fourth-crop sires

What a tough game this is. You only get to show the first card in your hand before virtually the whole pile of chips is distributed. One or two players gather up their winnings, whooping triumphantly, and suddenly your own hopes of staying in the game--your hopes of a viable stud career in Kentucky--depend exorbitantly on the next card. Generally speaking, it doesn't matter if you turn out to have had a whole sheaf of aces farther into your hand. By the time you can turn those over, there will...

The bloodstock industry in Kentucky is heavily weighted to the commercial marketplace, and when the first yearlings of a stallion sell well, sometimes even experienced commercial breeders can get momentarily caught up in the euphoria. A breeder called me after the Fasig-Tipton October Sale to say that he was going to breed to such a stallion next year. That's great, I told him, if he had a strong opinion on the horse, but I reminded him that he breeds to sell and he'd be breeding to a fourth-year sire, meaning...