Barry Irwin (photo Anne Eberhardt)
In a lettor to the Editor, Team Valor’s Barry Irwin has his say about ‘salesgate’.
Team Valor International buys and sells millions of rand worth of yearlings every year at the sales in South Africa. This year alone we sold 10 million rand worth of yearlings. We maintain a band of 15 broodmares, we own shares in stallions and we stand our own stallions. So as you can see we are heavily invested in a market that is thousands of miles away from our home base in the bluegrass of Kentucky in the United States of America
I have been attending the sales for the last 10 years.
During this time I have come to know the players, the sellers and the buyers.
I like South Africa as a place to buy, sell, race and raise Thoroughbreds and I like it as a place to develop stallions.
CTS Premier Sale
What I don’t like at all are the sharp, ruthless and cut throat business practices of the people behind the CTHS sales.
Look, South Africa–not unlike many locales where Thoroughbred racing has been conducted for more than 100 years–is fighting for its very existence in the face of changing demographics and unprecedented competition for the betting and entertainment dollar.
The last thing it needs to do is weaken itself by conducting a relentless power grab of the very organization that forms the basis of the breed–its own breeders organization and sales company.
When those behind CTHS wanted to conduct a sale in Cape Town, it was regrettable, but understandable. Let’s face it, most of the best lots are raised in the Western Cape and having these yearlings make the long, arduous trip from there to Germiston was asking a lot of them and their owners.
But for these same business people to now go head to head with the BSA in their own backyard in the environs outside of Johannesburg is simply absurd, unfair and insensitive.
BSA National Yearling Sale
I have sold and bought in both venues. I know the pros and cons. Do I wish the BSA conducted a more business friendly sale free of the risk of not getting paid or getting paid very late? Sure, who doesn’t. But that it no reason to abandon them or put them out of business.
I am not alone in this attitude. Without listing a roll call, the number of prominent names that also share this opinion reads like a list of former supporters and directors of the Cape sales outfit.
You folks do not raise enough animals, you do not have enough buyers and you do not have enough participants that seem committed to paying their training and veterinary invoices in a timely manner to have two sales companies competing against each other in the same locale.
It is now patently obvious, as I thought it had been from the onset, that the Cape Town crew wants to put the BSA out of business.
If they are successful, which I assume they will be because of the inability or willingness of the BSA to guarantee payment to vendors, the Cape group will have a monopoly. If a fellow like Mick Goss can cross over given what has transpired over the years between him and the key member of the Cape group, anybody is capable of switching sides.
A monopoly in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing, but having observed sales world wide for 5 decades, I can tell you that what is bad is when there is one sales company in town and they engage in practices so questionable and sharp as to be discussed at length by anybody with only a passing familiarity of the sales scene.
Sales Incentive Race
Running horses through a sale simply to gain it eligibility to a sales sponsored stakes race, running up prices to boost averages, among other shoddy practices, are so transparent as to be laughable. These practices do nothing but demean the entire process.
Right now I have a substantial investment in South Africa.
I must be honest and say that I am no longer comfortable with my investment based on the way things are starting to go.
But you know what? I don’t think those guys that run the Cape outfit give a damn, because their practices tell me that instead of encouraging inclusion, they would be happy to control every single aspect of racing, breeding and sales so that they can have a game of 5 handed poker between them selves.
Barry Irwin
President & CEO
Team Valor International
[email protected]
