Ex-racehorse with previous injury - to buy or not? And how much?

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kit279

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I have a few resting racehorses to stay for a few weeks and one of them is a 4 year old liver chestnut by Halling, recently gelded, and he really looks the real deal - moves like a flash warmblood, very athletic and a real personality, something of a toad to the other horses but got a lot about him, definitely a 'wow-factor' horse.

He had an injury as a 3-year old - going up the gallops, another horse struck into him behind and sliced his hind tendon. The vets put him back together and he had a year of rehab and although it doesn't look very nice, he's sound. He then ran once in bottomless going and picked up a hairline fracture so has had a few months to recuperate and is sound again now. The owner wants to sell - he's the type to do well on the racecourse and before his injury, they thought a lot of him so they want £5K for him. That wouldn't be what I'd spend on him but I can see their point - he's sound and nice and would make a very smart pointer in the right hands.

I really like the horse - the question is:- are his injuries a no-go? How much would you value him at?
 
About £500! Two injuries so really does not stand up to the workload. I would think very hard and long before commiting yourself. :)
 
i wouldnt pay anything more than £500 for him if im honest! However lovely he is, they sound quite nasty injuries that could cause issues in the future, so me being poor wouldnt want to risk much!

where i used to work there was a horse exactly as you described without any injuries, perfectly clean legs with great potential, just very sharp, and they wanted £5k for him. they decided to keep him and send him off to a proper NH yard, and he did quite well in the 2 races he did and they have high hopes for him next year.

personally, 5k is a huge amount of money, however nice the horse if it has injuries!
 
nowhere near 5k. There's so many identically great sounding exracers going round for a pittance now. And most wouldn't have those two injuries as well. Even if he was sound 5000 is well overpriced.
 
£500 MAX!

mine is the real deal (and 150% sound) and cost £1k and that is top end of what i was prepared to pay for an ex racer.

seriously, he doesnt sound tough enough to do anything useful competition wise, are you sure you want a pretty pasture potato because my gut feeling is that one or the other inury is going to come back and bite you in the ass.........................
 
I would personally not touch with a barge pole. There is one thing rehabbing a horse you have worked hard and knowing you have done everything properly but he has not even gone into the correct work yet and has these histories behind him. Plus you do not honestly know how well they rehabbed that tendon. But saying that if he is very special and you can get him for the right money and are willing to make the right decision if he goes wrong again then I perhaps would.
 
Ex-racer, tendon injury, £5k :eek: - I think this is a case of 'they saw you coming' :p

Personally I would not touch a horse who has had any tendon injury, unless I was buying it as a gentle hack.

Also that is FAR too much money IMO for an unproven, exracer. I am now cynical, because I've been there, done it and learned the hard way! (I currently have a broken down, fully retired 10yr old ex racer I paid too much money for) If you do decide you want the horse and are prepared to pay £5k then you would be foolish to part with that amount of money without having a full set of xrays before you buy it, and have that tendon scanned as well.

Every horse I have ever known with a past tendon injury, has broken down once in full work agian. The last horse I rode, who had previously suffered hind suspensory damage was fine with me, as I road walked him daily for 3 years, and he never had a days unsoundness. The vet deemed him fit and 100% recovered, and he went back to his owner, who jumped him over a cross country course less than a couple of weeks after he left me, and he immediately broke down. I was so angry, because I knew they never make a 100% recovery. The poor horse was pts :(
 
Just checked his record - he won his only race so I think the thinking behind the price is that he is the winning type so worth more than a failed not-fast enough racer.

I shall think about it if they want to take a very small amount for him - we have space and grazing enough for him and I'd do the right thing by him if I couldn't keep him sound. The dam bred a Derby winner so it will be interesting to see if he sells for the money they want.
 
Just to clarify - I wouldn't pay £5K for him, end of.

But that's what they're asking and it will be interesting to see if they get it, based on him, his pedigree and his win.
 
Prince33Sp4rkle said:
£500 MAX!

mine is the real deal (and 150% sound) and cost £1k and that is top end of what i was prepared to pay for an ex racer.

seriously, he doesnt sound tough enough to do anything useful competition wise, are you sure you want a pretty pasture potato because my gut feeling is that one or the other inury is going to come back and bite you in the ass.........................
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This!

ETA: my girl won several races, has some nice horses in her bloodline and the only damage to her legs was when she was kicked in the field - bearing in mind she was a hurdler as well as a flat horse - she cost just over £1k (the subsequent vets bill is a different matter!).
 
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Personally I wouldn't spend more than £500 either, ex-racers are 10 a penny and from dealings on my yard it seems most owners are happy to give them away just to be rid of them!

We've got two on the yard that were complete freebies, one 100% sound and a quality horse with an experienced rider on his back.
The other one, well I won't get started on that.
 
They will 100% not get the money they want for him.. both my tb's have excellent bloodlines, one was just under £3K as a 4 year (bought her 5 years ago.) old with no injuries & my gelding I got for nothing.. whether his sibling was a derby winner or not doesn't count for a lot I'm afraid..
 
I do understand the mentality that ex-racehorses are 10 a penny and you shouldn't pay more than £1K for them but I will say this. The trainers and the owners know what they have and they sell accordingly. The stud next door had a seriously nice horse in to sell out of racing as too slow and I asked what they wanted for him - they said £8K and I laughed but it sold the next day for the asking price.

I think you can find bargains and you can get them for free but I think if you were looking for something very special, you'd probably have to pay.

I shall wait and see if he sells...
 
Just to add - I was at Ascot recently and all the horses I loved who had good movement, confo and something about them all fetched good money as decent racing form. I think horses with something about them are usually good performers elsewhere. It was always said about Best Mate that he was going to be good at whatever he did.
 
MrsD123 said:
Don'y buy trouble, it does not matter if it was Shergar, its no use to you. Thousands of TB's bred every years, many don't make it, and this is one of them, sorry.
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I agree - we owned 'Diamond Crown' years ago. He was extremely well bred in racing terms - sire was 'Gone West' and he was a beautiful stamp of a horse. He sold for a whopping £250,000 as a yearling. He was injured in the paddock and went through 18 months of hydrotherapy and he was too slow for a racing career. He was owned by Sheik Muhamid al Makhtoum and he was 'given' to his groom for free. He was sold a couple of years later as a riding horse at Cambs Horse sales for £400. Pedigree for a gelding is irrelevent unless it is sound and sustainably sound and can be a competition horse.
 
kit279 said:
Just checked his record - he won his only race so I think the thinking behind the price is that he is the winning type so worth more than a failed not-fast enough racer.

I shall think about it if they want to take a very small amount for him - we have space and grazing enough for him and I'd do the right thing by him if I couldn't keep him sound. The dam bred a Derby winner so it will be interesting to see if he sells for the money they want.
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I think the breeding and the past racing history is immaterial if the horse has injuries that will affect his capabilities of doing another job. For example I would doubt this horse will be able to event, and it may be too risky to jump him, which is why if it was me, who had fallen in love with this horse I would have xrays and scans before buying him, so I knew for sure what his capabilities are. To me, it sounds as though his owners like him and are not really bothered about selling him, so they have come up with this figure.
 
That's my point, LEC - it's really hard to judge the value of ex-racehorses. The athletic ones are the ones you'd want to buy but they also tend to be good on the track. Some of the top racehorses would have been top of their game no matter what they did and watching Secretariat trotting and jigging down to the stalls, you'd have thought he was bred for dressage.

This horse has injuries but without them and with his breeding and his form, he'd be worth a lot more than £5K as a racehorse. I wouldn't buy him to race but I wonder if someone else will...
 
YasandCrystal said:
I agree - we owned 'Diamond Crown' years ago. He was extremely well bred in racing terms - sire was 'Gone West' and he was a beautiful stamp of a horse. He sold for a whopping £250,000 as a yearling. He was injured in the paddock and went through 18 months of hydrotherapy and he was too slow for a racing career. He was owned by Sheik Muhamid al Makhtoum and he was 'given' to his groom for free. He was sold a couple of years later as a riding horse at Cambs Horse sales for £400. Pedigree for a gelding is irrelevent unless it is sound and sustainably sound and can be a competition horse.
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I think the key point here is he was too slow - this one is not too slow and has won so may yet be a good racehorse. The question is about the soundness and that is certainly in question.

Otherwise I'd agree - it doesn't matter about the breeding if it's too slow.
 
Alan King had a french bred a while ago when my sister was working at his place. We kept an eye on it for a while to buy as an eventer. It had perfect conformation, well balanced canter and was athletic but just not a good race horse as too careful. We watched it go through the sales for £25k despite a dreadful record. Shame as he would have been cracking!
A good horse is a good horse. I am sure the horse you like would not be £5k if it did not have the injuries but they will perhaps take the risk on that in racing as they will see quicker results - months not years unlike eventing. He could realistically pay them back in a year if they can keep him on the track and if he never does anything again........
 
I will go against the grain and say they probably will achieve £5k or close enough- if they sell him back into racing or as a potential p2p horse.

As a riding horse he is worth very little but if, as a racehorse, someone can patch him up to win a few races before/if he breaks down again, he will be worth the asking price.
 
kit279 said:
The athletic ones are the ones you'd want to buy but they also tend to be good on the track. Some of the top racehorses would have been top of their game no matter what they did and watching Secretariat trotting and jigging down to the stalls, you'd have thought he was bred for dressage.
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I think they said of Secretariat that trying to fault him was like trying to find dry rain!
 
I'd agree with the above, that someone from racing might buy him on a gamble. (After all, that's what people in racing do . . .) BUT it depends a lot on the race he did win and they'd be much more likely to get what they want if he was currently in training. £5k isn't that much in racing terms, so if anything, that price tag would make me think they think he won't cut it.

The tendon injury wouldn't bother me all that much if the horse returned to work okay, although I would agree it may not have been rehabbed in the way we riding horse people would think is optimum. I would certainly want a closer look at it.

If anything, the fracture would bother me more, if only because it goes to the sturdiness of the horse in general. Although if it seemed in any way related to the tendon injury, it would obviously be a no go. I know horses recover from fractures all the time but the question is why they got them in the first place. It's not the same as a high mileage horse running often on hard ground or, as I saw a couple of years ago, a horse with some form purposefully sent out not fit because he belonged to a "betting owner". :(

I do know what you mean. I've seen a couple of horses over the past few years that would have been STUNNING riding horses - showing quality and super athletes - being rehabbed for injuries which would not necessarily have impacted on ridden careers. The owners were open to selling but there was no way I could justify the sort of prices they wanted and all the horses went back in to racing. Of the ones I know of, all then sustained further problems, but at least one has been patched up twice since then and won, then was sold for £40k. If someone offered him to me now, with the added mileage, I wouldn't touch him. :(

Knowing a bit more about it, I am very suspicious of ex race horses now, much more than in days past. There are SO many things they can do to keep them running that you'd never be able to detect but which disguise ongoing issues or have knock on effects sometimes years later. 2 and 3 year olds on heavy Tildren regimes, neurectomies and fasciotomies done almost as a matter of course, horses with tendon surgeries but absolutely clean looking legs . . . Which isn't to say avoid them all, by any means, but if the goal is to have an upper level competition horse at the end of it I'd like to be fairly sure I know what I'm getting into, or at least paying so little its worth the gamble.

You could always make an offer and wait and see, but I'd agree, they will probably find someone to pay them the money, somewhere, or close to it.

Edited to add, I'm not having a go at the racing industry, it is what it is and I understand why it is that way. And I do know horses get chucked out of racing all the time because they're too slow, but I think people underestimate how much effort may have been put in even to get to that point. After all, trainers aren't stupid and they're not that likely to send a horse to the post if it shows no form at all. Although obviously there are exceptions to that rule! And, in my experience, horses that have won early are often the ones people try hardest to keep on the road, even if there is lots of evidence to the contrary, because they're hoping to regain that elusive lost form. I know one horse that's race twice in three years, but each time won a big one - I suspect they could get very good money for her (more so on account of being a mare) but she is not what I would call a sound horse!
 
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They are dreaming thinking they'll get 5K for him. I would have no issues with the injuries, plenty of horses have come back from tendon injuries and fractures but here is the thing...if he was that good and showed that much ability why are they selling? Yes he may have won a race but it could have been a lousy race in which case his form is not worth a jot. Depending on his model/temperament I would def make an offer but it would be between 500 and 1000. if he is flat bred who is to say he'll get 2.5-3miles? If he was over here and was fit/showing a fair bit in his work he would make 5k for flapping but that is the only market where he'll make that money! In terms of a riding horse, I can understand why people would be put off by previous injuries but I would def investigate the horse as you never know what gems are out there with a wee bit of tlc will be super
 
The thing is the value of a horse as a racehorse and the value of a horse as an EX racehorse are completely different things.

I agree - someone in racing may well take a punt on him at £5k and chance the injuries. As an ex racer to rehab not worth anything like that obviously! Years ago I went to lok at some ex racers at a very successful yard. One I liked I think they wanted about £3.5k for as he still had race potential and ability. I was not interested at all at that price and told them if they were stuck with him I'd pay half that. He resold back into racing and went on and had some good runs and would give his owner a lot of fun.

So to the answer the OP yes I think he may sell at £5k but think they are quite right that they would not touch him at that price.
 
I have a lovely big black ex- racer currently resting in a field who is much more a sport horse type, he has amazing paces, a big scopy jump and although broken for racing, was started really well and will work in a lovely soft outline. He was in pre-training with a friend and they tried to buy him before he went into full training but the owner would not sell. He was only in training breifly before getting a minor bandage bow, this has been scanned and is nothing, the vets were happy for him to start work in 4-6 weeks but he will be left now until next year and then brought on for eventing, ultimately the plan now is just to find him a good home as he really was way to nice a horse to go to waste. I picked him up for £50 on the way to the factory - so if you want a nice ex racehorse horse you can have him for the price of transport from Ireland ;)
 
I have a totally sound ex-racer, never been lame for more than a day or two from hitting himself in the paddock *touch wood*, and never had any past injuries. He's got good confo and movement, and a good jump, nothing wrong with him at all. He cost me £300.

Wouldn't touch an ex-racer with two serious injuries with a bargepole, let alone for 5k! They may well get it for him as a racer though
 
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