KEY POINTS:
Sir Patrick Hogan, who knows a thing or two about breeding, says I must have some Irish in me.
I am going to take this as a compliment because he likes the Irish. But the thing he likes just about more than anything in the world is a horse with the Irish in it - and he has appraised me exactly the way he would a horse.
He can tell I've got Irish in me because "it's in the eyes". He can look at the eye of a horse and tell whether it is going to be placid, or spirited, or bad tempered.
"Some like a kind eye, some like a wild eye." He likes a wild one, which is partly why he loved a horse called Sir Tristram, who made Hogan his fortune and who was never tamed.
I ask him whether he thought people were attracted to horses that were like them, because Sir Tristram was just like him. "So they say. So they say." They both had Irish in them and Sir Tristram never stopped trying to have a go at Hogan.
"Oh, no, not at all. It was a game. And I mean I certainly don't have a go at people but I've got that cheeky instinct ... and he was a one-upmanship person ... aah, type of horse."
That was a slip of the tongue but I think he does think of at least that one horse as a person. He says about animals, "Perhaps they can't speak, but they know".
I don't know that he is much used to people giving him cheek in return (horses are another matter).
His mates call him "Eminence" or "Commander" and it is reasonable to conclude that he doesn't mind either. I'm not sure he quite enjoyed my insistence on calling him Eminence but he did take the human equivalent of a playful nip very well. So I have decided to forgive him for saying, "You're a bugger of a woman".
He says this because I happen to point out that the bottle of water he's given me out of the drinks fridge at the Cambridge Stud marquee at the Karaka Sales has a "reduced to clear" sticker on it.
He's only worth around $65 million. He says he's got "just enough to survive." He says he wouldn't put it past me to have put that sticker on myself and rushes to the fridge to check the other water bottles. They all have the "reduced to clear" sticker. He pretends to be mortified (and I bet somebody gets a bollocking) but I suspect that secretly he might approve.
He doesn't splash it about. We go up to the sales ring because he's after a horse to win him next year's NZ Bloodstock Million Dollar race for 2-year-olds but he can't bid because that would put the price up. He tells the trainer to go to $60,000 and gets the bay filly for $28,000. That makes him beam. He likes a bargain.
He only spends money on horses, rugby and the stud farm which he is pernickety about, being a perfectionist.
He and Lady Justine are both the same: "Fussy as fussy." So they do spend a lot on making sure the gardens are beautiful and the pasture perfect. They are a wonderful match. He says people often say to him that "lightning struck twice with you with Sir Tristram and Zabeel [Sir Tristram's son and another super stud.] And I say, 'No, it struck before that. It struck when I got Justine'." He's 67 and they have been together since they were 15 except for a bit of a break when he was 18 and went to Taranaki and "she heard back that I'd sort of side-stepped a little bit on the trip".
There has never been so much as a whiff of scandal about him as far as I know, so I'm far too interested in this little snippet for his liking. "Umm, it was all hearsay. It was never proved." Neither of them likes socialising much, although he does it for the business because it's expected. The last time he threw a big bash was for Lady Justine's 50th birthday and she was very cross about it.
I ask him how he describes what he does for a living. ("Breeder," which is what I would probably call him, sounds a bit odd.) He says he's "a cocky; I'm a farmer". Some farmer. What he isn't is a horse rider. He last rode a horse when he was 15. "My job is on the ground. It's harder to handle a horse on the ground."
He is like royalty in the horse world and at Karaka the Cambridge Stud tent is the biggest and where those with money to spend on horses are wined and lunched.
One year he made it a black-tie occasion, with waiters and crayfish. This was a mistake. "Too gaudy," he says, wrinkling his face. He does not like gaudy or flashy (except when it comes to his stables and farm and that's because they're the "shop window".) He doesn't have a helicopter or more than one car, a black Mercedes SUV.
There is a holiday home at Mt Maunganui, named after Sir Tristram, and another at Cooks Beach but he's not very good at holidays unless they involve horses or rugby.
He's wearing a gold Rolex but is at pains to explain that it was a present - or a reward, really - from a partner in the sales yard after Hogan sold a colt for $1.6 million here. He did spend $300,000 on hiring a documentary crew to film the story of the Sir Tristram he loved and whom he can never have enough of talking about. He happened to lean on the "on gizmo" on his remote the other day - "it must have been meant to happen" - and the telly turned on to Trackside (of course) and they were playing the last bit of the doco: Sir Tristram's burial service. He cried.
He cried in the ring at Karaka this week when the colt he'd prepared for sale went for $2 million. Actually, I am not allowed to say that because it was "not in the ring, it was when I left the ring". He went off on his own because "I didn't want people saying, 'Why has he got a tear in his eye when he's just got $2 million for someone, for Christ's sake?' " The tears were mostly relief that he had completed the job of getting the horse ready and sold for such a top price. "When the hammer went down everything let go."
He is an odd mix of hard-nosed businessman and sentimentalist, a "not very sociable" man and showman. He is certainly sentimental enough to have given Sir Tristram the stable name Paddy, after a dead Irish uncle. When I say the $300,000 spent on Paddy's documentary was a lot, he says, "I probably hacked a bit out of the shareholders as well".
Hogan has loved animals since he was a boy and never went bird-nesting or rabbit shooting. Now, if he sees a rat in the oats, he'll chase it off rather than kill it, "and the staff go mad at me. Oh, I am sentimental. I'm soft. Oh my word, yes. And I'm very superstitious." Paddy was buried with his tail to the rising sun and his head to the setting sun "and that's a very superstitious Chinese custom. You bury your famous and noble that way and the good fortune, good health and good luck and everything good around the place will continue to flow on".
Hogan always says he doesn't believe in luck but he obviously did a bit when it came to making sure Paddy was buried right. A priest conducted the service for good measure. Perhaps he thinks it's bad luck to talk about good luck. Or perhaps you can contradict yourself when you're known as Eminence.
And when you have been in the pre-eminent position, at the top of a hard game, for so many years, people are bound to say that "I seem to get my way all the time". He feels like he does: "Sure! Blimmin' oath. You know, if I'm putting something on or planning something, I'll say 'It won't rain' [and] it doesn't rain". Well, what is that? "It just doesn't rain. Everybody says, 'Oh well, there's Eminence again. He's got a direct line up there."
So, if it's not luck, why does the sun always shine on Sir Patrick Hogan? "I think some people are meant to have those things happen to them in life." He looks at me and says, "I mean, look at you and the water bottle. You got lucky there." It is a fine distinction but I'm beginning to understand it. Mere mortals have a bit of luck; eminences have a direct line.
