle, to be honest,” Russell replies. “It's respectful rivalry. All sales companies are competitive to each other, all round the world, be it Fasig or Keeneland; or Goffs, or Tattersalls; or Inglis, or Magic Millions. I guess we're all in competition for certain horses. But we're in a very exclusive club, dealing with the same clients all the time, so we have to have a good relationship with each other. Yeah, we want the better horses, and they want them too. It's what Humphrey Finney called fair exchange. We all just do the best we can.”

But September, unmistakably, is a one-off. As Russell says, it's not one market but three or four.

“Growing up, I never did puzzles,” he remarks. “And now all I seem to do is jigsaws. Because when we put together a sale, we try to identify the market and say that these horses should appeal to this group of buyers. In September, we're just making it convenient for people to come to one place, and buy at whatever level of the market, instead of coming five times a year. Identifying which horses belong where is the challenge-and the best part of the whole job.”

That, and the characters in the industry. Russell considers its unique charm to be the way so many people bring in friends as competitors, whether in the ring or on the track. The worst part, conversely, is those disputes. Rare as they are, they can happen at every level of the market and, for those involved, the stakes are no less critical at the bottom. But presumably he has had people refuse to sign big numbers?

“Mm-hmm,” he says, pausing expressively. “You just try to work it all out. Rogers gave me great advice when I first came to Keeneland. He said: 'Keep a log of any problems we have, and make sure we get them all resolved the day they happen.' Everybody is all fired up and it often comes down to the heat of the battle. September, especially. I think it's just trying to get people back level-headed and nine times out of ten, it works out.

“The conditions of sale are for buyers, sellers, and the sales company. All three have to play by the same rules. You have to take the personality out of it. I can't like Chris and not like George. If the rules say Chris is wrong, he's wrong. That's all that matters. Without sellers, we don't have buyers; and without buyers, we don't have sellers. So we are the middle man, and have to try and please both sides.”

As a genuine racefan, Russell is better placed than some to recognise how some professionals lose sight of the primary purpose of raising Thoroughbreds-which is not just to make a few bucks in the ring, but to go win a horserace. Does he accept that these objectives can be perilously disconnected?

“There was a period, I would definitely say yes,” he reflects. “There was more emphasis on the sales ring than the racetrack. I think it's shifting slightly. But it is, still, very commercial. Just look at the Reports of Mares Bred, and see the stallions being used and not used. We always comment that you should be breeding for there”–he turns at his desk and gestures to the racetrack, before pointing towards the ring–“and not there.”

Because the two sectors obviously sustain each other. “Without racing, we don't have sales,” he says. “We need a very strong racing product to keep our sales industry going. But people do recognize that. There are consignors who'll sell well, but their horses don't produce. They will go a cycle and do all right; and then all of the sudden, they won't. The market is pretty good at sussing that out. And the farms that do produce the best horses stay in business the longest.”

Not that anyone can ever be complacent. “It's a great leveller,” Russell says. “Just because you spend a lot money, you're not guaranteed success. And vice versa. Was Real Quiet (Quiet American) purchased to win the Kentucky Derby? Probably not. Probably he was purchased to be a nice allowance horse in California, and it all came together. But then you also have FuPeg [Fusaichi Pegasus (Mr Prospector)] winning the Kentucky Derby. That was good for everybody because that's what a $4 million horse is meant to do.”

And the virtual certainty that champions will graduate from the imminent sale–whether from Book 1 or Book 6–gives the whole Keeneland team skin in the game.

“There's great satisfaction when you're involved in the process that has Justify (Scat Daddy) winning the Triple Crown,” Russell says. “We all cheered every bit as hard for him in the Belmont as Tanya and John [Gunther, his breeders]. We were so proud of the fact that he came from Keeneland, as one little piece in the whole puzzle of things.

“Breeders never lose that connection with the foals they sell. And in the same way we all consider ourselves partners in every horse that goes through here. Everybody in our sales department follows them avidly. We may only get the privilege of their company in our auction ring for two minutes. But we feel that gives us some kind of ownership for life.”