She has all the modesty we expect in those who spend their lives with an animal as vigilant against human pride and presumption as the Thoroughbred. Perfectly happy, for instance, to tell you about the seven-figure yearling who ended up as a police horse. But if you really press Meg Levy to identify where she strives for an edge, she’ll shrug her shoulders and suggest a single word: “intuition.”
One word, not two. Not “feminine intuition.” If Bluewater Sales sell the top lot, then Levy is simply first among equals. Good at her job. And she should be viewed as neither more nor less proficient on account of her gender.
Nonetheless it was both valid and gratifying last weekend to see her celebrated, along with Kitty Taylor and Carrie Brogden, in Fasig-Tipton’s International Women’s Day video tribute to female pioneers in sales consignment. Levy, after all, started out in partnership with Taylor; while Brogden, in the video, says that she still views her as a mentor. And the fact is that Levy, some 30 years ago, was the first woman even to show horses for the Eaton Sales agency.
“That was a big deal at the time, for me to do that,” she recalls. “They had all these guys from Virginia, with the red hankie in the hip pocket, and showing horses was a real art at the time. I still think of it as an art. You know, I was humiliated many times. But I got over it.”
