TDN Weekend December 2016 Issue 9
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1045316
At the same time, the motif of his own tenure has been regeneration. For one thing, Beck and his wife Angela have raised five children here; but he has also, first as his father's hands-on representative and since 2010 as his heir, looked to the laurels of a stallion roster that might have stagnated after losing Unbridled (who had been an immediate but temporary boost to the new regime). "The first thing I set about doing was hiring really good people," he recalls. " We hired Neil Howard, who was doing a super job at Calumet; we hired his broodmare manager as well, Johnny Slugantz; we hired Brian Graves, who had decided he wanted to get into the horse business and keep a family tradition alive. It's been a wonderful group, and everyone's still here, still doing sterling work. Together we've continued a fantastic tradition. Because it is an extremely challenging business, which demands tremendous passion and dedication of everybody." The team has developed an elite profile as sales consignors, too. But while Beck himself plainly has a personal affinity with the wider world, he has detected an increasing insularity in American bloodstock since the days when Gainesway was synonymous with imported European blood—as evinced by many of the names carved on the cemetery headstones. An expanding turf programme in the United States encourages him to hope that breeders may yet revive that tradition here. Hence his particular enthusiasm for Karakontie, who advertised his wares to the local market in the GI Breeders' Cup Mile and is now selling his first yearlings. "We've been trying to get a really high-class European turf horse to Gainesway for a long time," Beck admits. "So we were very fortunate to get Karakontie from France: a Group 1 winner at two, who won a great stallion-making race in the French Guineas, and then the Mile at Santa Anita, in 1:32 and change, for a 110 Beyer. He was a legitimate, top-class 3-year-old miler, exactly what everyone's always trying to find, with a marvellous international pedigree."