Irish agent Demi O'Byrne has established a remarkable record of buying Grade 1 winners and champions

The future of thoroughbred racing and sales changed dramatically in 1994 when mutual friends introduced Irish veterinarian and pinhooker Dermot L. "Demi" O'Byrne to retired bookmaker Michael Tabor during a Caribbean vacation. Tabor was ambitious to build a world-class racing stable, and O'Byrne was the man to do it.

Demi O'Byrne
Birthdate: August 20, 1944
Birthplace: Kilmacthomas, County Waterford, Ireland
Education: Veterinary College of Ireland, University College, Dublin, Ireland
Residence: County Tipperary, Ireland
Family: Married, four children
Best horses sold: Al Bahathri, Authaal, Indian Skimmer, Soviet Star
Best horses purchased: Among Men, Ciro, Danehill Dancer, Desert King, Entrepreneur, Fasliyev, King of Kings (Ire), Marlin, Montjeu, Revoque, Second Empire, Stravinsky, Thunder Gulch

The first horse O'Byrne bought for Tabor was Prince Arthur (Ire), a Fairy King colt purchased privately from trainer Peter Chapple-Hyam's stable in 1994.

That colt won only one race in 20 starts, but his lone victory was the 1995 Premio Parioli (Ity-G1), the Italian Two Thousand Guineas equivalent. Prince Arthur also finished second in the Premio Vittorio di Capua (Ity-G1) and was rated champion three-year-old miler in Italy that year.

In the meantime, just a week later, O'Byrne had purchased a colt who would win Tabor a much more important classic. That horse, of course, was Thunder Gulch, purchased privately for a reported $475,000 as a two-year-old in 1994.

Thunder Gulch won the Remsen Stakes (G2) as a two-year-old shortly after his purchase and then developed into the American champion three-year-old of 1995, winning both the Kentucky Derby (G1) and Belmont Stakes (G1).

That O'Byrne possessed the ability to see the racing potential of horses such as Prince Arthur and Thunder Gulch was not a surprise. He had been training to do just that for a lifetime.

Travels with Sir Ivor

Born on August 20, 1944, in the tiny County Waterford village of Kilmacthomas, O'Byrne graduated from the Veterinary College of Ireland with a degree in veterinary medicine in 1968. He had already launched what would be the most important association of his career the previous winter, however, when he accompanied Irish champion two-year-old Sir Ivor to Pisa, Italy, for the winter.

That trip was one of many experiments conducted by the great Irish trainer Vincent O'Brien, and though O'Brien did not repeat that adventure despite Sir Ivor's subsequent successes, the experience opened doors for O'Byrne. He joined Jack Freeman's veterinary practice in Tipperary and then spent 1971 as an intern with Hagyard-Davidson-McGee Associates in Lexington, Kentucky.

From 1972 until the trainer's retirement in 1995, O'Byrne was closely associated with O'Brien's stable, serving as veterinarian to all of O'Brien's best horses of that era, including Alleged, The Minstrel, El Gran Senor, Storm Bird, Golden Fleece, and Thatch.

O'Brien was easily the most successful yearling buyer of the 1970s and '80s, teaming up with owner Robert Sangster and stud master John Magnier to form a formidable team at international auctions. As an integral part of that team, O'Byrne learned from the master.

In 1978, he inaugurated a pinhooking partnership with Timothy Hyde that lasted until O'Byrne retired from active veterinary practice in 1995 and went to work full time as Tabor's adviser. That partnership bought foals at bloodstock sales and resold them as yearlings. Among the partnership's sale yearlings were champions Indian Skimmer and Soviet Star, and classic winner Al Bahathri, as well as then-record European yearling Authaal, who sold for approximately $4.3-million in 1984 at the Goffs selected yearling sale. Authaal had been purchased for about $393,000 as the only Shergar foal offered at the previous year's November Goffs Invitational sale of foals and breeding stock.

Honour and Glory

O'Byrne began buying for Tabor at auction in the United States at the 1995 Fasig-Tipton Calder sale of selected two-year-olds in training, and he has become a familiar figure at the top of buyers' lists at major international sales over the last six years.

At the 1995 Barretts March two-year-olds in training sale a few weeks later, O'Byrne purchased the brilliant Honour and Glory, a handsome Relaunch colt. Trained by D. Wayne Lukas, the Racing Hall of Fame trainer with whom O'Byrne has developed a mutually respectful working relationship, Honour and Glory won 6-of-17 starts, including the 1996 Metropolitan Handicap (G1), and earned $1,202,942. Retired to Ashford Stud in 1997, Honour and Glory sired 82 live foals in 1998 and 94 in '99, according to Jockey Club reports, at a stud fee of $20,000.

Subtracting an arbitrary ten foals per year, an estimate of the number of Tabor's or Coolmore associates' homebreds conceived with no stud fee changing hands, that still leaves an estimated income from Honour and Glory in his first two seasons at stud of around $3-million.

That stud fee income plus his racetrack earnings represents a generous return on his $410,000 purchase price and does not even include Honour and Glory's stud fee earnings from shuttle seasons in Australia.

Honour and Glory is also a perfect illustration of the O'Byrne-Tabor-Magnier game plan. It is a an extension of and variation on the strategy originally conceived by Sangster, O'Brien, and Magnier in the 1970s of buying and proving top yearling colts and then profiting from their syndication value. Many of those yearlings were sons of Northern Dancer, and Sangster's and O'Brien's success was the springboard for the bloodstock boom of the 1980s.

Buying the best

In simple terms, that plan allows O'Byrne to buy what he judges to be the best weanlings, yearlings, and two-year-olds offered at auction each year as long as the price is reasonable.

The 40 or so horses bought each year are then parceled out to some of the world's best trainers, including Lukas, Nick Zito, and Todd Pletcher in the United States, Aidan O'Brien in Ireland, and Sir Michael Stoute in England.

Those superb trainers win Grade 1 or Group 1 races and classics with the best of the horses, who are then retired to stud, usually at Ashford or Coolmore, to begin collecting more money to reinvest in more racehorses.

O'Byrne and the Tabor-Coolmore team have executed that scenario to perfection over the last six years.

As shown in Tables 1-3 detailing the racetrack performance of the horses listed as bought by O'Byrne at public auction over the last six years, the reticent Irishman has averaged around 20% stakes winners among the weanlings, yearlings, and two-year-olds he has selected. This is indeed a remarkable record.

By contrast, the weanling, yearling, and juvenile sales patronized by O'Byrne produced less than 8% stakes winners cumulatively over the same period. This is the very definition of success in the Thoroughbred racing game: The ability to beat the percentages.

Even more impressive are the respective 20.7% and 21.4% group or graded stakes winners purchased as weanlings and two-year-olds. These rates are around five times as high as the overall rate of group or graded stakes winners produced from those same sales in the same period.

The list of graded stakes winners and their records presented in Table 4 makes it clear why the system works economically. Although the total on-track earnings of $30-million worth of yearlings, weanlings, and two-year-olds purchased annually will never match their total purchase price, the stud-fee earning potential and residual value of the best more than makes up for those that do not pan out.

Magnificent Montjeu

O'Byrne's list of 35 group and graded winners purchased at auction in the last six years presented in Table 4 includes eight champions and four classic winners: Danehill Dancer, Desert King (champion and classic winner), Entrepreneur, Fasliyev, King of Kings (Ire), Revoque, Second Empire (Ire), Sunspangled, and Stravinsky.

That list, impressive as it is, does not include three of the best horses in the world who were purchased privately by O'Byrne in the same period, as shown in Table 5. At the top of anyone's list would be the current dominant older horse in Europe, Montjeu, winner of the 1999 Prix du Jockey-Club (French Derby) (Fr-G1) and Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe (Fr-G1). Montjeu's undefeated 2000 campaign has included victories in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes (Eng-G1), Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud (Fr-G1), and Tattersalls Gold Cup (Ire-G1).

O'Byrne found Montjeu almost by accident. When he was considering having a satellite-TV service installed at his home so that he could watch French races, he visited Coolmore (where the satellite dish was already installed) to judge the quality of reception.

The reception, as it turned out, was excellent. That day as O'Byrne watched, Montjeu won his maiden victory at Chantilly with an electrifying late burst. O'Byrne was in France the next day to buy the horse for an undisclosed sum from the estate of his breeder, Sir James Goldsmith.

O'Byrne purchased the handsome two-year-old Marlin for Tabor shortly after Thunder Gulch's Kentucky Derby victory in 1995. Marlin went on to win the Arlington Million Stakes (G1) and earn $2,448,880, almost all of it in Tabor's colors. During Preakness week of 1995, O'Byrne purchased eventual $1,289,020-earner Victory Speech.

O'Byrne also has excelled at his old metier of buying promising foals, plucking classic winner and current Ashford stallion King of Kings from the 1995 Tattersalls December sale for $402,018. Rated champion Irish miler of 1998, King of Kings won the '98 Two Thousand Guineas (Eng-G1).

O'Byrne's taste in horses has often pitted the Tabor-Coolmore team in direct opposition to the Maktoum family and other high-dollar bidders at international sales, but reporters have learned not to expect extensive quotes from O'Byrne on his high-priced purchases. The Irishman seldom says much more than "He's a lovely horse," preferring to keep the basis of his judgments to himself.

Over the last six years, O'Byrne's judgments of young horseflesh have been right more often than those of any other prominent buyer. In just six years, O'Byrne has purchased 24 Group 1 or Grade 1 winners either at public auction or privately.

That is an unmatched record.