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Fast track to big money from £10m super stallion
Bill Bridge reports on the astonishing return on Yorkshire businessman's two-year gamble on racehorse Alkaased
MEET the 10m super-stallion. This is Alkaased, who is believed to have brought his Yorkshire owner the phenomenal sum of 10m with his sale to one of the world's top studs.
And for Mike Charlton, the Hull-born businessman behind the deal, the sale is particularly sweet – because he's just sold Alkaased back to the family he bought him from originally for just 42,000.
Mr Charlton, now based in Monte Carlo, struck gold when he bought Alkaased in 2003.
He purchased the horse for 42,000 from Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoum, a member of the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates, and yesterday completed the sale of Alkaased back to the Maktoum family's Darley Stud for an undisclosed sum but one which could approach 10m.
Mr Charlton refused to comment on the figures involved, but the finances of breeding thoroughbreds can run to astronomical sums provided the stallion proves capable of producing winners of top-class races.
Alkaased, bought by the Sheikh as yearling for $325,000, won for the first time at Ripon in August 2003, when he started at odds of 1-8, but then finished only second in a handicap at Leicester and it was decided he was not up to the required standard.
Mr Charlton stepped in to buy him and last Saturday, with jockey Frankie Dettori wearing the red-and-black colours of Mr Charlton's house at Hull Grammar
School, he earned 1.4m by winning
the Japan Cup – a race which carries
over 4m in total prize-money – in record time.
Earlier this year he won over 200,000 for victory in the Grand Prix de St Cloud in Paris.
The Darley operation is the breeding arm of the massive world-wide racing empire owned by the Maktoum family and Alkaased will stand at stud in Japan.
John Ferguson, bloodstock adviser to Darley, said: "Alkaased is an exciting prospect for three reasons: he is record-breaking winner of the Japan Cup; he is by arguably the world's best stallion; and he is a great looking individual.
"It does not matter that he was previously owned by Sheikh Hamdan."
An elated Mr Charlton explained how the deal was done. "The plan was to run in Japan then go on to the Hong Kong Vase on December 11 but after winning in Tokyo we received an offer for him.
"I discussed it with Luca Cumani, who trains the horse for me, and we decided to take up the offer.
"I always defer to Luca when it comes to horses – he is the expert and I would be foolish not to.
"He said he could not guarantee Alkaseed would run as well in Hong Kong as he had in Japan and that defeat there could take a little shine off his reputation.
"We also knew that to run Alkaased in Hong Kong and then meet Japan's quarantine regulations would cause him to miss the start of their breeding season.
"He is a five-year-old already and any delay in him arriving at stud would lessen his value to a potential buyer."
Under Japanese law, any horse being imported into the country to take up stud duties has to begin his journey from his home stables.
So Alkaased is being flown back to Cumani's Bedford House yard at New-
market where the medical examinations and documentation will be completed in time for him to arrive in Japan for
January 1.
Fortunes to be made by studs off the track
Bill Bridge
PURCHASE prices of stallion are rarely disclosed by the tight-knit world of breeding race-horses but owning a successful stallion can bring in vast amounts of money, far surpassing the outlay.
The world's most successful breeding operation is Coolmore in Ireland, where the empire built on the ability of the great stallion Sadlers Wells to produce sons and daughters capable of winning major races has made millions for owner John Magnier and his colleagues.
A stallion will mate with a minimum of 50 mares – sometimes up to twice that number – in a breeding season and the covering fee will depend at first on how successful he has been as a racehorse.
Then, after a few years at stud, his fee will rise if his off-spring prove first to be winners and then, hopefully, exceptional stallions themselves.
Of Coolmore's present stallions, the fee for a visit to Montjeu, sire of this year's Derby winner Motivator, is E125,000; for Rock of Gibraltar, of which Sir Alex Ferguson was once a part-owner, the fee is E45,000; for Sadlers Wells himself the fee is "private" – which probably means that if you need to ask you can't afford it.
Darley Stud at Newmarket has just announced a fee of 10,000 for Starcraft, a winner of five Group 1 races in his career. They have not yet confirmed a figure for Alkaased.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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