Horsepower, International Style

Shakespeare's Richard III offered his kingdom for a horse, but nowadays he probably would have to up his bid. At the famed Keeneland Association yearling sales in Lexington, Ky., last week, British Betting Tycoon Robert Sangster, 46, who has parlayed a shrewd interest in horseflesh and an oddsmaker's understanding of the business into a stable of 400 Thoroughbreds, paid $4.25 million for a 15-month-old colt. It was the highest price ever for a race horse at auction. Sangster outbid Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid el Maktoum, Dubai's Defense Minister and the heir apparent to the throne of the principality, who dropped out after offering $4 million. Sangster breezily announced he would have gone higher to get the magnificent dark bay, a son of Nijinsky II, Europe's Horse of the Year in 1970.

In Moscow, three horses with even longer pedigrees arrived from New York in a far different but no less intriguing deal that will bring three Soviet horses to the U.S. The object: to improve the breed on both sides of the Atlantic. The animals, a stallion and a mare born in the Bronx Zoo and a mare from San Diego's zoo, are rare Przewalski's horses. Discovered in Mongolia a century ago by the Polish-born Russian army colonel for whom they are named, Equus przewalskii is the only truly wild, totally undomesticated horse still left on earth. The stocky beasts have big heads, thick, short manes, chocolate-brown legs and a fondness for friendly nipping, neighing and other forms of socializing. But unless there are more exchanges to prevent inbreeding, they won't have much company for such horseplay. Only 420 Przewalskis survive worldwide, all of them in captivity.

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