There has been much written about the honesty of bloodstock agents and if you look at the online discussion section on trainers comments "Is Racing Corrupt " you can read it all for yourself.

Form our experience we have bid for horses at the sales with the owner of the horse bidding up the price. There are many instances of collusive bidding because of one simple fact. If you ask someone to buy you a horse up to a value of £250,000 surprise surprise it will cost you £250,000.

All you need to know is the maximum price someone is allowed to go to and Bingo, that's what the horse will be bought for.

What is of interest is that the top stallions will produce on average a rate of 10% to 16% listed to group winners. So buy a horse from theses stallions and you will do the same as the top bloodstock agents, who surprisingly manage slightly lower Group winners than from the list below.. Not too hard all you need is £300,000 to start. Add a dam that has won a listed or group race and you pay £1,000,000.

Obviously it is not quite as simple as this but the most important thing is to understand conformation and temperament and you will be better off relying on an experienced trainer or vet.

We are not saying all bloodstock agents work in an under hand way, far from it, but there are certain things that go on that should not. Even the well respected Charlie Gordon-Watson got himself in trouble, paying what looked like a back hander to David Elsworth to secure a sale of a horse. I am sure that we can give Charlie the benefit of the doubt but if you are new to racing you just need to aware of what could happen.

There are many pedigree software packages that you can buy and if you don't want to spend the time understanding them, then you will not get as much enjoyment out of racing as you should. www.RaceHorseTrainers.co.uk have a link to free pedigrees and www.HitechBloodstock.com can take you through all the different theories on breeding.