Agent Jason Hall Has Sharp Eyes for Value Mares

The vagaries of genetics and inefficiencies in the Thoroughbred marketplace create a tough environment in which to make a living. Beautiful, blue-blooded, and pricey prospects don't always live up to expectations, while horses that look ordinary on paper and get dismissed upon inspection may go on to become superstars.

Navigating these rocks in the channel can be frustrating, but they also create opportunities for those with sharp eyes. Jason Hall, the owner of Thoroughbred Review, a bloodstock agency in Idaho, is one such value hunter who has honed the skills necessary to find potentially successful racehorses and mares without emptying his pockets.

One of his most recent successes was with an El Prado mare he bought for $8,200 at the 2017 Keeneland January Horses of All Ages Sale. Named Torreadora, the mare was a Sam-Son Farm homebred who won a couple of races and earned more than $116,000.

As a broodmare, she had produced a couple of winners—one who earned more than $100,000—and she had a 2-year-old by Stormy Atlantic  who made a couple of starts but was not a winner. Torreadora did have a strong pedigree—her second dam is a half sister to Canadian champion Dance Smartly, top sire Smart Strike, and grade 1 winner Full of Wonder.

Torreadora just didn't seem, at the time, to be fulfilling her potential. 

"There are a lot of mares out there with good pedigrees that come from reputable breeders, but not all of them have her ability and her biomechanics," Hall said. "I studied her races extensively before we pulled the trigger on her, and she just floated across the ground. She was just one of those must-haves."

The mare was open when Hall bought her, which helped him as a buyer.

"We were expecting to give quite a bit more for her, but it was apparently a soft spot in the market. She is an El Prado from one of the best female families the stud book has ever seen. Granted, she was open, and a lot of people are afraid of those open mares, but when you are shopping in my price range, you have to take a little bit of risk," he said.

Two years later, the mare's 2015 Stormy Atlantic foal, a 4-year-old gelding named El Tormenta, captured this year's Ricoh Woodbine Mile Stakes (G1T) by half a length over grade 1 winner Got Stormy. 

Hall's phone started ringing, and within two weeks after the Woodbine Mile, he sold Torreadora privately at a nice profit. The mare is on the market again, cataloged as Hip 204 at The November Sale, Fasig-Tipton's Nov. 5 breeding stock sale in Lexington, in foal to Munnings . She is being consigned by Warrendale Sales as agent.

Asked why he didn't offer the mare himself through one of the November sales, Hall said he doesn't turn down a good offer when it comes along.

"This is my livelihood, so whenever an opportunity to cash in presents itself, I have to take it," he said. "The new owners might make a profit or they might not. I feel good about the money we got for her."

Finding Torreadora is no one-off success story for Hall.

He bought the Dynaformer mare Block at the 2011 Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale for $32,000 and four years later co-bred the filly Vibrance (by Violence ) out of the mare with Bill Vanlandingham. Vibrance went on to finish second in the 2018 Chandelier Stakes (G1) and was third in the Tito's Handmade Vodka Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies (G1) for Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners and Donna and Jim Daniell. 

In 2014, he found a City Zip mare named Celestial Legend at the Equine Sales of Louisiana Open Yearlings and Mixed Sale. The mare was quite valuable at one time, having sold to Spendthrift Farm owner B. Wayne Hughes for $525,000 at the 2007 Keeneland November sale. Her first foal was a grade 3-placed winner, but her next five foals yielded no other black-type performers. Hall bought her for $30,000 and the following year bred her to Violence. The resulting foal, Its Gonna Hurt, won the 2018 Speakeasy Stakes on the grass at Santa Anita Park.

Opportunities like those are only found after a lot of research is done, according to Hall, who keeps his broodmares with William and Jennifer Hardin at their farm near Paris, Ky.

On his first pass through any sales catalog, Hall said he immediately dismisses every mare without a race record or sale horse whose first dam did not race.

"If a mare was unraced or unplaced, I just flip the page and go on to the next one," he said. "If you can ascertain by looking at the race record that she ran 30-40 times and earned $60,000, then I'm not interested in those, either. We are going after mares that showed speed at the elite U.S. racetracks."

Next, he'll eliminate the graded stakes winners because he knows all the buyers will be focused on them, and they won't be affordable.

What Hall said he wants most is proven speed, because two-thirds of the horses he breeds or buys at auction will be sold through a 2-year-olds in training sale. He sends his horses to the TIP Training Center run by Luis Mendez. The first horse he sent to Mendez in 2008 was a filly by Gulch named Elle a Gent, whom he bought for $52,000 as a yearling and resold at the Barretts March 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale for $450,000 to Southern Equine Stables.

"That sale put us on the map and gave us some money to work with," Hall said. "It also told me pinhooking needed to be part of our program."

From then on, Hall said he's gravitated toward speed mares because they tend to replicate themselves and their fast-twitch muscles more easily than the two-turn types.

"I like to see a mare that has won five out of six starts and maybe won $150,000, and then you go to Equibase and see she had a ton of speed at Santa Anita or Saratoga. I'm a huge advocate of the Estes formula, where he said a race record should be first and foremost for all criteria," he said. 

Hall referred to the late Joe Estes, a former editor of BloodHorse.

Finding value with the talent requires Hall to uncover ability not evident on a catalog page. He said he'll watch 300-400 race replay videos before every Keeneland September and Keeneland November sale. 

"There are a lot of stakes winners that would get outrun by some of these allowance fillies had they been in the same race together. One might be a stakes winner in Minnesota, but this other mare was running 90 Beyers at Santa Anita. I am always going to take that Santa Anita mare," he said. 

"A really good example is a Karakontie  filly I purchased out of the recent September sale (Hip 3001). She was out of a City Zip mare that had three wins at 2 and 3 and earned some $130,000. That is nothing to shake a stick at, but when we reviewed her races, she was coming from way off the pace at Kentucky Downs, and then at Del Mar she could run on the front in :21 and change. Those are the kinds of mares we are going after."

As for conformation, Hall said he is looking for larger than average mares with large hips and wide gaskins, which he said are absolutely essential. Otherwise, it doesn't matter how much a "bargain" a horse appears.

"First and foremost is everything behind the flank. They need an engine," he said. "Everything is already stacked against you in this business. You can't start out with a weak hip and a weak gaskin or you have really stacked the odds against you."