12 minute read
Bear speed
Bearstone Stud has long been a nurturing ground for speedy horses and the farm got its rewards with Glass Slippers’ Abbaye win in October. We chat to owner Terry Holdcroft
THE BEARSTONE STUD TEAM and owner Terry Holdcroft have been producing quality sprinters for over 30 years at the tranquil farm in Shropshire, but the success gained by the three-yearold Glass Slippers in this October’s Prix de l’Abbaye was the first Group 1 winner bred by Bearstone and owned by Holdcroft.
When the rains came in France this autumn, the landmark achievement might very nearly have not happened at all.
“Her first run of the season was over 7f in a Group 3 at Newbury, it was soft ground. She lost both her front shoes and trailed in last,” recalls Holdcroft of his one-time Guineas hope.
“We decided then she did not want soft ground – it was one thing that trainer Kevin Ryan said all summer ‘if there is one thing we don’t want to do, is run her on soft ground,’”smiles Holdcroft.
The filly’s form picked up after that disappointing seasonal start with a fifth and a second in Listed races and then a fourth in the Group 3 Summer Stakes. The decision to make the Group 1 entry was made in the middle of summer, and before the filly had even been successful in a stakes race.
“I rang Kevin up and said, ‘You are going to think I am absolutely bonkers, but I want you to put her in the Abbaye!’,” laughs the breeder. “He said ‘alright’ – I expected him to say I think you’re mad because I thought I was mad, her form at the time didn’t warrant the entry.
“After that she won her Listed and then a Group 3 in France. She won that in 55 seconds, which is pretty good – I don’t think Mind Games ever did that over 5f. “She came from last to first in the last furlong, it was a far more impressive run than the Abbaye.”
After that performance the Group 1 entry proved to have been a fortuitous plan, and the sprint target on Arc weekend was set.
But the gathering clouds over France put Group 1 participation into doubt.
“The ground went soft and we thought we had no chance,” says Holdcroft, though the attractions of a weekend in Paris for the Arc helped make a decision to run.
“We had booked in the hotel so we thought we might as well go and enjoy the weekend, just go and have some fun and a good time.” The rest as they say is history. The filly jumped the stalls quickly – unlike in most of her previous runs – went to the front of her field and was never headed.
“I was standing in the paddock and watching the race with my wife Margaret and said, ‘Where is she?’ So often Glass Slippers had been slowly out of the stalls and I was looking at the back of the field for her and could not see her, but Margaret said, ‘She’s in front!’ And then she just flew and never saw another horse. It was her day.”
Glass Slippers is a third generation Bearstone Stud-bred filly, and at the tine of writing one of an amazing 56 winners bred by Bearstone in 2019, 879 since 1994. The vast majority of those wins have come in races under 7f; since an early ownership foray with NH horses sprinters have always been the focus of Holdcroft’s and Bearstone’s breeding operation.
“I do like the sprinters,” admits Holdcroft. “Tim Easterby tells me if I watched a field go past a winning post twice, I’d be dizzy!”
Holdcroft bought Bearstone after having previously crossed the land on the back of his hunter, the sheltered aspect of the land and with its own spring water appealing to him for future ownership. The farm was then just 17 acres, but has since been expanded to 350 acres and includes state-of-the-art stud buildings, found on three sites.
And while racehorse ownership began with store horse purchases in Ireland and NH horses, the injury issues involved in the jumping game led the owner to pursue Flat race ownership; a first race filly going on to becoming the foundation broodmare.
Since then the operation has expanded to include a significant broodmare band, which includes boarding mares, and has become a stallion farm in the 1980s. It possesses a longevity in the industry that means Holdcroft has seen significant changes in the stallion market.
“The first stallion we had was Pussiance,” he recalls. “And that is how things have changed – if I remember rightly he had 50 mares and he had eight winners and he was leading first-season sire!
“Then we got Mind Games and he would have had a few more mares, but not a lot more, and he was leading first-season sire, too.
“Then Indesatchel came along, and he was leading first-season sire, too, and he didn’t have a mountain of mares either.
“Then you didn’t need a mountain of mares to get the first-season sires’ title and that’s how things have changed, dramatically and in not a very long time.
“Now to be a leading first-season sire you need between 20 and 25 winners, but you can only get that if you’ve had 150 mares or more,” exclaims the stud owner, exasperatedly adding: “People in this industry, and this always amazes me, they look at how many winners a sire has had but they don’t care to look how many mares he has seen, as if that doesn’t matter. It’s crucial!
“In any business if you are looking at statistics, you should be looking at all the statistics before you can take a view. I never hear anyone in the industry say ‘yes that leading sire has had 20 winners but he’s had 200 mares, but, take a look at the stallion in sixth, he only had 70!’
“I think that the US Jockey Club suggestion and ideas of limiting stallions to 140 mares and not limiting the first-season sires, it doesn’t seem a ridiculous idea to me.”
Washington DC
Holdcroft’s former day job was as managing director of the Holdcroft Group, a car business he began as just a 20-year-old. The company has grown in tandem with Bearstone and now has 22 outlets and employs 650 staff. It has remained as a family business – Holdcroft’s son Darren is now the managing director, while his father still goes into work everyday. “The car business is a very competitive industry, as the horse industry is,” reflects Holdcroft. “But we look at statistics a lot, a lot more carefully than the horseracing industry seems to. We have to ask all the time how many are we selling in an area? What are we selling? How long are they taking to sell? Do the cars need moving on?
“We are measuring against proper information on a daily, weekly and certainly monthly basis – all the time,” he explains.
“In the motor industry you are lucky if you make one per cent on turnover, you have got to be on the ball. You go one per cent the wrong way and get 101 per cent on overheads, then you face losing a fortune.
“Most people who are successful in the motor industry are really big on statistics,”he adds.
THE BUSINESSMAN has brought his expertise and money-managing skills into his bloodstock programme, and for Holdcroft breeding a successful horse cheaply still gives him enormous pleasure.
“It does give me a bit of a kick breeding them without spending a fortune, I get quite a bit of satisfaction in that!” he admits.
“The best horses we have bred have not cost a lot of money and it just shows you don’t have to pay a lot of money to breed a racehorse,” he says. “Funnily enough, when I have spent big money on nominations, I have never done very well at the sales and they haven’t been great race horses either. “I have done better statistically and percentage-wise using my own stallions and, even when I put them in the figures at the price they are advertised at, they have not cost a lot to produce.
“Breeders often think that because they have an expensive mare, they think they have got spent a lot more money on a nomination and they are going to get something better – I admit on occasions I have felt like that too, it is a mistaken view to have.”
Holdcroft’s reasonably produced but most successful horses include Svelt, who won the 1986 Group 1 Premio Parioli. He was by African Sky, who stood at the Irish National Stud, and cost about “£3000 or £4000”. “We bred another horse called Kornado by Superlative – he won the Group 2 Mehl-Mülhens-Rennen and the Group 1 at Dusseldorf. And Golden Nun, she was by Bishop Of Cashel who was £1,000 nomination – she won the Group 3 Ballyogan Stakes,” recalls Holdcroft.
The farm also has the significant achievement of breeding two Queen Mary winners.
“Romantic Myth was by Mind Games and he stood at three grand, Romantic Liaison, she was by Primo Domino – I had a share in him and he stood at about £5,000 or £6,000. “There was Hearts Of Fire, a Group 1 winner of the Gran Criterium. He was by Firebreak, a stallion who was a three grand nomination.
“And Glass Slippers, she is by Dream Ahead – he was advertised at about 14 grand, but I got him cheaper because I sent two mares to Ballylinch!”
The electrically fast sprinter Mind Games is probably still the stallion Bearstone is most well-known for and his influence is still seen in many of the farm’s pedigrees – in fact, he is broodmare sire of Night Gypsy, the dam of Glass Slippers.
“Mind Games was bred by Val Hughes and by Puissance. I had decided I wanted to buy the best by Puissance and I saw Mind Games as a foal, he was a beautiful foal, so we made sure we bought him,” says Holdcroft. Bearstone has a number of fillies in training each year in support of the stallion operation and their pedigrees.
An exasperation to Holdcroft is the state of British prize-money, believing that funds have not improved since those racing days of Mind Games.
“Racing is a rich man’s sport end of story, and you obviously don’t expect to make a profit on it, but when you look at the prize-money in relation to training fees it is a joke,” he says.
“I was chatting with Jack Berry, and he said 30 years ago he was getting £2,000 for winning a race. Now you see horses still running for around £2,700 and that horse might have cost 500,000gns to buy!
“And that is what you get if you win – and you have got to win! And then you have the 21 per cent taken out of it too, and that is before you start to cover transport costs.
“You might as well run for nothing – in actual fact prize-money is nearly an insult; you would be better off running for nothing! “Of course, no one has to have a racehorse, it is not compulsory like having a car to get to the office or work, but the industry desperately to improve as it so needs more owners and to encourage more breeders – it is losing both.”
Of Holdcroft’s own training programme, Bearstone aims to keep most of the fillies, depending on pedigrees and situations, and sell the colts; the farm had around about 15 in training this year.
“I think the nurturing of them is so important – there is no point on spending a fortune breeding or buying and then not looking after it properly,” says Holdcroft. "You should do every mortal thing you can think of to do the best by that horse.
Fountain Of Youth
“Just as important then is having a good trainer who normally then has a good jockey, and then you need a bit of luck as well – you have got to have those four ingredients. “We always have the fillies back in the winter – it does them a bit of good and helps with costs. We keep them in light exercise and turn them out depending on the weather, we don’t let them down completely,” he explains. Bearstone employs 12 staff with many there on long-term basis – stud manager Mark Pennell has been on the farm since he was 16 and he’s now 54, while assistant Hayley Mayer can also boast double figures in years at Bearstone.
The farm is, as Holdcroft explains and not unexpectedly, “run on a commercial basis”. The current stallions at the farm are sprinters Fountain Of Youth, a son of Oasis Dream who had first runners in 2019, and Washington DC. By Zoffany he is about to embark on his second covering season.
The former won the 5f Group 3 Sapphire Stake and is son of the brilliant dual 1,000 Guineas winner, Attraction.
“Fountain Of Youth has had the winners of seven races, but a lot of placed horses – I am sick of finishing second!” declares Holdcroft. “Our own Gravity Force ran a good race in the Group 3 Horris Hill to finish fourth – he ran a blinder and is a decent horse.
“They have a bit of size about them and are good-looking horses – they should improve at three. They are not small, short-coupled ‘wham-bam’ type of horses, they should be able to carry weight in handicaps.
“They are the sort of horses that you just can’t rush; you would ruin them.”
Washington DC has form fitting of a Bearstone stallion with a win in the Listed Windsor Castle Stakes and a second in the Phoenix Stakes (G1) at two. He went on to pick up a second placing in the Prix de l’Abbaye at three, alongside producing multiple Group-class sprint performances for trainer Aiden O’Brien.
Holdcroft says: “We are really pleased with Washington DC – he saw about 80 mares last year. He was fast horse and a good two-yearold. He has Group 1 form and just because of the numbers at Coolmore did not get a place at stud there.”
Cars, racehorses, broodmares and stallions have provided a good mix for Bearstone and the Holdcrofts over the years, and with the talented Glass Slippers promising a “fun year ahead”, the curtains will open on 2020 with anticipation.
