How much should a racehorse cost? Most guessers would start with a really big number and then add several noughts, perhaps recalling the tale of The Green Monkey, who was sold for $16m and never won a race.
It is called the sport of kings for a reason and many of the runners at Royal Ascot this week will be owned by royalty, whether it be our own Queen or middle-eastern Sheikhs. But one of the fastest among them could have been purchased just last year for the price of a second-hand car.
Sceptical began life among the blue-blooded stock at the mighty Godolphin operation. He was bred to be good, by a stallion who won half a million in Australia and out of a mare who won easily at Royal Ascot in 2009. But Sheikh Mohammed’s team saw little promise there because last summer, before he had even made it to a racecourse, he went to an auction at Doncaster where he went for a knocked down £2,800.
Anyone in racing could have bought him that day, when the most expensive lot went for £230,000. But while that horse has since finished last in the only race he has contested, Sceptical already looks like the bargain of all time, having won four races in a row and recouped his modest purchase price 15 times over.
It was a happy band of four Irishmen who had the vision to see what he could be. James McAuley, a 39-year-old from Dublin, is registered as the owner but he shares the expense, as well as the highs and the lows, with his brother, Stephen, and his hotelier uncle, Jim Gough. The County Tipperary trainer Denis Hogan completes their group.
The craic, as they say, was mighty when they made it to Royal Ascot last year, for all that they had little expectation of success. They travelled over with an eight-year-old handicapper, Kerosin, who surprised no one by finishing down the field in the two-and-a-half-miler, which is basically a jumps race without the hurdles.
This week will be very different, primarily, of course, because of the coronavirus and the restrictions under which the sport must continue. Hogan is allowed into Ascot, as the trainer, and McAuley also expects to gain admission as the horse’s groom, but the other two men will watch from home.
There will be much more tension. Sceptical is not some handicapper trying to pick up a few quid. He is the bookmakers’ favourite for next Saturday’s Diamond Jubilee Stakes, a top-class sprint which carries a purse of £250,000.
“It’s a bit of a fairy tale,” McAuley reflects. He remembers the calculations they made while Sceptical was in the auction ring, knowing the horse had trouble breathing because Godolphin had made that clear. The good news was that seemed to be putting off other buyers. “We factored it in, it’s gonna cost us €1,500 to get his wind done. Is he worth £4,300? It was a no-brainer. He was a fine horse. We’d have been more than prepared to pay a fair bit more than that.”
McAuley’s assessment has been justified in spades and Sceptical is being called the fastest horse in Ireland. “I think we’ve proved that already,” his proud owner says. “When he won on Monday, that was literally the best that’s on offer over here.
“His last run in Dundalk, he was upsides a line of horses with a furlong to go and then won six and a half lengths, running away. I don’t know about English sprinters but certainly over in Ireland we don’t see horses doing that.”
McAuley’s team had a similar success at a lower level with Hathiq last year, having given him time to get over the pelvic injury that had made him affordable. “We look very clever now. But if you buy cheaper horses, some of them don’t work out. If that happens, we don’t even try to sell them for small money, where you don’t know where they go. We find them homes as riding horses.”
Suspicion can attach to the sort of low-profile race in which McAuley’s horses sometimes find themselves and the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board is still mulling the result of a Dundalk claimer in March, in which he and Hogan had the first two finishers. The form suggested one was a more likely winner, the betting market spoke firmly in favour of the other one and the well-backed runner won.
McAuley says he has nothing to hide, had no bet on the race and adds that Yuften, the runner-up, finished lame. He sounds like a man who can put such worries to the back of his mind.
Sceptical is also a laid-back character, a trait which seems to help. “If you were to see him in his stable, you could genuinely put a child up on him and let him walk around,” McAuley says. “For some reason, the bookies have been giving a price about him, so we’ve had substantial bets on him. We went down to the stable yard one day and he was literally asleep with his head resting on the door, about half an hour before the race. We were saying: ‘Come on, now, wake yourself up!’ But that’s just him. Everything just comes so easy to him.”
