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C00002 00002	a259  1939  12 Oct 85
C00011 00003	a260  1956  12 Oct 85
C00021 00004	a261  2011  12 Oct 85
C00030 00005	a262  2028  12 Oct 85
C00040 00006	a263  2048  12 Oct 85
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a259  1939  12 Oct 85
BC-APN--Horse Industry, adv27-4 takes,0902
$adv 27
AGENCIES AND RADIO OUT
For release Sun., Oct. 27
From AP Newsfeatures
APN MAILED PRINT SUBSCRIBERS GET 5 B&W PHOTOS, 4 COLOR SLIDES
 
    ''The horse business is the most exciting, emotionally rewarding
activity either of us has ever pursued professionally and it can be
very, very profitable.'' - Arnold Kirkpatrick and Jack Lohman,
''Successful Thoroughbred Investment in a Changing Market.''
    
    ---
    
    ''We have seen dozens of people, smart people, successful business
people, who have taken a bath in the horse business because, when
they entered it, they checked their brains at the door.'' - Arnold
Kirkpatrick and Jack Lohman, ''Successful Thoroughbred Investment in
a Changing Market.''
    
By NANCY SHULINS
AP Newsfeatures Writer
    LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) - The bay colt known as No. 215 had just been
sold at the annual Selected Yearling Sale for a world record $13.1
million, and in and around Keeneland Race Course, the hubbub had yet
to die down.
    Outside the sales pavilion, reporters mobbed the buyer, British
soccer pools baron Robert Sangster, who calmly sipped a cold drink
and did his best to ignore them. A second group of reporters lunged
for the pay phones in the office.
    Inside, auctioneer Tom Caldwell tried to quiet the crowd: not only
buyers and sellers but also awe-struck racing fans, workingmen to
whom high rolling meant the $50 betting window at Churchill Downs.
    Over at Barn 14, where the prize yearling was already back in his
stall, his excited groom was offering his observations to a herd of
onlookers who had stampeded over to see what $13 million worth of
horse looked like.
    ''I knew he had a chance to be the sale topper,'' said Scott Burns,
a young, genial gap-toothed fellow who wore a slightly dazed
expression as he leaned on the rail in front of 215's stall.
    ''We kicked around figures like $3 million to $5 million, but
numbers like that are pretty incomprehensible to me. Like, I need a
new pair of shoes, you know?'' he said with a laugh.
    ''He did pin me up against a feed trough once, but he's all right. I
guess I'll have to go to Europe if I ever want to see him again.''
    Burns gazed at the world record yearling he'd helped raise, the
as-yet unnamed son of Nijinsky II and grandson of Northern Dancer,
and he reached back to give him a proprietary pat on the neck. ''I
wish him the best of luck.''
    Then his grin faded and he added softly, ''I just hope he can run.''
    ---
    It is a long-standing irony of this industry that a $13 million
horse may not run as fast as a $1,100 horse.
    But it is by no means the only one. This is a business of ironies:
    - A horse with flawless conformation can break down on a racetrack,
his perfect leg, his career, and his life shattered in the tick of a
stopwatch. A horse with a leg as crooked as a black snake can run
without mishap for years.
    - A horse whose parents won millions on the turf can prove himself
unable to outrun a fat man; a horse whose parents won nothing can
join the ranks of racing's 69 equine millionaires.
    - A man with a few dollars to spend and no experience in the horse
business can win the Kentucky Derby with the first horse he's ever
owned. A professional breeder with unlimited money and years of
experience can devote his life to breeding a Derby winner and die an
old man, still trying.
    - A yearling that nobody wants can go on to become a stallion that
everyone wants. A stallion that everyone wants can produce foals that
nobody wants.
    ''This business attracts some people who are brilliant in their own
fields, but who spend two nights at a cocktail party and think they
know everything about horses,'' says Nick Nicholson, executive
director of the Kentucky Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders
Association.
    ''With some full-time horse people, you can ask them who the
president of the United States is and they'll tell you Harry Truman.
But if you ask them who won the fourth race at Hollywood, they'll
know every time.''
    Increasingly, the business attracts lawyers and stockbrokers and
doctors and real estate developers; rich folks by most people's
standards. But to the Arab sheiks, Greek shipping magnates and
Japanese businessmen lured into the game a decade ago, these new
players constitute the middle class.
    The foreign investors, in turn, constitute ''new'' money to the
closed circle of Bluegrass bluebloods. Their recent infusion of the
rial, drachma and yen, not to mention the pound, has greatly
increased the value of the thoroughbred. It's become one of the
hottest international commodities of the '80s, transported freely
from continent to continent ''as though the Atlantic didn't exist,''
says Jim Williams, director of publicity for Keeneland.
    It has happened so fast that it has taken even the most
knowledgeable in this business by surprise. In 1944, when Keeneland
held its first select yearling sale, the average price paid was
$5,231. Twenty years later, the average had risen to about $20,000.
Twenty years after that, it hit $544,681.
    MORE
    
 
 
AP-NY-10-12-85 2236EDT
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a260  1956  12 Oct 85
BC-APN--Horse Industry, adv27-1st Add,1018
$adv 27
AGENCIES AND RADIO OUT
For release Sun., Oct. 27
LEXINGTON, Ky.: hit $544,681.
    In 1976, breeders got their first look at a million-dollar yearling,
Canadian Bound, sold at Keeneland for $1.5 million. 
    They saw their first $10 million yearling seven years later, when a
Northern Dancer colt brought $10.2 million. The industry woke up with
a start.
    Among its innovations was the creation of the Breeders' Cup, a
series of seven championship races that are run on what is billed as
the richest day in sports. This year marks the second series of the
annual races, being held at Aqueduct Race Track in New York on Nov.
2. In all, $10 million in purses will be awarded.
    The number of yearling sales is increasing too. 1983 brought 76
major yearling sales in North America, with 8,705 yearlings - 23
percent of the crop -sold for a total of $359 million.
    On the day of the historic $10.2 million sale, recalls Williams,
''the scoreboard read $200,000. There weren't enough spaces to get
the whole number on the board.''
    Up until then, six spaces had been plenty; in 1960, a buyer could
have walked off with the entire crop for $10 million.
    The man who spent more than that on a single horse was Sheik
Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum of Dubai. The horse he bought, Snaafi
Dancer, now a 3-year-old, has yet to race, leading many industry
observers to surmise that the $10.2 million yearling can't run.
    From that same crop of thoroughbreds, a small bay weanling was sold
privately for $12,500 to a Florida man who, retired from the real
estate business at 38 and bored after a couple years of boating and
fishing, was making his first foray into the business.
    The little weanling with the mediocre pedigree has grown into a
handsome 3-year-old stallion with one of the fattest bankrolls in the
barn. He retired from racing a few weeks ago with career earnings of
$4.2 million, including the $406,800 he took home for winning the
1985 Kentucky Derby in the third-fastest time ever recorded for
America's premier horse race. Another $2 million came from Robert
Brennan's Cherry Hill Race Track in New Jersey, as a bonus for
sweeping the Cherry Hill Mile, the Garden State Stakes, the Kentucky
Derby and the Jersey Derby.
    The buyer was Dennis Diaz, the horse, Spend a Buck.
    A business of ironies.
    ---
    ''Darley Arabian was the fastest, most beautiful stallion in Syria.
The Byerly Turk was a war hero. And the Godolphin Barb was discovered
in Paris, pulling a peasant's cart as if it were made of gold.
    ''Two centuries ago they were brought to England to sire a breed of
champions. Today every thoroughbred can trace the magic in its blood
back to one of them. They continue to run as if they're outracing the
desert wind or charging into battle.'' - advertisement, New York
Racing Association Inc.
    ---
    The thoroughbred took its first, wobbly steps in the late 1700s on
British soil. The industry it sired is coming of age on the rich,
fertile bluegrass of Kentucky.
    The mineral-rich limestone soil found here is considered the prime
reason why Kentucky-bred horses consistently out-perform their
out-of-state rivals.
    Eight of the 11 Triple Crown winners were sired or bred in Kentucky.
From 1971 to 1980 alone, Kentucky produced 15 percent of the crop and
28 percent of the winners of stakes races, those with the richest
purses and fastest fields.
    Florida was second, with 8.8 percent of the foals and 12 percent of
the stakes winners. California, with 13 percent of the crop and 10.9
percent of the winners, was third.
    The number of breeding operations in Florida and California is
growing, and a 1982 Joint Legislative Task Force reported that the
industry had grown to $2.3 billion in New York State alone.
    But Kentucky remains the undisputed center.
    Not only the best horses, but also the top service providers and
state-of-the-art facilities are found here: the veterinarians and
trainers, equine hospitals and training centers, farm managers and
exercise riders.
    Best known are a handful of the oldest, richest and most established
operations: Claiborne Farm, home of Triple Crown winner Secretariat
and leading sire Nijinsky II, father of the $13.1 million yearling;
Calumet Farm, whose devil's red and blue racing silks have been worn
by eight Kentucky Derby winners; and Spendthrift Farm, home of Triple
Crown winner Affirmed and, until recently, Seattle Slew.
    These are but three of the 1,600 Kentucky addresses currently
reporting at least one thoroughbred on the premises. Of those, about
half are concentrated in the gently rolling fields of central
Kentucky known as the Bluegrass Region.
    The Bluegrass is to the horse business what Detroit is to the auto
industry, an analogy not lost on Spendthrift founder Leslie Combs II;
a cartoon in his office depicts him as a wrench-wielding factory
worker on an assembly line cranking out race horses that are
transformed into piles of money.
    ---
    ''If a horse's leg shatters, that's it. The end of the line is a can
of Alpo. If people tell me they have to make money, I tell them to go
buy a U.S. Savings Bond.'' Brownell Combs II, president of
Spendthrift Farm
    --- 
    Leslie Combs II, who started with fewer than 126 acres half a
century ago, developed his farm into a 2,350-acre complex of 50
barns, 42 stallions, an elite band of broodmares, two training
centers and its own advertising agency. Depending on the season,
Spendthrift employs between 250 and 300 people. 
    Combs is credited with several scandalous innovations. He was the
first to advertise his horses, once considered highly uncouth in the
sport of kings. He perfected the art of syndicating stallions; his
syndication of Nashua at $1.2 million in 1955 was the harbinger of
the million-dollar deals of today.
    MORE
    
 
 
AP-NY-10-12-85 2252EDT
***************

a261  2011  12 Oct 85
BC-APN--Horse Industry, adv27-2nd Add,0931
$adv 27
AGENCIES AND RADIO OUT
For release Sun., Oct. 27
LEXINGTON, Ky.: of today.
    In November 1983, he did something more shocking still. He brought
his horses to Wall Street, issuing 650,000 shares of common stock and
transforming one of the last bastions of Bluegrass establishment into
the first major thoroughbred horse farm to be publicly traded.
    Combs, chairman of the board, his son Brownell, president, and other
family members own the majority of shares, traded on the American
Stock Exchange. But the Combses, citing health reasons, have signed a
letter of intent to sell their 8.9 million shares in Spendthrift to
Manuel Mayerson, an Ohio and Florida businessman who amassed his
fortune through real estate development, and who says he intends to
maintain and expand on the farm's record.
    For Spendthrift, going public raised $7 million and plenty of
eyebrows.  More important, said Vice President Keith Nally, ''it
provided a vehicle for raising funds in the future without having to
borrow.''
    The stock hasn't exactly burned up the track. It has fallen from its
$12 offering price to as low as 4 1/4. Industry experts blame the
stock's poor performance on a mutual lack of understanding between
Wall Street and the horse business.
    Less than a year after the stock issuance, Spendthrift announced it
had closed another ground-breaking deal: sale of 100 units in a
limited partnership for a total of $7.5 million.
    The limited partnership, in which a group of investors become
partners in the ownership of race horses and, in some cases, breeding
rights to leading sires, is among the industry's newest wrinkles.
    Another is the buying and selling of future stallion seasons, the
right to breed a mare to a given stud in, say, 1986. Matchmaker
Breeders Exchange, a private membership exchange based in Lexington,
set up shop a little more than a year ago. It has since grown to 700
members and completed 1,120 transactions.
    In the limited partnership, the managing partner selects the horses,
makes the breeding or racing decisions, and handles the advertising
in exchange for a percentage of shares. Limited partners are actually
silent partners.
    ''Prior to the limited partnerships, you needed at least $500,000 to
$1 million to invest in this business,'' says Nally. ''Now, it only
takes $50,000 or $100,000.''
    While less risky than independent ownership, it is still far from a
safe bet, and in talking to potential investors, Brownell Combs made
a point of not mincing words: ''I tell them the horse may ultimately
be worth about 9 cents a pound.''
    (They do shoot horses. But shattered legs notwithstanding, more
effort is made to save thoroughbreds - especially heavily insured
thoroughbreds - than in the past, and better medicine is available
with which to do it. Even if a horse's racing career is cut short by
injury, the animal may still be a valuable stud or broodmare.)
    Despite the risks involved, enough new investors have joined up to
render the thoroughbred business unrecognizable to the old guard.
    ''Twenty years ago, the business was dependent upon and controlled
by 100 people,'' says Arnold Kirkpatrick, co-author of ''Successful
Thoroughbred Investment in a Changing Market'' and a longtime
consultant in the business.
    ''The base of participation has broadened a hundredfold. Whether
this is good or bad remains to be seen. I think it's both.''
    What's bad is that some investors are more enamored of the tax
benefits than they are of the thoroughbred, and they're making some
costly mistakes. Chief among them is overproduction.
    ''Over the past 10 to 15 years, the average foal crop grew by a 6
percent annual rate, and each year, we sold a higher percentage of
these increasingly larger crops at auction. And we were getting, for
10 years, increasingly larger average and median prices,''
Kirkpatrick says.
    ''In the same growth period, people became victims of the
misconception that the business was exempt from the laws of economics
and the laws of nature. They began to think they could breed anything
to anything and turn a profit.''
    At the same time the birthrate was soaring, training costs for race
horses were climbing too, encouraging investors to take average
runners off the track and put them in production, passing their
faults on to new generations.
    ''It got to where production was in excess of 50,000 foals a year.
It only takes 78,000 horses to run racing in the United States,''
says Kirkpatrick.
    Now that prices in the middle to low end of the market are dropping,
Kirkpatrick is hoping the birthrate will too.
    ---
    ''Stallions live in solitary confinement. Their only contact with
other horses is in the breeding shed. They're bred heavily for six
months of the year, then not at all for the other six. Stallions tend
to have psychological problems.'' - Rick Nichols, manager, Shadwell
Farm
    ---
    The van pulls up to the stone stallion barn and a dozen or so people
clamber out. Sunburned and smiling, Instamatics at the ready, the
tourists close ranks in a lush patch of grass outside the
horseshoe-shaped barn.
    Their expectant eyes focus on a stall marked by a bronze plaque:
    ''Governor's Citation, November 30, 1978, honoring Thoroughbred
racing's 23rd millionaire, the first horse to win the Triple Crown
while undefeated.''
    Inside, a sleepy looking dark bay stands up to his knees in golden
straw, eyes half closed, alfalfa spilling lazily out of a wall
feeder.
    MORE
 
 
AP-NY-10-12-85 2308EDT
***************

a262  2028  12 Oct 85
BC-APN--Horse Industry, adv27-3rd Add,1031
$adv 27
AGENCIES AND RADIO OUT
For release Sun., Oct. 27
LEXINGTON, Ky.: wall feeder.
    His groom, Tom Wade, comes in, saddles him up and leads him onto the
grass, where he looks resplendent if slightly plump in a blue and
orange saddle pad with his name on it. This is the spectacle of
Seattle Slew, dressed in Spendthrift colors and out for his morning
gallop on the one-eighth-mile track his keepers have nicknamed Slew
Downs.
    Wade, out of whose chest Slew took a generous piece on one of his
more ornery days, walks him around for the tourists. Their cameras
click madly as the guide tells them a bit about the horse they are
photographing.
    Born in 1974 with a crooked front leg and a mediocre pedigree, Slew
was sold as a yearling for $17,500. He won $1.2 million at the track
before making the inevitable career change from race horse to stud at
age 4.  
    He was syndicated for $300,000 a share in a 40-share syndicate. His
first two crops included Slew O' Gold and Landaluce, 1984 Kentucky
Derby and Belmont winner Swale, and Grade I stakes winners Slewpy,
Adored and Seattle Song.
    By that time, his stud fee had climbed to $750,000, with no
guarantee of a live foal resulting, and his estimated value
represented a return on his owners' investment of 521,093 percent.
    Slew is scheduled to be bred to about 60 mares each year for as long
as he's able, which could be 20 more years. One $300,000 share was
recently resold for $3.5 million.
    Last month, Seattle Slew moved to Robert Clay's Three Chimneys Farm
in nearby Midway, joining his Eclipse Award-winning son, Slew o'
Gold.
    Until then, he bestowed his favors amid Spendthrift's 2,350 acres of
green grass and white clover, amid the 50 cool, dim barns, the 100
miles of creosote-stained black fence, the army of trucks, cars and
farm vehicles, the trophy-crammed office buildings, the dazzling pink
tulips, the fat bumble bees.
    The Alice in Wonderland illustration that is Spendthrift Farm was a
fitting place for Seattle Slew to call home; Spendthrift's assets are
worth in the neighborhood of $100 million - almost, but not quite, as
much as he is.
    ---
    ''Knowing when to go and when to whoa, that's the trainer's job. The
horse has to learn how to wear a saddle and carry a rider. How to
break from a gate and gallop on dirt. Most of all, he's got to learn
to be an honest race horse and not cheat.'' - Trainer Sonny Sims
    ---
    The life of a thoroughbred on a Kentucky horse farm follows a
pattern as timeless as the seasons. Conceived in a two- or
three-minute coupling in the breeding shed, the foal emerges 11
months later, usually at night.
    If he's healthy, he'll be up on his spindly legs and nursing within
an hour. Two to four weeks later, he'll start picking at grass. At
four to six weeks, he'll taste his first oats. At five or six months,
he'll be weaned.
    He'll spend his time kicking up his heels with other weanlings, with
a couple hours off for daily grooming. He has to look good when he
goes to the auction ring as a yearling.
    If he has a good pedigree and no major faults, he'll go to the
Keeneland sales in July, where he may fetch anywhere from $100,000 to
millions.
    His carefree days are now over. He must be taught how to race, a
process that lasts about four months.
    ''The biggest mistake you can make is making them go too fast too
soon, not doing enough conditioning before asking too much of them,''
says trainer Sonny Sims, a former farm manager at Spendthrift.
    ''We break them as yearlings in the fall, but they don't do any
strong gallops right away. We start to get serious with some of them
in the spring.''     His racing career will start in the late spring or
fall of his 2-year-old year, provided he's weathered training. If he
does well, he'll probably race until the end of his 3-year-old year.
Then it's time for another adjustment.
    If he's a stallion, he must get used to a solitary life. Stallions
are separated by double fences to discourage biting or fence-jumping.
Fillies destined to become broodmares must learn to get along with
each another.
    A popular stud may be bred to as many as 60 mares during the first
half of each year. A broodmare will be busier still, producing 10 or
11 foals during her lifetime; 16 or 17 is not unheard of.
    Good producers will be rewarded with a few years of leisure toward
the end of their days. ''We have several old pensioners who are 33 or
34,'' former Spendthrift broodmare manager Nichols said recently.
''You let 'em enjoy what time they can.''
    When the end comes, most are sent to processing plants to be made
into a variety of by-products. But not all are disposed of in this
manner.
    A few timeless customs still linger in this industry of venerable
tradition and new money.
    The best stallions - and a handful of exceptional mares - are still
given ceremonial burials consisting of the head, the hooves, the
heart, and in the case of the studs, the testicles.
    They are buried in cemeteries on the grounds of the farms whose
colors they carried over the finish line. Swale, the brilliant
Kentucky Derby winner and son of Seattle Slew who died after winning
the 1984 Belmont Stakes, was buried in an oak casket lined with the
yellow and orange silks of Claiborne Farm.
    He was laid to rest in a cemetery marked by rough-hewn stones and
reserved for the rarest of breeds: Thoroughbreds with magic in their
blood, those that ran, regardless of crooked legs or average
parentage, as if they were outracing the desert wind or charging into
battle.
    Honest race horses. The ones that didn't cheat.
    END ADV
 
 
AP-NY-10-12-85 2324EDT
***************

a263  2048  12 Oct 85
BC-APN--Selling Sam, adv27,1199
$adv 27
AGENCIES AND RADIO OUT
For release Sun., Oct. 27
From AP Newsfeatures
With BC-APN--Horse Industry
By NANCY SHULINS
AP Newsfeatures Writer
    The fan mail pours in from young girls everywhere, from Emilys and
Heathers and Laurens and Tiffanies.
    Some send hugs and kisses, to be delivered by proxy, along with
promises of undying love. Others send drawings. One sent $5, to be
spent on ''carrots and things.''
    This latest adolescent heartthrob doesn't live in Hollywood, and he
isn't a rock star.
    He lives in Jackson, Ohio, and he is a horse.
    His name is Sam I Am, he's a 3-year-old registered paint horse, and
at last count, he was up to 522 owners.
    Yes, just like Seattle Slew, Northern Dancer, and many another
high-priced thoroughbred, Sam I Am, valued at about $2,000, is the
property of a syndicate.
    He's owned by a growing gaggle of horse-crazy girls who have paid
$23.95 per share for a scale model of Sam, a shareholder's
certificate, and the right to visit, brush, photograph, and sit upon
Sam.
    The syndication of Sam was the brainstorm of Beverley Henderson,
whose husband Jerry, a breeder of standardbreds, acquired Sam in
exchange for a saddle. The little paint horse didn't fit into the
farm's breeding program, but Beverley couldn't bring herself to part
with him.
    ''This is a working farm, not a gentleman's farm, and everything we
have must be of use,'' she explains. Remembering her own horseless
childhood, she decided to fulfill the dream of ''ownership'' for
other children. With the help of a lawyer, she formed Sam and Co.
Inc. and issued shares now being sold through a handful of retail
stores and magazine ads.
    Since the shares became available last October, more than 500 have
been sold, all of which shows that in this era of video games and
space toys, visions of Black Beauty live on in the hearts and minds
of American kids.
    The dream of horse ownership is shared by adults as well, and
statistics kept by the American Horse Council in Washington, D.C.,
indicate that, rising land prices and dwindling frontier aside, the
number of horses and horse owners is on the rise.
    America's horse population has more than doubled in the past 25
years, according to the council, which places the current population
at 8.5 million. This year, 3.5 million owners will spend over $9
billion on their horses' upkeep alone.
    Another 27 million will ride someone else's horse at least once this
year. Many more will attend one of the roughly 7,400 nationally
sanctioned - or 29,000 locally sanctioned - horse shows that will be
held coast to coast.
    Most of those shows will feature quarter horses, by far the most
common breed. The American Quarter Horse Association expects to
register 170,000 animals this year. During the first seven months of
1985, the AQHA logged nearly 50,000 new owners, up 5 percent from the
same period last year.
    Don Treadway, director of public relations, says the popularity of
the quarter horse - ''the cowboy's horse'' - has been boosted by TV
ad campaigns in which horses are helping to sell everything from
bubble gum to beer. Conversely, Treadway says, bubble gum and beer
are helping to sell horses.
    In one current ad for Jeep, Stephen ''Tio'' Kleberg, president of
the association, is pictured astride his world-class quarter horse,
Little Peppy. ''Only one thing handles horse country better than my
Grand Wagoneer...'' the ad copy reads. ''But it can't seat six.''
    Treadway says new western movies like ''Pale Rider'' and
''Silverado'' can also make a major contribution to the trendiness of
the horse.
    This ''support material'' helps fill the gap left by the demise of
the television western, Treadway says. ''In the '60s, we had Hoss
Cartwright and Little Joe riding for us. We're still getting feedback
from it.
    ''Our surveys show that our members got interested in quarter horses
at 14 and bought their first horse at 21. These are the people who
saw the last of the TV westerns.''
    The average quarter horse sells for $1,000 to $2,500 and is most
often used as a pleasure horse under Western saddle. But there are
also a hundred quarter horse racetracks in 18 states. Last year,
Americans attended more than 16,700 such races, spending $350 million
at the betting windows.
    Quarter horses, bred for speed over short distances, race on
quarter-mile tracks. The world record for a quarter-mile, held by a
quarter horse, is 21.02 seconds, or 47 miles per hour. A leading
thoroughbred, by comparison, requires 24.1 seconds to go the same
distance, although on a longer track, the quarter horse will soon eat
the thoroughbred's dust.
    While record-price thoroughbreds have grabbed most of the headlines
in recent years, the second-leading quarter horse sire, Dash for
Cash, was syndicated for $30 million, and Special Effort, the 1981
world champion quarter horse, was syndicated for half that amount.
    Top prices also have been paid in recent years for Arabian horses,
the world's oldest pure breed but a relative newcomer to the United
States. Last year, the first million-dollar Arabian yearling was sold
at auction in Arizona.     Registration figures for Arabians show steady
growth, with a total U.S. population of 264,664, according to Sally
Corey of the Arabian Horse Registry.
    All thoroughbreds can trace their bloodlines back to one of three
Arabian stallions, whose blood was combined with that of heavier
English mares to sire the breed of champions two centuries ago.
    ''There's a lot of romance with this breed,'' says Ms. Corey. ''Many
believe these are the finest horses in the world, partly because
their blood has remained pure over thousands of years.''
    Arabians are much smaller and slower than thoroughbreds and are
known for endurance rather than speed. Versatility is another
hallmark; they can be used for hunting, jumping, carriage-pulling,
ranch work and pleasure riding, and Arabian racing, while still
limited, has become more popular in recent years.
    Other popular American pleasure horses include the Morgan, the Anglo
and half Arab, and the Tennessee Walker, as well as two color breeds:
the Appaloosa, noted for its spotted coat as well as its speed,
stamina, and docile temperament; and the Pinto, or paint horse, a
good all-around riding horse whose coat is marked by broken patches
of black and white or brown and white. Western movies often depict
Indians astride Pintos, a favorite of many tribes because the
animals' broken coats provided good camouflage.
    Unlike the breed of champions, the other breeds, however popular,
tend to produce few superstars, a sad state of affairs in Beverley
Henderson's opinion.
    ''I grew up with horses like Silver and Trigger. But today's
children have only space creatures,'' she says sadly. ''Too many of
them have no warm animal they can love and identify with.''
    She's hoping to change all that with the help of Sam I Am, the
$2,000 paint horse whose own newsletter, The Sam Scoop, is now in its
second printing.
    END ADV
    
AP-NY-10-12-85 2344EDT
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