by Pohla Smith
from KEENELAND PROGRAM, spring/summer 1995
It was 1978, and 28-year-old Dan Rosenberg was looking to move up in the Thoroughbred business. On his calendar was an interview for a job managing Robert Clay's small but up-and-coming broodmare farm, Three Chimneys.
For now, though, Rosenberg was still assistant manager of Lucille Markey's tightly run Calumet Farm, which had a strict no visitors policy When the strange car appeared on one of the private drives, Rosenberg went out to do his duty, politely informing the driver that he would have to leave.
Equally politely, the driver apologized and explained that he was a fellow breeder from Midway, Robert Clay of Three Chimneys. He had picked up some friends at nearby Bluegrass Airport and thought it would be okay to show them around Lexington's showplace.
Rosenberg's heart skipped a beat.
"I said to myself, 'Oh shoot, I just blew that interview."' Rosenberg recalls. He laughs.
"Robert enjoys this story," Rosenberg says.
No wonder. If Dan Rosenberg had known more about Robert Clay that night at Calumet, he wouldn't have worried so much about having to ask Clay to leave.
Robert Clay respects people who can be trusted to do their jobs with pride and decisiveness. "People hire people and then try to micro-manage them," Clay says, "and I'm a big believer in giving them the goal and mission and letting them roll."
He hired Dan Rosenberg soon after that first awkward meeting, and 17 years later Rosenberg remains Three Chimneys general manager.
The farm, however, is no longer a 100-acre spread with 20 broodmares. And Clay no longer can drive onto a Kentucky horse farm without someone recognizing his face and assuming he has business to be there.
Rather, Three Chimneys is a fullservice breeding and sales consignment operation recognized worldwide for its quality stallions and babies, as well as for its innovative, technologically up-to-the-minute, but still very personal service.
Three Chimneys has grown to encompass five distinct divisions spread over more than 1,500 acres. They are home to nine stallions-five of them champion racehorses, some 250 broodmares-300 at breeding time, and a varying assortment of babies.
It has raised, bred and/or sold such Thoroughbred stars as Canadian Horse of the Year Alydeed, 1993 Belmont winner Colonial Affair, 1994 turf champion Paradise Creek and the gritty Grade I-winning fillies Gorgeous and Jeanne Jones.
Last year it was the leading consignor at Keeneland with more than $12.5 million in gross sales.
While presiding over Three Chimneys development, Clay, 48, also has become one of the most familiar and influential persons in the breeding business and the Bluegrass. A civic and industry leader, his expertise and capacity for hard work are much sought after and almost always given.
"He's always there when he's needed." says James R. "Ted" Bassett III, chairman of Keeneland Association and president of Breeders'Cup Ltd.
No kidding.
Among the many industry boards Clay sits on are those of the Breeders'Cup and Keeneland, as well as Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders'Association, Kentucky Thoroughbred Association and the University of Kentucky Equine Research Foundation. A member of the Jockey Club and a trustee of The Blood-Horse magazine, he also is past president of both TOBA and the Thoroughbred Club of America and former member of the American Horse Council Executive Committee. He currently is chairman of TOBA's Marketing Task Force, which has taken on the challenge of lobbying Congress for a bill that would fund racing promotions nationwide with money from parimutuel handles.
His business acumen - Clay has a business degree from William and Mary and has done graduate work at Harvard-also is sought by other industries. He sits on the boards of directors of PNC Financial of Pittsburgh and PNC Bank of Louisville, as well as a privately traded corporation in the video production and computer imaging business.
And then there are his civic involvements. He is a trustee of the University of Kentucky and a director of Midway College. Probably most dear to his heart, however, is his work with Bluegrass Tomorrow, a regional coalition of business and government executives dedicated to planning and land management. He is a co-founder and past president of the group, which is trying to map a common sense approach to growth that would also protect what Clay calls the area's "free park" - the Thoroughbred farms that are the main attraction of central Kentucky.
Yet, despite the many demands on his time, he still manages a personal life.
He and his wife, Blythe, have raised two children, Heather, 24, and Case, 21. The Clays travel frequently, and Clay enjoys other hobbies like bird hunting and golf.
"The guy gets more things done than any guy I know," says Bob May, a Lexington-area stockhroker and longtime friend.
And with absolute concentration.
"We played tennis with (the Clays) the last time we were in Nassau," says Russell Jones, manager of Morven Stud, proprietor of Walnut Green Bloodstock in Kennett Square, Pa., Richard Jones' brother and Clay's longtime friend.
"He hadn't played in a long time, and he really got into it. We started out pretty strong, but by the end he had got back into thc game to the point that he pulled their victory out."
From there, Russell Jones and Robert Clay headed to the croquet court. Clay never had played but quickly caught on.
"He didn't pull victory out of defeat, but by the time we were done, I didn't want to play again because I thought he was making so much progress I wasn't going to get by him again," Jones says.
"He's always up for anything," Bob May adds. "If you call and say let's do this or that, if you say let's go play golf or go to a movie, it's incredible how he'll do it cause a friend is asking."
The question is how?
"I sort of bounce off the walls," Clay jokes.
He also has that rare ability to rejuvenate himself with naps. "He can go to sleep at the drop of a hat," May says.
In all seriousness, though, Clay credits his wife and his staff for clearing the way for him to do his amazing juggling act.
"Blythe is a major component of everything I do and certainly an important sounding board for all of my businesses," he says.
"I've got a fantastic team of folks. "I've got a super general manager and managers and a super office staff."
While Rosenberg oversees the entire operation, each of the separate divisions also has its own manager. Wes Lanter is manager of the Stallion Division, located across the street from the original Three Chimneys; Gary Pimentel manages Sheffield Farm, the yearling division; Peter Ensch manages a broodmare division called Kenirey Stud; and Gary Bush oversees broodmare divisions at Tracewood and the original farm.
And when Clay says he believes in letting his employees do their job, he means it.
He is, according to Rosenberg, "an exceptional boss" and "ideal manager."
"His management style is going to hire people to do the job and letting them do the jobs," Rosenberg says. "He's constantly encouraging us to stretch ourselves, to grow, to take on more...
"I won't say he never says 'this could have been handled differently,' but in all my years here he has never said, 'You dumb idiot, why did you do that?' He's always encouraging all of us to stretch and learn."
Clay also credits staff at Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association and Bluegrass Tomorrow for the success he enjoyed while piloting those organizations.
TOBA, for example, increased its membership from 600 to more than 3,000, largely during his presidency. But, Clay says, it was hardly a one-man effort.
"I think it was setting the goal of making it more of a representative organization and then hiring John Hamilton (as executive director) to get it done," he says.
"I think I've been lucky enough to get good people to run these things. We were able to attract a great executive director for Bluegrass Tomorrow, a great executive director for TOBA. You've got to get good people in there to get the job done."
That's true, of course, but the fact of the matter is that Clay excels at finding, motivating and keeping the right people.
"He is one of those people (for whom) there's an old saying: 'It's amazing what you can accomplish if you're willing to let someone else take the credit."'
The next question, then, is why? What compels a person like Clay to devote so much time to industry an civic concerns with no care for personal aggrandizement.
"I don't have a good answer for that," Clay says. "On the industry side, there are leadership voids in our industry. I think it's important for this industry to step up to the plate more often than it does, and somebody's got to do it. Not that I'm the only one doing it, but it just seems like it needs to be done.
"And then the community thing, that's the kind of thing once again (that) somebody's got to do it. And I don't know what drives me to do it...it's part of me, I guess."
The example was set for Clay as a child. His father, Albert G. Clay, is a breeder and cattle rancher with other business interests. But he, too, took time for industry and civic work. He served 20 years as a trustee for the University of Kentucky. He also helped to form American Horse Council to fight a tax bill that would have proved crushing to horsemen. AHC remains the industry's strongest voice in Washington.
Clay points out that much of the industry work he does is, to a degree, self-serving.
"I think the industry thing is a very important thing to do for the existence of my own business because we don't exist in a vacuum," he says.
"We live in an industry, and the prosperity of that industry has a direct effect on your own business."
Still, most people are willing to sit back and let others do the work. Clay cannot.
"He's pretty much of a take-charge person. Either he'll do it or he'll get someone to do it," says Russell Jones. "If something needs doing, he's not very good at ignoring it."
Clay concurs, particularly when it comes to industry projects.
"Our industry's lack of focus and lack of direction and lack of consensus is a very frustrating thing for me," he says. "I don't know what else to do except throw your shoulder to the grindstone and keep trying. I think if we throw our hands up, we'll sink with the ship."
But altruism definitely was part of the inspiration to help form Bluegrass Tomorrow.
"I really think this thing is something that is very important to do for other generations," he says.
"We're trying to preserve a quality of life in a way in this free park out here in the same way we're planning for economic development.
"All these horse farms, they're essentially a free park, and this community has made the assumption that this free park will be there forever. It's a bad assumption. So what we've got to do is provide the land holders with the proper equity to make sure it is there forever."
Clay is very attuned to the pleasures of life in the Blue Grass, having grown up in Mount Sterling. His exposure to the Thoroughbred life increased in the mid-1960s, when his father became interested in racing and breeding.
But it was Clay's days away from the Bluegrass, studying business at William and Mary that set him on a course towards a breeding career of his own.
"I did my thesis on the economics of the Thoroughbred business, and it got me sort of interested," Clay says. "It just always appealed to me as a great entrepreneurial business that had worldwide contacts and the people that you meet always had an appeal to me."
After college and a stint in the Navy, Clay returned to the Bluegrass hoping to make his way in the business. "But I couldn't make a living at it, so I started into the fertilizer business and started calling on farm managers, getting to know people," he says.
ln 1972, he and his wife scraped together enough money to buy 100 acres of the Lucy Holt Estate for $1,000 per acre. The parcel included some tobacco barns and an old Federal-style house with six chimneys. After refurbishing it would have three, and Clay rightfully could name the place for the charming address of an old fraternity brother: Three Chimneys, St. Georges, Bermuda.
In 1973, he made his first consignment as agent for his father. The Bold Tactics colt, sold for $37,000 to Frank Donovan, was named George Navonod and went on to win the De Anza, Cabrillo Sunny Slope and Norfolk Stakes. He was third higllweight behind Foolish Pleasure and L'Enjoleur on the 1974 Free Handicap.
The broodmare band grew as Clay developed more clients - only about a dozen of the mares are his. Then, in late 1983, Clay was able to make the deal on just the kind of horse he'd been seeking to begin a stallion operation. It was Slew o' Gold, a top 3 year-old who went on to win the Grade I Jockey Club Gold Cup and the division championship after Clay and original owners Equusequity syndicated him into 40 shares.
The next year, the owners of Chief's Crown asked him to take on the $20 million syndication of their colt, who promptly went out and won the Breeders' Cup Juvenile and 2-year-old colt championship.
Slew o'Gold took up residence in Three Chimney's brand-new stallion barn in 1985. Chief's Crown joined him the following year. By 1987, the barn was near-capacity with the addition of 1977 Triple Crown champion Seattle Slew, Sharastani and Nodouble.
Clay always had sworn six would be his limit, but there were a few more opportunities he could not pass up. He built four more stalls in 1992. Today, there is room for one more, but Clay will be in no hurry to fill it. It will take a special horse to join the likes of Three Chimney's current nine stallion lineup: Seattle Slew and his Eclipse Award champion sons Slew o' Gold and Capote, 1984 juvenile champion Chief's Crown, 1990 juvenile champion Fly So Free, Dynaformer, Rahy, Time for a Change and Wild Again.
Despite the growth, Three Chimneys manages to maintain the attention to personal details for which it is famous - a product of the divisional setup, which limits the number of horses for which each manager is responsible, even at the busiest times.
For example, the nine stallions are ridden one to three miles daily to keep them fit, and staff veterinarian Dr. Jim Becht has his own lab for bloodwork, cultures and fecal checks. Mare owners get a weekly activity report as well as telephone calls, and those with interests in the stallions get offspring reports. The office also does the paperwork involved with registration and naming.
"We just go out of our way to do what we can for them," marketing director Margaret Layton says.
Despite the common touch, the farm also is up-to-date technologically, a regular traveler on the information highway.
Thrce Chimneys recently became the first breeding farm to have a presence on the Internet. Customers now can make stallion applications and soon will be able to look at the farm's stallion brochure via their home computer on the World Wide Web.
Clay takes pride in such firsts.
"We are continuously trying to differentiate ourselves," he says. "I think that not too far down the road, excellence is going to be the price of admissions. If you don't innovate and anticipate, you're going to be left behind, so differentiation is a big part of our sort of mindset."
But Clay is not one to make change for the sake of change. Happy clients remain one of his chief goals, a fact that was reinforced when the entire Three Chimneys management team went to Shakertown over the winter for a goal-setting retreat.
"I think that we want to be a major influence in the marketplace in the world," Clay says.
And that, he adds, means reaching out to non-traditional markets.
"We've got to open our eyes to Europe, Asia, Australia and South America. I think we're going have to look at markets from a more global perspective than we have in the past."
But not to the point of losing the common touch.
"At the same time we want to stick to our knitting in a big way," he says. "We want to service our existing clients. We want to have happy people, happy clients, and we don't want to get too big. We don't think we necessarily have to be huge to be a factor in the world market."
Clay and Three Chimneys already have proved that.
