In the second instalment of his new series, New York breeding stalwart Robert D. Fierro recalls how the state revitalised its program to re-emerged as a significant industry presence
The year 1980 was one of the most significant decade openers of the 20th Century. Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States during a period when American civilians were held hostage in Iran.
Sally Ride was the first woman in space. CNN was founded as the first cable news network, the Mac computer was born, Argentina and England went to war over the Falklands, Mikhail Gorbachev instituted Glasnost. And at the end of the year, John Lennon was assassinated.
Along the way, Genuine Risk became the second filly to win the Kentucky Derby. With all that going on, it would hardly be surprising that the breeding industry in the state of New York would not gain much public interest, nor inspire thoughts of a revival of the days when the state was at the forefront of breeding Thoroughbreds.
New York led the way
Indeed, well before Kentucky and Virginia became the quality breeding grounds, it was New York that led the way. As a dye-in-the-wool native New Yorker and buttressed by a decade of writing dozens of articles about racing and breeding in a host of consumer and business publications, your correspondent discerned that attention must be paid.
Read more: Robert D. Fierro – New York in the Early Days
That’s because it had become out of fashion in the late 20th Century to discuss how the state’s history impacted the country’s development to a degree few others had, to wit: much of the French and Indian War was fought on her land (Leatherstocking Tales, anyone)? The American Revolution’s decisive battle was in Saratoga. Immigration from Europe was centered at Ellis Island in the Hudson River.
And there are many historians who have argued that without the Erie Canal, which transported food, construction materials and people shipped up the Hudson to Albany and then west to Lake Erie, the Midwest would have not developed as quickly or efficiently as it did.
Indeed, millions of schoolchildren from Buffalo to Montauk learned and regularly sang in their music assemblies the legendary 1905 folk song whose opening stanza is:
I’ve got a mule and her name is Sal,
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.
She’s a good old worker and a good old pal,
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal
A burgeoning division
Like many others in 1980, what struck us were the increasing number of races restricted to ‘Registered New York-breds’ at NYRA (Aqueduct, Belmont, Saratoga) and Finger Lakes (close to Rochester, near that Erie Canal).
Say what? Registered New York-breds? How could there be so many of these runners when the oldest could not have been more than four or five years old?
That’s because it was only a few years before (1973) that Governor Nelson Rockefeller signed a law which created the New York Thoroughbred Breeding & Development Fund, a state-run agency that was saddled with regulations. It had some input from horsepeople but rather more from politicians.
This was the first of such state-sponsored program in the nation that set aside a portion of pari-mutuel revenues to provide incentives for breeders to foal their mares in the state and/or retire or resettle stallions there as well.
The deal was simple. If your foal qualified as a registered New York-bred and earned any money in a race in the state then you, the breeder, would get a check for a percentage of that purse regardless of whether you still owned the horse.
If that horse was sired by registered New York stallion, the stallion owner would also get a percentage of the purse winnings. The program also provided millions of dollars to supplement purses in races restricted to New York-breds at NYRA and Finger Lakes.
Surely not, Nelson?
One can immediately deduce that the implementation of the program provided serious revenue to be plowed back into the rural communities. However, it also created criticism because some people saw this as a form of socialism in a sport which was firmly rooted in the free enterprise axiom of winner takes all (or, at least, 60% of it).
That this development came about was somewhat of a shock to the racing panjandrums who could not believe that this Rockefeller, who was known to be opposed to all forms of gambling based on his religious beliefs – and who was, after all, ‘one of us’ (landed gentry) – would sign such a law.
How he changed his mind is very simple, though not widely known. Agriculture, the largest economy of the state, had been battered for a long time by weather, competition from fast-developing states, and the loss of farm families when the seniors passed on. This prompted many landowners to sell to real estate developers who began throwing up residential and commercial developments.
When this was brought to the governor’s attention, he understood such development could impact the legacy of the Rockefeller family’s immense land holdings in the state. Thus he jumped on board in a manner which was socially acceptable and politically correct.
Agricultural reinvigoration
To paraphrase the reasoning: “Widespread development will spoil the beauty of the land we must preserve for future generations to enjoy, plus we need to invigorate the agricultural sector.”
That widespread development in the rural areas occurred anyway became beside the point – but the invigoration of the agricultural sector came swiftly and somewhat unexpectedly.
Taking all of this into consideration, in 1980 your correspondent plotted to get into the burgeoning program by joining with two men with real estate and investment experience to explore the potential of launching partnerships which would acquire mares, breed them in New York, and sell the offspring at auction.
At the time your correspondent was considered a national expert in such partnerships, having authored the best-selling Tax Shelters in Plain English several years earlier and having covered such investments in many periodicals.
We set out with ambitious plans and traveled the state looking at real estate and discussing plans with lawyers, accountants and financing experts while keeping our fingers moving across the keyboard turning out freelance articles to keep the family fed. Alas, all that traveling, interaction and plotting tested the patience of the other two associates, which resulted in only two situations that provided lasting impact, much of it beginning in 1981.
These two situations were serendipitous and fortuitous and will lead off the next chapter of this series.
Goodbye for now.
• Robert D. Fierro has 40 years’ experience of chronicling racing and breeding for leading US Thoroughbred publications – plus almost 20 years of managing two biomechanical enterprises. He played an integral role in establishing the successful New York state breeding program, as he outlines in his series for Thoroughbred Racing Commentary
• Visit the New York Thoroughbred Breeders (NYTB) website
Bob’s Business #1: How I met Steve Crist – then serendipity took over
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