Modest to a fault, breeder and former chairman of the Breeders' Cup Fred Hertrich likes to talk about how lucky he has been.“I've been very fortunate, very lucky,” he said. He also said, “If you're not lucky, things won't fall your way in this business.”Perhaps. But there's a lot more to it than that.Luck is not the reason Hertrich became the youngest Ford dealer in the United States, forming Frederick Ford Mercury in Seaford, Delaware. Today, he is the President of the Hertrich Family of Automobile Dealerships, representing 23 automotive dealerships, 13 collision centers and a long-term leasing company, ranking them in the top 50 privately owned retail automobile groups in North America. Luck is not the reason that Hertrich and his partners have bred numerous stakes winners, including 2017 GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies winner Rushing Fall (More Than Ready) and such standouts as GI Hopeful Stakes winner Boys At Tosconova (Officer) and GI Travers Stakes winner Catholic Boy (More Than Ready) or European champion Shamardal (Giant's Causeway). Luck is not the reason he was chosen to be the Chairman of the Board of the Breeders' Cup from 2017 to 2021.Then, just what is his secret sauce?It starts with attention to detail.“I attribute our success to our staff and how we raise the horses and how we get them from Point A to Point B,” he said. “People ask how do we do it. There are so many things, but it starts with luck. Then you have to have the staff. Somebody asked me once, 'What does it take to make a good horse?' and I said that, 'Believe it or not, it probably takes 60 different people who have had something to do with the success of that horse.' So many horses don't get that opportunity because they don't have those 60 people working with the horse. There might be a horse someone paid a couple million dollars for and because the groom isn't paying attention the horse falls over backwards and breaks its neck. It's so labor intensive to get that animal to the gate where it performs. It takes all of that. It's such a game of inches and fifths of a second that just can't miss anything. The devil is in the details in raising a horse and getting that horse to reach its full potential. It is a really difficult task that not many people have an understanding of.”Long before he got into Thoroughbred racing, Hertrich was in the Standardbred game and always made sure that he surrounded himself with knowledgeable, reliable people.While he was ensconced in the Standardbred business, he didn't give much thought to the Thoroughbred game.That changed overnight. Hertrich was at a Standardbred sale in Lexington with his then-partner Dr. Phil McCarthy when McCarthy suggested they head down the road and check out a Thoroughbred sale. Hertrich didn't think he had anything to lose.“Doc said we ought to go to the Thoroughbred breeding stock sale,” Hertrich said. “So we put together a partnership that included [prominent Standardbred owner] the late Lou Guida. Lou and Phil had been friends for years. Lou came in for 25% of the partnership to buy Thoroughbred broodmares. A gentleman named Ben Walden, Jr. of the Walden family, which has been in the business for 50 years, joined us. His father really educated me at that sale about buying Thoroughbreds. We all had 25% and we spent a couple of million dollars and bought mares in what turned out to be a very down market. My entire life, I've been very lucky and was lucky to put that partnership together.”Hertrich, who owns Watercress Farm near Paris, Kentucky, was still somewhat of a greenhorn when it came to Thoroughbreds, so he reached out to some of the smartest people in the industry.“I found the farm and I bought it,” he said. “When I bought the farm, Dr. McCarthy had just returned from working in Europe for two years and he came out and looked at the farm. We also had Joe Taylor, the father of the Taylor Made sons, come out and look at it with me and tell me all about the soil maps that he thought were the best anywhere in Bourbon County or the surrounding area. I didn't know anything about soil maps.”He likes to call himself a trader more so than a breeder. He doesn't just sell yearlings or 2-year-olds, but will sell anywhere where he thinks he can get the price he is looking for. It's the same when he decides he needs to add to his broodmare band.“The process starts once that foal is born and then we decide how we are going to market that foal,” he said. “We could sell it as a weanling, we could sell it as a yearling, we could sell it at 2-year-old-in-training sale. Or we could race it. The great thing about the industry to me is there is always a market. If you decide you want to sell a horse, you can usually do it within the next 30 days. For a trader, which is what we truly are, that's very enticing because we always know we can go to a market or find another mare in another market. It's kind of been our mantra that we participate at all levels because I think you really have to. If you are going to be one-dimensional, then you are at the mercy of the market on that particular day. That's kind of what makes the Standardbred business difficult, as you don't have those multiple markets like you have with the Thoroughbreds. The market is always moving and you can't really know until you get there what that market is going to be.”Hertrich took on a new partner in John Fielding before McCarthy passed away. The two hit it off right from the start.“John came in while Dr. McCarthy was still alive,” Hertrich said. “We've been friends for probably 25-odd years and John likes to tell people we've been partners for that long and have never had a cross word. That is true. We met at a Standardbred sale in Toronto at Woodbine Racetrack. I probably shouldn't say this, but at end of sale, we got a case of Labatts beer and sat on a couple of hay bales and, by the time we left, we were best friends.”Hertrich said he has about 100 mares at Watercress, but would like to get down to 80 or 90. But planning the matings for even 80 horses is a monumental task. He knows he couldn't get it down without the help of his right-hand man, Rob Tribbett.“I met Rob when he was cleaning stalls for his father, who trained for me,” Hertrich said. “He was the assistant racing secretary at Ocean Downs right out of college. He didn't like that and said to me, 'Fred I'd like to come to work with you. I just want to learn different things. I'll do it for free.' He's been with me ever since. He's a big piece of the puzzle that goes into the work that has to be done to decide on your matings. We are mating some 100 mares. We also own stallion shares, but you have to go to the market and buy some breedings, as well. Then we sit down and put it all together based on what we know about the mare and what we know about the stallion. All the conformation information. All the information like that cross has been bred 50 times and has never worked, so we're not going to go there.“There's an awful lot of effort and time that goes into it,” he said. “You think you're brilliant when you figure out the puzzle and then you think how dumb you are when you don't. You know the stallion and you know the mare and then the foal comes out and it doesn't look anything like you thought it was going to look. On the other hand, you worry about a mare because she has a conformation defect and she might throw the perfect horse. In all honesty, the guy with the most money does not always win.”Rushing Fall | Sarah AndrewOf all the top horses he has bred, Hertrich said Rushing Fall is his favorite. Her record includes a win in the 2017 GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf.“Your first memory is always the best,” he said. “That was Rushing Fall. We sold her to a good friend in Bobby Edwards. And she turned out to be a Grade I horse right about the time when I first came in as the Chairman of the Board of the Breeders' Cup. We were at the Breeders' Cup and watched her win. That built us up, making us think we could do this every year. The owners of that horse are very good friends and so is the trainer, Chad Brown. It was very exciting for us to win at that level. As incoming chairman, I even got to present the trophy to them.”He owns shares in several top sires.“We own shares at every major farm that sells shares,” he said. “We don't own any at Coolmore or Spendthrift because they don't sell shares. We have shares of stallions at WinStar, Lane's End, Hill 'n' Dale, Claiborne and Gainesway.Hertrich is in the process of getting out of the Standardbred game, which will give him more time and more money to devote to his Thoroughbred breeding operation.He would like nothing more than to own a Breeders' Cup winner, but because Hertrich and Fielding never have many horses in training, that's not likely to happen. But you never know. They'll just have to get lucky. They have before.The post Keeneland Breeder Spotlight: Sustained Excellence, How Fred Hertrich Has Stayed on Top appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.