By MICHAEL GUERIN
Selling horses always sounds like easy money.
Some Yank with his fancy greenbacks wants your little horsey. He sends a cheque, you send the horse, everybody is happy.
That has been a way of life in New Zealand harness racing for decades. We breed them, race them and so often sell them.
This season New Zealand owners are on target to sell more than 900 standardbreds overseas for the third year in a row. That is about a quarter of the horses we breed.
Selling horses has become the lifeblood of our industry.
Owners can sell a good horse that might be on its mark for between $100,000 and $200,000 and that appears good business sense.
After all, it takes a good horse to win $200,000, doesn't it?
All that selling is good for the industry. Owners get money to reinvest, send their mares to stallions, breed new horses for the sales and the great racing machine marches on.
Money is the petrol that fuels racing's motor and at the moment the petrol is flowing freely.
So what's the problem?
The problem is that maybe now we are selling too many of our best horses, which is leaving unhealthy gaps in our open class ranks.
A decade ago the odd, run down or struggling open class pacer might make his way to the United States and we would sell a couple of talented 3-year-olds to Australia. But more often than not the best horses stayed at home.
Now we are starting to sell real deal open class horses and the gaps are starting to appear in our open class ranks.
Open class trotter Sundon's Way left for the States last week, joining Lyell Creek who is already there. But that isn't so bad because our trotting ranks still have great depth.
The pacing ranks do not run so deep.
In a season when New Zealand horses have won their first Interdominion on Australian soil in 24 years and continued their domination of the Miracle Mile, the next level of elite pacing has been eroded.
Take Yulestar and Holmes D G out and try to work out who the next best pacer in New Zealand is.
The pretenders to their thrones were horses like Mac De Stroyer, Ouch and Black Cam. They have all gone to the United States.
As for Australia - Atitagain, Courage Under Fire and Another Party. All Grand Circuit winners this season who used to be Kiwis.
Our leading ladies have also been whisked away. In the last two years we have waved goodbye to the likes of Tupelo Rose, Hawera and many more.
At the time the money often seems too good to turn down. After all, how does you average open class horses compete with champions like Yulestar and Holmes D G?
But before banking that cheque New Zealand owners should have a little think about exactly what is happening in New Zealand harness racing.
Because the days of our best horses racing here are virtually over. Horses like Yulestar and Holmes D G never race in New Zealand in the second half of the season anymore.
They head to Australia for the rich carnivals over there and leave our open class ranks to the lesser lights.
In the last five years two class seven mares - Kate's First and Flight South - have won the Auckland Cup.
Not to mention a class six horse like Disprove winning the Easter Cup or Makati Galahad and Smooth Trickster winning free-for-alls on a weekly basis in the South Island. The latter pair are talented, honest horses. But they are not genuine open class stars.
Yet they win almost every week because the South Island open class ranks are in a shambles. Quite simply, you don't have to own a champion to win $100,000 a season anymore.
You need the right horse, some luck and most importantly, good placement by your trainer.
The best open class horse in the South Island is probably now Pocket Me and that is only because his sale to the United States was called off.
A year ago you could have bought him for around $125,000 and that would have seemed good money.
Since then he has paced the fastest race mile in Australia, won $132,215 and is now worth twice as much. And he is one of the favourites for next season's New Zealand and Auckland Cups.
His stablemate Happy Asset is the best example of why keeping your pride and joy can reap far greater benefits than a nice cheque split five ways.
Three years ago he was struggling to make an impression in open class and any offer over $100,000 would have seemed value.
But his owners believed in the old fella, kept him when others would have sold and he has repaid them with an Auckland Cup, an Interdom Final third, over $600,000 in stakes and a lifetime of memories.
Two years ago Lorraine and Ron Nolan were told they were mad not to sell Yulestar for $350,000. Since then he has changed their lives.
Every serious horse agent in New Zealand will tell you the market is getting even stronger as Canadian harness racing stakes gets fatter on a diet of poker machine profit and the exchange rates make our horses tasty buys for US and Australian buyers.
The easy money will keep New Zealand harness racing ticking over but it won't draw people to the tracks. In two years we have the Interdoms at Addington and surely Yulestar and Holmes DG won't be there.
Who will? The best three and four-year-olds in New Zealand are horses like Cool Hand Luke, Stars And Stripes, Bruzem, Young Rufus and City Rogue.
They are fine horses but all will need to develop to be real open class guns, horses worthy of public admiration.
New Zealand owners will always sell horses. Some owners have to because they need the money and good luck to them. They have earned their reward and long may a strong export market continue.
But when we start selling the jewels in harness racing's crown it is time to ask does the long-term cost outweigh the short-term profit.
After all, they will still be holding New Zealand, Auckland, Victoria, Hunter and Easter Cups, not to mention Interdominions and Miracle Mile, next season. And the year after that, and the year after that.
Some proud owner has to win them. But to do that you need a horse.
Racing: Exports eating into ranks
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