Mike Cline, the only farm manager Will Farish's Lane's End Farm had ever known, retired during the summer after a 40-year career at the 2,500-acre farm near Versailles, Ky. A native of Woodford County, Cline was instrumental in the development of the farm and the development of a top-notch staff. Cline mentored many successful people in the industry, including Callan Strouss at Lane's End Oak Tree division, Chris Baker at Three Chimneys, Eddie Kane at Calumet Farm, Charles Campbell at Indian Creek Farm, and Cooper Sawyer at Mt. Brilliant Farm, as well as Lane's End stallion manager Billy Sellers and new farm manager Todd Claunch.
Like any other person in the Thoroughbred business, Cline can't just walk away. He continues to lend a hand at Lane's End, is consulting, and has been announced to a position as a yearling inspector for Fasig-Tipton. Cline sat with BloodHorse's editorial director Evan Hammonds last month.
BloodHorse: You've been at Lane's End for 40 years ... but let's begin with your formative years. You started your career with Thoroughbreds with Hall of Fame trainer Mack Miller. Talk us through the early days.
Mike Cline: Mr. Miller was a Versailles guy. We both are from Versailles. I went there right out of college and with no real plan. I thought I wanted to train horses, so I took the job as a groom and lived in a tack room in New York at Belmont Park.
Mr. Miller never really called me by my name. He used to call me 'Woodford County.' But it was a great opportunity. I think my parents were a little miffed by me going to college (University of Kentucky) and then taking a job working on the racetrack, but you know I grew up on a farm. Horses were something I always felt was going to be part of what I was going to do. I wasn't sure what part of it was going to work
One of the biggest things I learned from Mack was that this business is a lot easier if you have the best horse. It was also a grand time for racing, and there was a lot of stuff going on, but not all of the issues that go along with racing these days. I don't want to say that maybe it was more of a purist thing, but there just weren't all the conversations that we seem to have now days, and lord knows Mack Miller was the original 'hay, oats, and water' guy. He definitely felt like all you needed to do was take care of the horses and feed them properly, and have the right help and put them in the right races. And having the best horse helps out a lot. In the old days having the best horse would work out more often than it does now.
BH: What was the learning process like?
MC: I was there with a bunch of older guys that I wouldn't say they resented me, but I was like the 'new kid.' All of the rest of them had been there quite a while, so I learned a lot about how to take care of horses from the people I worked with. I always felt like my time spent on the racetrack, although it didn't turn out to me being a trainer, set me up for working on a farm ... just from the notion of learning how to take care of horses every day; being around really good horses made it easier for me to come here (Kentucky) and be around really good horses.
Being around all of those old pros that knew everything there is to know about horses, and watching how they moved around horses and the way they took care of them …I felt like my time there was very important. (Trainer) Neil Howard came there and worked as a groom in that period of time. It was kind of when I was leaving when he came in.
BH: You left working for Mack Miller?
MC: I took a job working on the starting gate for about a year in New York. I left Mack's barn and went to work on the starting gate, working for NYRA (New York Racing Association). I was still bouncing around. The truth of the matter was I made a whole lot more money for NYRA than I did for Mack. I felt like when Neil came, the two of us were there and it was one of those deals where every time Mack needed a foreman or an assistant, or something, he picked somebody in the barn, and he was never going to pick between Neil and myself, so one of us had to get out of there to give the other person a chance.
I went to work as an assistant to trainer Bob Dunham and got that practical training experience doing that. I had a string of horses at Liberty Bell (now Parx Racing). We went to Fair Grounds in the wintertime, and I got some experience with the day-to-day training of horses and running horses. Working there is actually where I met Mr. Farish. I just made some connections; as an assistant, I was working for E.V. Benjamin. I left that job to go with the Benjamins' Big Sink Farm, and then I met Mr. Farish. I was lucky as hell. I didn't have any master plan.
By the time I went to Mr. Benjamin's, I was in pretty good shape knowing how to take care of horses. Obviously, I didn't know that much about repro (reproduction). I had a guy there who still works at Three Chimneys, Butch Morell. If it weren't for Butch, I probably would have failed right off the bat. He knew everything. That's where I got the first farm
experience.
BH: How was the transition from the track to the farm?
MC: Training horses is a chore, the travel and moving around. I had no family or real responsibilities, so it was fine. You start to think about getting married and having a family and then the racetrack becomes a little more complicated. I got to come back home and work for an unbelievable outfit, Mr. Benjamin was the nicest guy to work for, the whole Benjamin family. We had a few mares there for Mr. Farish at the time. He had some at Mr. Benjamin's and he had some with Warner Jones, and after we were there for a period of time, both of those guys were getting older and were sorting out what they were going to do in the future with his broodmares. That is when Mr. Farish bought Lane's View Farm. It was a 250-acre cattle farm; the only thing it had was a main house.
BH: Mr. Farish didn't envision what Lane's End is now, did he?
MC: He said, 'We'll run some cattle.' Then we started cleaning up the land and clearing the land and getting it ready. That's when he decided, 'Hey, this would be a pretty good place to have horses.' We straightened it up, bought some land around it … how lucky were we to be able to put together a couple of thousand acres from around the house? The main house is the centerpiece for all we've done around here, architecturally, the barns and everything. They reflect the columns on the house. It all took off from there.
Then I had a period of time I worked for Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Farish as we were getting started here. It transitioned to Lane's End. Even when we started building barns, stallions were the last thing to come.
BH: How did the stallion operation start?
MC: We had broodmares here. One of our original stallions was Dixieland Band for Mr. Farish's father-in-law (Bayard Sharp). We were going to have a few ... you can't have just one. For a while we had two or three more. We had Fit to Fight and Hero's Honor maybe in that group (both trained by Mack Miller).
Spend a Buck came along, and he was definitely a big horse at the time and a pretty good example of how important pedigree is to be a sire. Alysheba was the big get for us.
When we built this place, we had 24 stalls, so we had some sort of plan. We spent a period of time at our quarantine barn (off Big Sink Road); we were rushed to have a home for our stallions, so that's where we started. And built it up to where we had several there before we built this place (stallion complex).
BH: How has the stallion business evolved during your career?
MC: Early on it was easier to figure out what something was worth because some people didn't try to move something until their racing career was over. Now as soon as a horse breaks his maiden and is heading to a stakes, people are buying parts of it; it's a little more unpredictable.
A lot of horses get traded a month or six weeks before the (Kentucky) Derby (G1). It makes it more difficult to figure out what the value is when you are buying that early. But it's a competition. People are buying-in when they feel comfortable. It seems to me, I'm not saying we haven't done that as well, but it makes more sense if you are trying to have investors if you know what something is worth. When you buy them early, there is only downside because of the upside and the kickers (see page 38) … it gets more expensive every time they win a race. It's difficult now. That has been part of the reason the book sizes have grown. As things get more expensive, you have to figure out a way to pay for them.
BH: The sales division is a large part of the Lane's End story. How did that get started?
MC: We started selling our own horses early on in the process, so a lot of the horses we sold were for Mr. Farish and his partners and came right off the farm. Then it just kind of grew. We started representing people who were breeding at the farm, and having stallions really moved the farm forward in a big way. It's just the influence you can have with stallions. Especially with the stallions we ended up with—A.P. Indy and Kingmambo and those kinds of horses. They really raised the profile of the farm. All of a sudden you have more boarders, more clients, more yearlings, more sales. The stallions really drive the bus.
BH: Tell us about the big boy, A.P. Indy, who died earlier this year.
MC: He was special because he was born here on the farm and belonged to Mr. Farish and his great partner, Bill Kilroy. He was a star every step of the way. He was a star at the sales ring, he was a star on the racetrack. And fortunately, Mr. Farish had the foresight to get him back here to the farm, and he ended up being a pretty big star here.
A.P. Indy was always special. He never benefited from large books. His books were smaller, almost from the beginning because he was that sort of horse. He was very intelligent and easy to be around. He was retired fairly early because he became infertile, and he lived eight or 10 more years. It just seems like for as long as I can remember A.P. Indy has been part of our deal here, even when he stopped breeding. As soon as people cleared the door, they made a right hand turn and went to A.P. Indy's stall, walking past all of the new ones.
BH: What about his final day, Feb. 21?
MC: That was one of the sadder days we had. He had a good quality of life to the very end because of the way he was taken care of along the way, but there comes a time for everything. You have to figure out a way for it to end. Boy, that was a tough day. There were a lot of tears around here the day we ended up having to put him down. A few days later we just started celebrating what a great stallion he was and what a great career he had and how important he was to the farm.
He was an easy horse to be around; he had no bad habits, and we've had plenty of other stallions that did. Most of the time they take better care of themselves when they're turned out; they don't often have as many wrecks and crashes as some of the other ones do.
BH: Now that you are 'retired,' what were the bigger challenges from the farm?
MC: The problem with trying to be in any part of the horse business is when you are young, you have all of the energy and great ideas, but you don't have the experience, but then when you get the experience, you don't have much drive. Coming here as young as I was, I felt like I had a really good background, but anybody who works in the horse business has to make sacrifices because it's a seven-day-a-week job, and so we have a lot of people that start out here very young, and the Farishes encourage them and allow them to move forward and progress ... oftentimes sending them to other farms to work. Because of the reputation we have, people tend to stay here. Today everything happens so quickly, and nothing happens fast enough for most people. It is a sign of the times. We've been fortunate to start people off here at a young age, and the Farishes always allowed us to create jobs for them that were challenging enough and made them want to stay. The better the people taking care of the horses, the better the horses turn out to be, most of the time.
I know I say patience is something you have to learn if you are going to do this, and it was something I definitely needed to learn. Any good trainer has to figure out when to move forward and when to tread water for a little bit and when to back off. And it's the same with raising horses. There are periods when you can move them forward, and then there are periods when you need to leave them alone for a little bit, and there are periods where you need rest. Being patient enough to make those kinds of decisions is important. I learned patience from (stallion manager) Billy (Sellers), watching how Billy takes care of these stallions. They come here from the racetrack, and watching him transition them from racehorses to stallions...you only have to have one bad day with them and you are going to deal with that forever. Watching him and how slowly he does it. I've learned patience right up to the day I retired here, and I think that's important.
We live in a world where everything happens so quickly. If you are going to do well at raising horses, you have to figure out a way to slow that down because it just doesn't work with horses. I have a lot of good examples when it doesn't work.
BH: Twenty years ago you were here with Billy Sellers, Callan Strouss, Todd Claunch, and Eddie Kane. That's quite a team.
MC: Billy and Callan were the first two people I hired here basically. Callan ended up taking over Oak Tree for the Niarchos family, which was by design. We've had some very talented people here, and I think part of the reason we were able to attract them when it got to the point when they were ready to move forward, they either moved forward here or we helped them move forward somewhere else. We have the manager of Calumet (Kane), we have the manager of the Oak Tree/Niarchos family (Strouss). We had Chris Baker here who is now at Three Chimneys. We have a lot of people here that spent time here, and I feel like they learned how to do things the right way. It's not easy. It takes time to learn to do the right things for the horses, and it's even more difficult in this day and age because people don't want to put in the time.
We've never kept up with how the world has changed. The procedures and all of the stuff we do with horses have evolved, and there are a lot things that we do better now than we did then; but the truth of the matter is, it hasn't changed that much. The outside world is changing. If you are going to work on a horse farm, you have to make sacrifices with your personal life, with your children ... one of the reasons when I talked to Bill about retiring here, I have two sons that probably would have been better served had I spent more time with them. I wasn't always good at that because I threw myself at this. My kids would laugh if I said it, but I felt like I didn't spend enough time with them. You do the best you can when you are working, but that's in every walk of life—you have to strike a balance, but I have two grandsons that I want to spend some time with and have time for. With all that is going on with the world right now, nothing anybody does is easy.
BH: You are 'retired' now? You've taken a new position as a yearling inspector at Fasig-Tipton?
MC: I'm not sure you could call it a 'position.' I retired from the day-to-day responsibility from the farm. I felt like it was time for me to do that and especially with the group we have assembled here. When you work 40 years at a place, making sure that it ends well is more important than the money and everything that goes with it; at least for me it is.
Having said that, I've been fortunate that I'm able to stay involved with some stuff going on at the farm that is important to me because I have clients I have worked with and I talk to all of the time. The people here were not only my employees but my friends ... when you spend this much time together, you get close, and you can never totally divorce yourself from that. I just didn't want to be responsible for as much as I was being responsible for.
The Farishes allowed me to do that and stay involved with the farm, and I'm doing a little consulting for people that ask. Fasig-Tipton called me early on about doing some yearling inspections, and I felt that was something that might be fun. It's kind of in my wheelhouse with all of the sales yearlings we'll have here.
I've worked with them, Boyd (Browning Jr.) and Bayne (Welker) are mostly the two people that do it for Fasig, and unfortunately they lost Dennis (Lynch) and Bill (Graves). They've done a great job moving that company along. They're great guys, and I enjoy being around them. I always respected those guys that do that, and maybe they thought I could add some value with my experience.
My whole life has been about doing this. I don't know how to do anything else. I'm grateful to have been whatever part of this farm was for as long as I was here. I always looked at it as being part of it. I want to thank the Farishes for allowing me to be a part of this great deal and being able to stay a part of it. Believe me, I know how fortunate I've been. I was a longshot.
It's been a little different waking up and not knowing exactly what you are going to do (laugh). The one good thing about being on a farm: If you are good at what you do and are dedicated, it's pretty hard to get into too much trouble because when you get up you have to bust it. So, let's say, this place gave me plenty of direction. You worry when all of that is gone how you are going to handle it, but for me it's been good because I have enough stuff helping people with some matings, and I always felt like I was good at pasture management and so I'm helping getting someone's farm in order; just stuff like that comes natural to me and doing it on a smaller scale and the Fasig thing...not sure where it's all going to go, but I'm good wherever it goes.
The full version of this story first appeared in the Nov. 21 edition of BloodHorse Magazine. To purchase a copy, please visit BloodHorse.com/Tablet or Shop.BloodHorse.com.
