Mines (diamonds) director Sir Philip Oppenheimer; the electronics mogul Sir Michael Sobell. And now they had Robert Sangster, untitled, uncommissioned, unconnected and unpretentious – embryo bloodstock adventurer par excellence.
Robert did in fact know dimly, somewhere in the back of his mind, that his fellow stewards at Haydock Park were planning to propose him for membership, but since everyone knew – post-Soames – that you were unlikely to be thrown out these days once proposed and seconded by persons of high rank, he never gave it much thought. News of his election came as rather a surprise to him. But he and John Magnier knew simultaneously that their number one problem was solved. In the world bloodstock business, there is no higher form of credential than to be recognized as a Member of the English Jockey Club. This remains true in all racing countries from Tokyo to Longchamp, from the Antipodes to Santa Anita. Membership denotes total respectability, total honesty, total uprightness. Besides, a meeting with such a man might secure you an invitation to the Jockey Club Room at Newmarket, or Epsom, or perhaps even Royal Ascot. Members of the English Jockey Club are well received everywhere, and in Australia and the United States they are quite often feted.
What the Members did not however fully appreciate was Robert’s former close association with a bookmaker – his own family credit account division which Robert shut down before it became a total embarrassment both financially and socially. And nor were they fully appraised of his most recent venture which saw him as the owner of a financially doomed bloodstock agency in Newmarket which was currently acting as a paper-thin shield for a pile of debts that stretched from Deauville to Saratoga. In the fullness of time, Robert would describe his involvement in this absurdity as: ‘A bit hasty!’
The Newmarket Bloodstock Agency was its name and it was presided over by the tall, balding Richard Galpin, a man whose charm and relentless salesmanship hid a business brain which was apt to function in a rather unorthodox manner. His personal memoirs might easily have been entitled, What They Would Never Dream of Teaching You at the Harvard Business School. Within a few weeks of his Jockey Club membership being finalized, Robert had bought up the shares vacated by Richard’s cousin and become, in effect, the owner of this most shaky enterprise. His decision to become the head of a bloodstock agency was probably encouraged by the fact that his old friend Nick Robinson had elected to part from his family firm, following the death of his grandfather Sir Foster. Robert decided that he and Nick had better run the bloodstock business between them and Nick was duly appointed chairman.
‘It was’, Nick recalls, ‘one of the most nerve-racking periods of my life. Five minutes on the phone with Richard would give me an instant headache. And if I hung up on him, he’d ring right back and keep on talking as if nothing had happened!’
Within a few days of taking over, Nick Robinson reported to Robert that all was not absolutely ideal with the new agency. Because, not only did he own the company, he also owned twenty horses in Australia which Galpin had bought speculatively the previous year. Unsold by the Agency, they were currently in training, at high cost, now at Robert’s expense. ‘Worse yet,’ Nick added, ‘Galpin wants to go back to Australia and buy some more!’ Robert replied in rather colourful language, which meant, broadly, that perhaps Richard should rethink his Antipodean strategy.
The ensuing few weeks were full of rancour. Nick had decided to go to the upcoming Fasig Tipton Sales of two-year-olds-in-training held annually at Hialeah, in Miami. No expert in the subtleties of conformation himself, he received a five-minute lesson in a bloodstock agent’s technique from Galpin. ‘Feel his legs, like this. Then get up and say something, like “Well, they’re not perfect, but neither were his father’s, and that didn’t stop him running, did it?”’ Without any huge confidence Nick departed for Miami, with a local trainer, Ian Walker, leaving Galpin in charge of the office. Over the next few days he would ponder long and hard as to why the normally shrewd and sure-footed Sangster was fooling around in this chaotic enterprise anyway.
Nick arrived at the sales in Florida and reported immediately to the Fasig Tipton office in order to establish his credentials, as the new chairman of the Newmarket Bloodstock Agency. His reception was inordinately frosty and he was told that the head of the sales company, the rather pompous John Finney wanted to see him. Nick was taken to the back row of the empty sales ring and asked precisely when the Newmarket Bloodstock Agency intended to pay for their purchases at the Saratoga Sale in New York the previous August. It was the first indication Nick had received of any debt problem Robert might have inherited from the previous owners: problems with unsold horses were one thing, but these debts were completely unaccounted for. A thousand little red lights started to flash before Nick’s eyes.
He called Robert immediately, direct from Finney’s office, and recounted the problem as succinctly as he could. The facts were relatively simple. Galpin had bought a very expensive horse for the tight-fisted London electrical tycoon Sir Jules Thorn, a man notorious for claiming a six-month credit line to anyone to whom he owed money. That included industrial suppliers, accountants, trainers and definitely bloodstock agencies. Sir Jules was famous for it. In this case however his reluctance to pay Galpin had been almost fatal because Galpin had bought in dollars and billed Sir Jules in English pounds. During the six-month suspension of payment, the dollar had firmed and the pounds with which Sir Jules had paid Galpin had not covered the dollar amount owed to Fasig Tipton. The shortfall ran into several thousands. Galpin had pleaded with him, but Sir Jules had not grown as rich as he was by listening to the bleatings of penniless agents. Unsurprisingly, he informed Galpin the problem was not his. Thus, in the usual way of such men, he had no further interest in it and would not pay another cent.
Robert’s options were narrow. Either he could pay Finney and allow Newmarket to continue to trade in bloodstock, or he could request Nick to return home and wind up the company, and try to sue Sir Jules for the loss. Robert bit the bullet and paid. And Nick, slightly shaken by the experience, settled down to inspect the two-year-olds, and perhaps buy a couple for an English client. His peaceful perusal of the barns and their expensive occupants was, however, short lived. In the middle of the sales that evening, the tannoy system suddenly paged him: ‘Mr Nick Robinson of the Newmarket Bloodstock Agency to the office, please.’
Nick, who was becoming increasingly underwhelmed by the entire exercise, duly presented himself at the office where he was confronted by one Monsieur Olivier Victor Thomas of the French sales company, Office du Pur Sang. This particular Frenchman was not merely angry. He was shaking with rage.
‘You!’ he yelled. ‘You represent l’organisation des criminels.’
‘Who me?’ said Nick.
‘Newmarket Bloodstock! Ha! I spit on Newmarket Bloodstock!’
‘Oh Christ,’ said Nick, and added that he would prefer to discuss anything of this rather disagreeable nature somewhere less proximate to the officials of Fasig Tipton. They retreated to a little office above the open-air bar where most of the English bloodstock agents had congregated. ‘Newmarket Bloodstock is a disgrace,’ bawled the Frenchman.
‘Sssshhhhhhh,’ said Nick, acutely conscious that all eyes were now upturned from the bar below as he and Monsieur Thomas gave a passable imitation of Romeo and Juliet having their first row. ‘Monsieur Robinson!’ thundered the Frenchman. ‘We do not like people who do not pay for their horses. Your organization is a disgrace and you will be blackballed from French racing. Not one of your bills from the August Sale at Deauville has been paid.’
Down below a few sniggers had turned into full-scale laughter. The agents and trainers were falling about at the plight of the rookie bloodstock agency chairman, even though they all knew the debts were obviously Galpin’s not Nick’s, nor, clearly, Robert’s. The grandson of Sir Foster Robinson sighed the sigh of the profoundly depressed and headed for the second time that day to a telephone to call Robert. Then he realized it was three o’clock in the morning in Liverpool, and instead booked the
