PARIS, Kentucky — Long before trackgoers, many of them dressed to the nines, arrive at Churchill Downs in Louisville Saturday evening or Steve Buttleman picks up his bugle and plays the “Call to the Post” to mark the start of the 147th Kentucky Derby, people like Eric Buckley will have been working to make the American racehorse industry what it is.
There is a lot of blood, sweat, and tears that trainers, farmhands, and horse breeders, jobs which Buckley and his family have been doing for three generations, put into the “most exciting two minutes in sports” and the jewel of horse racing’s Triple Crown.
Buckley’s farm is located about 90 minutes from where all of the action will be Saturday. He breeds mares, hoping that a foal of one will someday become a contender at Churchill Downs.
That nearly happened last year, when I reported the horse their dam bred, Ete Indien, was one of three thoroughbreds favored for the Derby — a Derby that was ultimately postponed from May to September because of the pandemic. In that gap, Ete Indien was injured before he ever had a chance to compete.
Buckley said the moment stung, but that is part of a business in which the real money is made for whoever owns the horse that wins the Kentucky Derby. “The breeding fees for that winner pays dividends for a very long time,” Buckley said.
Tall, built like the college linebacker he never was, Buckley is a man’s man. He loves working with his hands, and he loves caring for the horses, including the need to be in the barn whenever a mare is about to give birth. And he says he couldn’t imagine doing anything else even if he makes little money from it.
“I wasn’t a star athlete, so I don’t know that I ever had aspirations of being a sports hero, but I can tell you, I never wanted to do anything else but be involved with horses and be involved in the farm,” he said. “I mean, I would work for free to keep this farm going.”
He is a farmer. He is a cowboy. And he is dedicated to his horses, craft, family, and part of a network of hardworking people, far removed from anyone’s perception that only the wealthy make American horse racing a treasured sport.
Buckley explains that he breeds mares to sell the offspring: “Every once in a while, we’ll keep one to race, but that doesn’t happen very often.”
Buckley says when everything goes right for him when he takes a horse to a public auction either as a weanling or a yearling, he’ll get paid a sum of money that he hopes is several times higher than the stud fee he paid.
“So an old rule of thumb used to be, if you could get 3 times the stud fee, that was good,” he explained. “But that has kind of fallen by the wayside in the last 20 years because of the way stallion syndication has gotten so big, and stud fees have gotten so big. I don’t know that you can keep that rule of thumb anymore.”
For Triple Crown winner American Pharoah, whom I visited at the Coolmore Farm that he calls home, stud fees are now private; but the last time the cost was available publicly, it was $200,000 per cover — live breeding he could do a couple times a day.
That’s a fee cost-prohibitive to most breeders.
Buckley says what someone who does not know a breeder deeply connected to his or her horses might not understand is that people like him are with these horses every day of their lives. “I’m the first thing they see when they come into the world. I’m with them every day until I sell them. So there’s a lot invested, not only monetarily but emotionally.”
He said when things don’t go right with a horse’s health or it is injured, it can be devastating.
“If you’re going to be in this game long enough, you’re going to see just about everything and experience every emotion, high, low, good, and bad,” he said. “And you’ve got to learn how to harness that.”
“I’ve had horses that I absolutely loved, and they got sick and died on me, or I tried to save them and couldn’t. You better have a strong stomach if you’re going to do this.”
Buckley took me to Keeneland, the iconic racecourse and thoroughbred racing’s leading auction house, founded in 1936. Its spring racing season ran from April 2 to April 23, with daily purses of $739,902. Buckley, who is so familiar with everyone at the facility from the track to the trainers he could qualify as mayor, explains the nearly 90-year-old northern Kentucky institution is a place steeped in history that attracts the sport’s top trainers and jockeys.
The spectators range from the well-heeled in the stands to the everyman on the field. Several things connect both groups: love of racing, community, and Kentucky. Elaborate hats are not mandatory, but you would definitely be in the minority should you choose not to don one.
On Derby day, Buckley won’t be at Churchill Downs, instead, he will be working at the barn. “I’ve never gone to the Derby,” he says smiling, then shrugging.
He hopes people across the country will be tuning in, though, just as he will be.
There is a misconception about the industry that does drive him crazy. It mostly comes from activists from “animal rights” groups.
“They are constantly trying to present horse racing as just a cruel sport and everybody’s cheating, and I wish they would come spend a week, or a month, or whatever they could do, on a farm like mine and see what we do,” he said.
Buckley said these activists have no idea of the amount of time or energy and effort that goes into taking care of these animals, “and I would say that like in everything in life, there are a few bad eggs, but there are a whole lot more good people than there are bad people in thoroughbred racing.”
The sport, he said, is often hard to promote unless you grow up in it, or know somebody that’s in it, or get the bug. “When you’re a little kid, you’re playing basketball, baseball, football, soccer, you’re not playing horse racing. You’re dreaming up scenarios where Buckley hits the last-second shot, you win the game. You don’t think about your horse winning the fifth race at Keeneland, so that could be hard to relate,” he said.
“But I think if you go to the track on a pretty day, you don’t have to gamble a nickel. Just go have a hot dog and a Coke, soak up the horses, the scenery, the other spectators. It’s something really neat.”
