Racing: Calculated gamble pays off with colt

When you buy a racehorse you have a limited number of people to argue about it with. Your wife, husband, partner, possibly your bank manager and, if the price has been over the top, occasionally your conscience.

If you buy a horse for someone else it's a different matter.

If you buy for someone else and the price could purchase most houses in Auckland, it's a huge liability.

If you buy for someone else for that amount of money and the understanding is that the horse has to win enough group one races to make it into a multi-million-dollar stallion, well, you probably don't sleep.

Rick Williams put his reputation, and more importantly his job, on the line when he recommended his employer, multi-millionaire Australian trucking giant Dick Karreman, buy a half share in Keeninsky, one of the favourites for this afternoon's $100,000 Waikato Draught Stakes at Te Rapa.

It's the biggest calculated gamble Williams will ever attempt.

And it's paid off, even if in grey hairs every bit as much as in dollars.

Williams had been looking around for a stallion prospect for Cambridge's The Oaks Stud, a property he recommended to Karreman a couple of years ago and one he now manages.

The pair were at the Sydney yearling sales last year scratching their heads as to how they could afford to match the staggering money being offered for stallion prospects - at precisely the time Aussie star Exceed and Excel changed hands for a rumoured A$20 million and was shipped off to England.

"The only way we're going to do this is to buy into an emerging horse and go for a ride," Williams told Karreman.

The Oaks bought Graeme Rogerson's half share in Manawatu Sires Produce winner Keeninsky for a sum you would be happy to retire on tomorrow if you could accrue, and the ride has been even wilder than the pair could have imagined.

The Oaks essentially won the jackpot and pushed Keeninsky into the multi-million-dollar stallion bracket when the colt toppled the best sprinters around in the group one Telegraph Handicap at Trentham last month.

Above the excitement of the big day at Trentham you would not have heard Williams let out the most massive sigh of his life. There was a half a head margin in the race and that small distance was worth more than a million dollars. The stakemoney was insignificant compared with Keeninsky's stallion value increase.

There is another million on the line today, again not in stakemoney, but because another group one victory on top of the Telegraph might be enough to seal the title of Champion Sprinter for Keeninsky and that is a huge stallion service seller to go with his Champion Juvenile mantle.

The nervousness is not over for Williams yet, but he doesn't want to go back to the moment when Keeninsky had his first start for The Oaks at Hastings in the spring.

"I've never been so nervous in my life," he said.

"Dick is a performance-motivated person. Defeat is not a good option."

Keeninsky won by a margin.

Williams, and indirectly Karreman, have fielded criticism for removing journeyman rider Allan Peard from Keeninsky after the colt was beaten in the last two strides by Rodin in the group one Captain Cook Stakes, this time run at Otaki.

The fact that there is no evidence of balancing the books in the media when they put Peard back on for the Telegraph Handicap sits slightly uncomfortably with Williams.

He feels he and The Oaks are fully justified in their actions.

"Let's take a professional look at this. There is a lot of money involved here - it is not en emotional thing.

"The fact is Allan is not as good a jockey as Opie Bosson, who replaced him in the 2000 Guineas.

"Another fact is that I like Allan as a person, but he showed in being beaten in the Hawkes Bay Guineas and the Captain Cook, that he is not as cool when things start to go wrong as some other riders. Every time this horse goes around it's a pressure race.

"My boss has $25 million tied up in thoroughbreds and he expects results. When we get beaten by half a head and he asks me if a better jockey would have made the difference, I have to look him in the eye and say yes.

"I admit that's pressure, but it's where you have to make tough decisions - this is business.

"And, jockeys get on and off horses all the time. That's their right, it's their livelihood. But we have to have the same right. Sometimes I think some members of the press are jockey junkies and I'm not knocking jockeys, some of them are among my best friends."

Williams is happy to have Allan Peard in the saddle for today's race and his will be one of the first hands he shakes if the colt can repel strong opposition from the likes of King's Chapel and Danbird.

And Williams will be especially pleased for co-trainer Stephen Autridge, who has done a magnificent job with Keeninsky.

"People tend to ignore the fact that Stephen has been under the same enormous pressure as we have each time this horse goes around."

Safely through this the camp are looking at group ones in Australia, success in which would double the already considerable worth of Keeninsky.

"The Oakliegh Plate and the Newmarket are possibilities and we'd like to run him fresh-up in the Lightning in Melbourne in the spring."

King's Chapel has been prepared specifically for this race and his fresh-up record of being unbeaten in four starts when fresh makes him the favourite today.