IT’S been said that expectation is the root of all heartache and that adage easily fits the dynamic of buying racehorses.

Big expenditure typically equals big expectations. Rightly so. When it doesn’t work out as hoped, however, - which is so often the case with young, largely unproven horses - the disappointment stings.

What can add to the blow of an expensive failure for an owner is for the lofty purchase price to be out there in plain view for all to see. Whether it’s fair or not, Caldwell Potter will always be assessed against the backdrop of being a €740,000 purchase. It’s a dynamic that has added heightened expectation and pressure to each of his runs this season, and creates headlines when he gets turned over in back-to-back starts, as he has just done.

Paul Nicholls is doing his level best to cool any talk about the seven-year-old returning to Grade 1 heights, and that’s an indication of the sort of pressure he has felt with the microscope being on his owners’ big-money buy.

As reported by Ash Symonds after Caldwell Potter’s defeat at Windsor last week, Nicholls said: “Harry’s [Cobden] comment just now says it all: he’s a very nice horse, but he’s not a champion. I have big problems with his feet and he’s hard to train, so that doesn’t help. He’ll win plenty of races, we’ve just got to box clever.”

Would there have been some interest in covering Caldwell Potter’s drop-off in form if he had changed hands for an undisclosed fee privately? Sure. But would the focus have been anything as intense as it is now when the €740,000 price tag hangs so heavily around his neck? Not a chance. The figure being out in the open ramps up the ante several notches.

Record buy

Likewise, the eye-watering £660,000 spent by the same connections on Regent’s Stroll at Goffs last summer is in the spotlight after the Nicholls-trained six-year-old ended up being safely held in the Challow Novices’ Hurdle last month.

Given the amounts spent on some of the top National Hunt prospects around, one can imagine Challow winner The New Lion’s purchase price to J.P. McManus exceeded the public auction record for a National Hunt horse-in-training set by Regent’s Stroll. However, when that private sale figure will never reach the public consciousness, it’s highly conceivable that he will never come under the same sort of scrutiny as the likes of Caldwell Potter. That approach will suit many owners.

Any number of big-money private buys go by the wayside too, though there have clearly been several public purchases change hands for major sums that have not worked out. The likes of Interconnected (winless under rules after being bought for £620,000), Gallyhill (a £450,000 buy who never looked like threatening blacktype company) and Histrionic (winless under rules after €450,000 sale from a point-to-point) come to mind, though the list is much longer than that. Even the likes of Classic Getaway, a useful performer but nonetheless 0-7 in graded company, hasn’t lived up to his price of £570,000. When you spend that money, you really expect to be landing on a Grade 1 campaigner.

Below is a list of some of the most expensive National Hunt horse-in-training purchases at public auction in Britain or Ireland from 2019 to 2023. Of the 40 horses to cost £320,000+ on this list, only nine managed to win at Grade 1 level. Plenty were smart types, but Jonbon and Bravemansgame - as it stands - are the only horses to win Grade 1s beyond novice company.

On the whole, it’s closing in on a year since the Caldwell dispersal sale and the results thus far have proven to be a series of mostly expensive disappointments relative to the overall turnover of €5.29 million (across 29 horses). The purchase prices are out in the open for all to see. Not all owners, trainers and bloodstock agents will enjoy the racing world seeing in full view what has mostly turned out to be poor business to this point.

Top recruits

What’s intriguing to note is how the top jumps horses around join their connections, and how few reach their end-user owners by auction. My colleague Amy Lynam did an insightful deep dive into the background of all the top jumpers of 2024 earlier this month.

By my count, 25 individual horses won Grade 1 races in Ireland last season - 68% of which joined their existing connections privately. A total of 59% of horses placed in Grade 1s also never had their final purchase price disclosed to the public.

A definite element of those figures is Willie Mullins. He clearly has some of the best resources and backing in the game at his disposal, but is not a regular to sign for top lots at National Hunt auctions on these shores.

Yes, he is strong at the sales in France, but it feels as though the champion does a high degree of business for his best performers behind closed doors. As touched on in a case study in this column after the 2023 Cheltenham Festival, 40 of Mullins’ 51 runners in Grade 1s at the meeting (78%) did not join their connections at public auctions.

Of course, there will most definitely be a considerable number of disappointments but when - in this Cheltenham example - the final purchase prices were only available for 22% of runners, it’s nowhere near as easy for the public to cast judgement on how good or bad the business was.

When the level of public discourse is so strong surrounding Caldwell Potter, is it any wonder some connections prefer to buy private?

Maybe just maybe, the private route reduces the scrutiny a little when things go wrong.