Page 10 - July 2007 The Game

10 The Game, July 2007 Canada’s Thoroughbred Racing Newspaper
Insuring the Vehicles of Chance
By Peter Valing
A box of winner’s circle photographs sits in the corner of Rollie Embree’s office. “We recently renovated, and I haven’t had the time to put them back up,” says Embree. He’s a busy man - with his insurance business, his farm, his grandchildren and his horses, which are running both here at Hastings and in Alberta. Still, being the entrepreneurial sort, Embree has recently expanded his insurance umbrella to cover British Columbia’s thoroughbreds. It seems a logical step, he being a lifelong insurance man as well as a successful breeder/owner of racehorses.
“You’ve got to be interested and know your horses if you’re going to get into the business of insuring them,” Embree explains. “You shouldn’t insure
something you know nothing about.” Embree grew up on a farm in Delta, back when Delta was little but farms. “There were horses everywhere when I was a boy,” he reminisces. Then the farms began to disappear. One day, the Embree family farm, too, was sold to developers. Given no choice but to seek a living outside of the family tradition of sweat and soil, Embree became an insurance broker. Not surprisingly, his specialty became farm and equine coverage. “I started with equestrian, breeding and training farms,” he says. “These folks needed coverage for liability in case someone got injured, building insurance,
insurance on equipment, etc.”
Some of the farms Embree would visit
on insurance calls had race horses. “I would look at these beautiful creatures and dream of what it would be like to own one.” This dream he coupled with another: to return in some way back to the soil. So when the opportunity arose, Embree rescued twenty acres of Delta land from developers, and on it he established Embree Farms. He would continue in the insurance business, but at the end of the day drive out from Vancouver to his farm and tend to the horses. (In this he is currently assisted by his grandchildren, who also live out on Embree Farms).
“When we were starting out, there wasn’t a lot of money to gamble on race- horse ownership. We bought a cheap claimer named Sizzle Sun because that was all we could afford,” says Embree. His next memorable purchase was a mare that nearly cost him the farm. “Vet bills were all I saw after Racing Edge broke
her sesamoid. I had to start hiding the bills from my wife. But what was I supposed to do? She was my only horse, and I had
this feeling that she’d make a great broodmare.”
With a little help from Regal Intention, Embree’s mare bore her
first foal, Regal Request. The filly chalked up enough wins in 2005
to be named top two-year-old in
B.C. “This was particularly special for me because it was my
first homebred after fifteen years
in the business. There’s no feeling like breeding a winner!” exclaims Embree. A phone rings on his desk, but he ignores it and continues. “So Regal Request starts to earn back what I put into all those doctors’ pockets when along comes my mare’s second foal, Stephanson. Who would believe it? Two beauties in a row!”
In seven races, three-year-old Stephanson has only missed the board once. He won the CTHS Stakes in April, and as recently as June 10 he won an allowance at Hastings in the slop. On the same weekend, Embree’s River’s Reach scored a victory at Stampede Park. “That horse did nothing right at Hastings. Then I shipped her to Alberta, and bingo, she goes from $5000 to $40,000 races. I had never put much stock in the saying ‘courses for horses’ until now.”
Still, Embree considers himself a “small player” compared to some of the clients he insures. “Over the years I’ve dealt with many of the big players in the B.C. thoroughbred world – The K.K. Sangaras, Canmor Farms and the like,”
Hastings as often as possible, and almost always if Rollie’s horses are on the card,” he says. And while Embree would be content shooting the breeze about his horses or joking around, Knight presses the point about what it is that they’ll be offering to the B.C. racing community.
“We’re handling the horse-related insurance in B.C. for the big Toronto- based insurance firm, B.F. Lorenzetti. We insure all horses, from low claimers to stakes runners and offer a range of policies covering mortality, surgery and after-death expenses.” In a world in which every one seems to insure themselves against every possibility, it is surprising to learn that some owners don’t bother insuring their horses. “Some guys just see their horse as a hobby and don’t bother investing in insurance. If the horse dies they replace it, or they get out of the game.”
“And then there’s the rich guys - some of them don’t bother either,” Rollie cuts in. “Do you think that the Arab sheiks insure their horses? I doubt it. If they lose an animal, they simply raise the price of oil.”
No insurance company will protect you against defeat on the board. If you happen to purchase a hanger, or a horse that habitually spits its bit, there’s not a policy in the world for you. It is, after all, at least partly a game of chance. But if you’ve got an animal of some worth, it might be worthwhile to have it covered. And covered by someone who has handled a few horses in his time.
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Rollie Embree (left) and Andrew Knight
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says Embree, browsing his rolodex. “The only thing that’s this year from years past is that insuring racehorses.”
Andrew Knight is assisting
with this new venture. “Rollie’s
man and I’m the office man,” is how Knight describes the relationship. Though he isn’t heavily involved in the horse game, he shows a keen interest and respect for it. “I try to get down to
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Embree the front
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