Los Angeles, October 21, 2008--Before they were Curlin and Zenyatta, they were known as Hip Nos. 2261 and 703, courtesy of the sales catalogue for the massive Keeneland yearling auction in September of 2005. Zenyatta went in the ring first, and on a day when almost 300 other horses were selling for an average of $178,000, Jerry and Ann Moss were able to buy her for $60,000. Four days later, on September 19, Keeneland paraded hundreds of mostly B-list yearlings, and Curlin was sold for $57,000, which was a couple of thousand dollars below the average for that session.

This was the marathon sale that was marked by a fierce bidding battle, over a handsome Storm Cat colt, between the cocky Coolmore Stud guys from Tipperary and Sheik ("I'm not exactly down to my last camel") Mohammed of Dubai. Coolmore and the sheik have become the Hatfields and the McCoys of international racing, and on this early fall day in Kentucky, Marty and Pam Wygod, who had consigned the colt, were relishing every punch. The bidding on their horse stopped at $9.8 million, after which Sheik Mohammed signed the sales ticket. Later named Jalil, the colt didn't race at two, won one minor race in England at three and this year, after putting together a modest winning streak against creampuffs, has finished seventh in the sheik's own race, the Dubai World Cup. There was something in the news about Jalil finishing third a couple of months ago in a $50,000 stake at Suffolk Downs.


But enough about the Irish and the Arab. For much less than the sales tax on Jalil, the Mosses bought a filly who will run as the odds-on favorite for a $2-million purse in the Breeders' Cup, and Curlin, who has already earned $10.2 million, will be favored in a $5-million race the next day.

The yearling prices for Curlin and Zenyatta were so niggardly because both horses, while sporting representative pedigrees, didn't show well. Zenyatta had a bad case of equine acne. "She was very gangly and awkward, and got an awful skin disease," Don Robinson, who raised her at his Kentucky farm, told The Blood-Horse.

Fares Farm, which bred Curlin, projected that he might sell for $300,000 at Keeneland. But when the colt was only a few months old, a calcium deposit formed on his left front ankle. Also, Curlin was starting to bow out at the knees, and he had a head that should have been atop another horse's body. The serious bidders and the pinhookers, noting the lesion on the ankle and the other defects, ran for cover.

Only Kenny McPeek and a couple of other diehards were still interested. McPeek, known to have an eye for the bargain-basement horse with potential, quit training for a short time to concentrate on the bloodstock end of the business. After buying Tejano Run for $20,000, McPeek finished second in the Kentucky Derby with the colt, who earned more than a million dollars. She's a Devil Due, a $30,000 McPeek purchase, won a major stake at Keeneland and finished third in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies. McPeek won the Belmont with Sarava, a 70-1 shot.

"I've trained enough bad horses to know what they look like, and I've trained enough good ones to know when I see one," McPeek says.

On the Monday Curlin was to be sold, the Keeneland auction was in its seventh day and the ugly duckling was the 116th horse of the session to be led in. Ennui engulfed the sales pavilion, but McPeek kept raising his hand and took Curlin home.

The rest of the way, you'll have to pay special attention, because the story has a way of meandering. McPeek sent Curlin to the farm of Shirley Cunningham Jr., and he and a partner, William Gallion, took several days before they decided to keep the horse. McPeek, who missed the daily life of a racetracker, thirsted to return to training, but Cunningham and Gallion, who are lawyers, had already promised Curlin to Helen Pitts, McPeek's former exercise rider, who had become a trainer. "I politicked hard to get that horse," McPeek told his friend, the late Cliff Guilliams.

Pitts only had Curlin for one race. The colt broke his maiden by 12 1/2 lengths, running seven furlongs in an exceptional time, and the offers came flooding in. Two days after the race, 80 per cent of Curlin was sold privately to Jess Jackson, the California winemaker, and two of his partners. The price was $3.5 million. How do we know this? For his work with the horse, McPeek subsequently sued Cunningham and Gallion, asking for $175,000, which he said was 5 per cent of the sale price.

McPeek's action was water off the backs of Cunningham and Gallion, who wound up in court--and jail--as defendants in a fraud suit that said they had cheated hundreds of people out of $46 million, or more, in a class-action settlement with the manufacturer of fen-phen, a diet drug. Cunningham and Gallion, awaiting a retrial on those charges, have held on to their minority interest in Curlin.

Jackson, whose original share in Curlin was a controlling 31 per cent, began buying out his other two partners late last year, after Curlin's Breeders' Cup win cemented the Horse of the Year title. In this Breeders' Cup, Kenny McPeek's only official interest is Dream Empress, a 2-year-old who's expected to run in one of the filly races. McPeek bought Dream Empress at auction for $60,000, the same price as Zenyatta, and just a few thousand dollars more than what Curlin first cost. "They ought to give this guy a medal for buying that horse for $57,000," McPeek's lawyer once said.