FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Sara Mercurio, Publicity Manager 212.674.5151 x336 sara.mercurio@bloomsburyusa.com $TUD ADVENTURES IN BREEDING KEVIN CONLEY 'Simply wonderful.' -- Kirkus starred review 'Totally engrossing…the equine love story you've been waiting for.' -- Esquire 'Funny, insightful and engaging…a vividly equine-centric view of social, cultural and economic human history.' -- Publishers Weekly 'Kevin Conley writes with the grace and power of a literary thoroughbred. His brain, however, is one-hundred-percent human, which means that he knows everything about his subject and has cajoled horse people to tell him all their secrets. STUD is a great entertainment, a piece of vivid reporting, and a marvel of economy and wit. I read it straight through, at a gallop.' -- Jeffrey Eugenides, author of The Virgin Suicides Early retirement, plentiful sex with the world's wealthiest and most attractive partners, and piles and piles of money-the stud's life is a life of which most of us only dare to dream. STUD: Adventures in Breeding (Bloomsbury, March 20, 2002, $24.95, hardcover), by Kevin Conley, takes readers into the strange and seductive world of horse breeding. In this world, studs earn as much as NBA stars, intimate acts take place in front of a small team of breeding-shed professionals and a video camera, and at the auctions, a sheikh from Dubai and an Irish breeder duke it out in a Kentucky bidding war for the season's finest yearlings. STUD takes readers to the rolling bluegrass hills of Lexington, Kentucky where we visit Overbrook Farm, home to Storm Cat, the stallion whose stud fee runs $500,000 a pop. If the Kentucky Derby is the most exciting two minutes in sports, then sex with Storm Cat is its most expensive thirty seconds. A conservative estimate of fifty guaranteed live-foal contracts suggests that Storm Cat will clear twenty million dollars this year, after insurance. Impressive, and doubly so considering that his stud fee is nearly double that of his closest rival. STUD also drops in on Three Chimneys farm, where we meet the twenty-six year-old Seattle Slew, ancient by equine standards, who survives life-threatening spinal surgery to make a rousing return to the breeding shed. Later, we stroll through Crestwood Farm, where Storm Boot, an ornery son of Storm Cat, has, time after time, managed to get 'runners' out of any old nag of a partner. Only slightly less intense than the action in the breeding shed are the showdowns at the auctions. At the Keeneland auctions in Kentucky, we meet the buyers: Kentucky breeders, English bookies, Irish vets, Florida pinhookers, hall-of-fame trainers, bloodstock agents for owners in Hong Kong, and two groups that can raise the stakes on any horse into the millions-'the boys' and the 'Doobie Brothers.' 'The boys' are a group of uncharacteristically taciturn Irishmen, a crew made up of a veterinarian, a Tiperary breeder, and their even more silent partners. The Doobie Brothers, one of the local nicknames for the entourage of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the Crown Prince of Dubai, sport royal-blue windbreakers, and, in the early days of the September sales, manage to drive up the bidding on a Storm Cat colt to 6.8 million, the most anyone had paid for a horse at auction since 1985-only to lose the horse to their rivals. An entertaining cast of characters, to be sure, but the horses themselves are the most intriguing by far. We witness an old stud going strong and a new stud losing his virginity. Conley fills us in on the history of thoroughbred racing, and revisits favorite horses of the past: Citation, Secretariat, Seattle Slew and others. Usually, when the champion 'retires to stud,' those words are the last racing enthusiasts ever read about their favorites. STUD pulls back the curtain on an as yet unseen aspect of the horse world, and takes a voyeuristic look at the intimate acts in Eden-like settings and the billion-dollar business behind them. KEVIN CONLEY is an editor at The New Yorker. His writing has appeared in Details, US Weekly, The New Yorker, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, and Sports Illustrated. He lives in New York. 'Conley provides all the needful color commentary with cool brio and a heart-gladdening display of language. His prose displays an easy grace, lightly worn intelligence, and unbeveled enthusiasm that makes you plain like the guy rather than envy him. He can nail physical appearances…One suspects this writer could tackle any subject with aplomb, but thoroughbred horse-breeding, populated by violent, menacing subjects boasting competitive streaks that border on the criminal, certainly offers a fine canvas for his brush…Simply wonderful.' -- Kirkus starred review STUD: Adventures in Breeding By Kevin Conley March 20, 2002 $24.95, hardcover 224 pages ISBN 1-58234-184-2