Happily Forever After

Ballylinch

HAPPILY

FOREVER AFTER

BALLYLINCH STUD HAS BEEN SELLING GROUP 1 WINNERS AT GOFFS ORBY FOR DECADES. JOHN O’CONNOR TELLS DONN McCLEAN ABOUT THE LATEST CLASSIC CHAPTER IN THE STORY, THAT OF EPSOM OAKS HEROINE FOREVER TOGETHER.

John O’Connor was hopeful when Forever Together entered the ring at the 2016 Orby Sale. And there was a solid foundation to his hopefulness. The filly had the looks and she had the pedigree, and all the right people had shown interest. Of course, back then she wasn’t Forever Together. She was Lot 74, a bay yearling filly by Galileo out of the Theatrical mare Green Room, a half-sister to Prix Jean Prat winner Lord Shanakill, a full-sister to

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Fillies’ Mile winner Together Forever. And, despite the hopefulness and the solid foundation to it, there is still a degree of trepidation when a filly like that goes into the sales ring.

“There is only a finite number of buyers for a filly like her,” says O’Connor. “You’d have all your work done, but you’d still just be hopeful that everything would go okay.”

John O’Connor had been there before. Many times. Ballylinch Stud had sold many top class fillies in the ring at Goffs, their managing director watching on as the bids are called and the figures on the bid board soar. There is nothing more that you can do at that point. All that can be done has already been done. All you can do is watch and hope, passively, powerlessly, contemplatively.

There was precedent too. In 2013 O’Connor had looked on, similarly passively, as Forever Together’s full sister Together Forever had walked around the sales ring in front of him. He was delighted when she was knocked down to MV Magnier for €680,000, and he was more delighted when, just over a year later, she won the Group 1 Fillies’ Mile at Newmarket.

“You follow their progress on the racecourse, all of them, and of course you want them to do well.

Together Forever didn’t win until her fourth attempt, but she always showed promise and it was brilliant when she won her Group 1. Actually, she beat a horse that we bred ourselves, Agnes Stewart, owned

by Clipper Logistics, into second place in the Fillies’ Mile at Newmarket that day so, going into the final furlong, we didn’t really mind which one won, as long as one of them did!”

Agnes Stewart was also sold at Goffs in 2013. So two fillies from the same Ballylinch consignment, first and second in the Fillies’ Mile.

Two weeks before Together Forever won the Fillies’ Mile, her half-sister by Sea The Stars went through the ring at Goffs and was bought by Amanda Skiffington on behalf of Fiona Carmichael for €1.1 million.

Named Signe and sent into training with William Haggas, she didn’t race at two or three, but she won her first three races when she started her racing career as a four-year-old last year. Signe is now back at Ballylinch Stud, back with her dam. Full circle.

“WHEN YOU HAVE A TOP CLASS BROODMARE LIKE GREEN ROOM, YOU ARE INVARIABLY HOPING FOR A FILLY. HER FILLIES HAVE BEEN SO SUCCESSFUL.” 22

The three fillies, Together Forever, Signe, and the yearling filly in the ring, were bred by Vimal and Gillian Khosla out of their mare Green Room. Green Room didn’t race herself, but she is a half-sister to Spanish Fern, who won the Grade 1 Yellow Ribbon Stakes at Santa Anita in 1999 for Juddmonte and Bobby Frankel, and to Rusty Back, the unraced dam of Heatseeker, winner of the Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap. She is out of Chain Fern, a half-sister to the top-class Al Bahathri, winner of the Irish 1000 Guineas and dam of 2000 Guineas winner and Champion Stakes winner Haafhd.

And Green Room has proven herself to be a top class broodmare.

Her first foal was Lord Shanakill, sold at Keeneland’s September Sale in 2007 for $110,000 – a veritable bargain – and winner of the Mill Reef Stakes as a two-year-old, the Prix Jean Prat as a three-year-old and the Lennox Stakes as a four-year-old. She does not have a twoyear-old this year, but she has a yearling and a foal, both by Galileo, both fillies.

“Breeders would be hoping for a colt foal in the normal course of events,” says O’Connor. “But when you have a top class broodmare like Green Room, you are invariably hoping for a filly. Her fillies have been so successful, and it’s great when the family is extended.”

Green Room was one of a handful of mares that the Khoslas sent to Ballylinch when they were looking for an Irish base for their small but select broodmare band in 2012.

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CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Forever Together wins the Oaks by a wide margin; Ballylinch Stud manager John O’Connor; Donnacha O’Brien with the Oaks trophy; Together Forever wins the Fillies’ Mile at Newmarket from Agnes Stewart

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“I WASN’T THAT CONCERNED THAT SHE DIDN’T WIN AT TWO. SHE WAS ALWAYS GOING TO IMPROVE AS SHE MATURED”

“They are such good people. They enjoy it all, they love their horses and they really appreciate any success that they have.”

The Khoslas major in the travel business. They developed their enterprise Travelselect.com to a point at which, in April 2002, it made commercial sense to sell it to lastminute.com.

But success in the travel business does not automatically beget success in the bloodstock industry. What works in the former does not automatically work in the latter, and vice-versa. But there are common threads that run between the two: a concentration on quality, on trying to do the correct thing, a patient approach, an ability to get on with people. And the Khoslas’ methodology is working in the bloodstock industry too.

In a short question and answer session with The Irish Field in June this year, Vimal Khosla was asked what advice he would give to someone who was thinking of getting involved as a racehorse owner.

Be in it for the long haul, he said.

The numbers on the bid board rolled as the Galileo filly moved easily around the ring. It took them a little while, but once they got going, the momentum built, slowly at first, then quickly, then slowly again.

Through the €300,000 mark, through the €500,000 mark and up to €900,000 before the gavel fell. Mr MV Magnier, thank you very much.

It was a great result all round for Ballylinch Stud and for the filly’s breeders. Delight and relief in equal measure. Exhale. The highestpriced filly in the Orby Sale that year. Happy sellers, happy buyers, a job well done, and you knew that the filly was going to a good home.

“You always hope that they go to a good home,” says O’Connor.

“That’s important. You hope that they will be given every chance to fulfill their potential. To be honest, when you get to that level, to that type of filly, they are invariably going to a good home. Even so, you couldn’t have asked for a better place for her to start her racing career than Ballydoyle, as with her sister three years earlier. You knew that she was going to get the best care, that she was going to be given every chance of succeeding on the racecourse.”

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CLOCKWISE FROM FAR LEFT: Vimal Khosla; M.V. Magnier bought Forever Together as a yearling; John O’Connor watches the bidding; The hammer is about to fall at €900,000

Named Forever Together, the filly was inevitably sent into training, like her sister three years earlier, with Aidan O’Brien. Unlike her sister, however, she didn’t win at two. She was a slower burn, a late May foal. Indeed, she didn’t make her racecourse debut until early October, when she shaped encouragingly in finishing a running-on fourth in a one-mile maiden at Naas.

She raced for the second and final time as a juvenile in late October. By that stage of the season in her juvenile year, her sister had already bagged her Group 1.

“I wasn’t that concerned that she didn’t win at two. She was always going to improve as she matured, and we were looking forward to seeing her as a three-year-old.”

Her three-year-old season started brightly but unluckily. Sent to Chester by Aidan O’Brien for the Cheshire Oaks on her three-year-old debut, she was held up in traffic at the top of the home straight before finishing off her race well to take second place behind her stable companion Magic Wand.

“That was obviously a very encouraging run,” says O’Connor. “Of course, it would have been better if she had won it, a Listed race, but she did show that she had lots of ability. You’d obviously prefer a good but unlucky run like that to a run in which she was well beaten.”

So Forever Together was still a maiden by the time Epsom Oaks day rolled around, but Aidan O’Brien had no hesitation in pitching her into the Classic. It was the race for her, a Galileo filly, a full-sister to a Fillies’ Mile winner, and a running-on runner-up in the Cheshire Oaks over a mile and three and a half furlongs.

It was some way to break your maiden, in a Classic, powering clear under Donnacha O’Brien up the stands rail and winning by four and a half lengths.

“That was a great day,” recalls O’Connor. “A Classic winner, an Oaks winner. That’s what Ballylinch Stud is all about.”

Ballylinch Stud have a deep history of Group 1 winners with Goffs. It was back in 1993 that they sold a yearling colt by Keen out of the Caerleon mare Immediate Impact to Johnny McKeever for £25,000.

That’s £ Irish punts. That’s how long ago 1993 is.

That colt was named River Keen, and he went to America as an older horse and won the Grade 1 Woodward Stakes and the Grade 1 Jockey Club Gold Cup for Bob Baffert.

There was Eva’s Request, who won the Group 1 Premio Lydia Tesio at Capannelle in 2009, and High Heeled, who finished third in Sariska’s Oaks in 2009 and won the Group 3 St Simon Stakes, and Red Rocks, who won the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Turf in 2006 and the Grade 1 Man o’War Stakes in 2008, as well as the Group 3 Gordon Richards Stakes in the interim. And last year there was the Galileo filly out of the Dansili mare L’Amour De Ma Vie, whom Ballylinch sold to Godolphin for €1.2 million.

That was significant, not only because she was the highest-priced filly in the Orby Sale – two in a row for Ballylinch – but because her purchase by Godolphin, a Galileo filly, represented a change in policy by Sheikh Mohammed’s operation.

“I wasn’t surprised,” says O’Connor. “She is a really nice filly and all the right people were interested in her.

She made the headlines because she was bought by Godolphin, but we were just delighted that she did so well and that she had been purchased by a top operation”.

Ballylinch will inevitably have a strong consignment at the Orby Sale again this year, headed up by the Khoslas’ Galileo filly out of Green Room, an own sister to Together Forever and Forever Together.

“I know that you’d expect me to say so, but she is a lovely filly. Really. Not unlike Forever Together. She has a lovely way about her and she has done very well this year. We are looking forward lots to seeing how she does in the sales ring and, in time, on the racecourse.”

There’s that hopefulness again. Well-founded, as ever.

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