Reign Supreme

Aisling Crowe chats to John Tuthill of Owenstown Stud after a year that enjoyed a highlight with Supremacy’s Group 1 Middle Park victory.

Tuthill argues that he owes his success to the fantastic land at Owenstown, explains that he is reassessing 2021 covering plans for his mares and would dearly love to see prize-money improve in Britain and Ireland

SUPREMACY, one of this season’s outstanding juvenile colts, successful in the Group 1 Middle Park Stakes and Group 2 Richmond Stakes, spent his formative months in the North Kildare paddocks that once formed part of the famous estate belonging to the Earls of Kildare.

Owenstown Stud is the nursery where Supremacy was born and reared, just as the Group 1 winners Excelebration and Persuasive were before him.

Supremacy’s dam Triggers’ Broom is a permanent resident at the farm of John Tuthill, breeder of those star milers, where her owners Kangyu Racing International board seven mares to support their stallion Cotai Glory, a member of the same Tally-Ho Stud team as Supremacy’s sire Mehmas.

Tuthill’s joy at the success of Supremacy is warm and genuine: “It’s always a thrill when horses that you’ve looked after go on and be successful, it’s great, it is what we live for really. To have a Group 1 winner on the farm is great and when clients have that bit of success, it gives everyone such a boost and it is wonderful,” he smiles.

Kangyu International Racing is a group of Hong Kong businessmen, headed up by the Honourable Kenneth Lao. They raced Cotai Glory and when he went to stud they kept a stake in him and created a small breeding operation centred around Cotai Glory, and set out to buy some mares to go to him.

Owenstown Stud’s modest John Tuthill

“In a year when things have been difficult in Hong Kong it was a real note of positivity for the fledgling breeding operation,” adds Tuthill.

The breeder’s voice becomes animated with enthusiasm when he speaks of Art Power, the three-year-old colt who won the Group 3 Lacken Stakes and was just a nose and two half-lengths fourth in the Group 1 British Champions’ Sprint Stakes in October.

“He is so exciting and I didn’t half shout at the television! My throat was sore after that race!” exclaims the delighted breeder.

“He was beaten less than a length by horses who are six and eight years old, that was a proper run. If he strengthens up into next year, he is going to be a serious horse.”

Art Power is a son of Dark Angel, a stallion with whom the Owenstown broodmares have developed a fruitful partnership. He is also the sire of Choose Me’s

Group 1 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes winner Persuasive. Art Power’s dam Evening Time, a Listed-winning daughter of Keltos, is back in-foal to Yeomanstown Stud’s leading sire.

Art Power and Persuasive are members of two families that Tuthill has developed with Art Power tracing back to Shadow Casting, a Juddmonte-bred mare purchased by his late aunt Averil Whitehead, breeder of the brilliant stallion Indian Ridge.

Sent to the Kendor stallion Keltos, Shadow Casting produced Evening Time, who won two Listed races and was twice placed at Group 3 level. She is the dam of Group 3 Ballyogan Stakes winner Penny Pepper, who has joined her dam in the Owenstown broodmare band, Morning Frost, who is a Listed winner in France, and Art Power the latest of her black-type winners.

“Penny Pepper is in-foal to Night Of Thunder and Evening Time is in-foal to Dark Angel, as luck would have it,” says Tuthill.

Three-year-old Art Power (10), bred by Owenstown out of Evening Time, finishing fourth in the Group 1 British Champions Sprint behind Glen Shiel

“There’s a lot about Dark Angel that fits Evening Time in my view, and I am happy with that cross,” he says of the mating that produced Art Power.

“Keltos had very few offspring so there isn’t a lot to go on because there are so few. It means to a certain extent you are sort of in the dark trying to discover what works.”

Hecuba is another Juddmonte-bred mare acquired by Tuthill’s late aunt and she produced the Listed Waterford Testimonial Stakes winner Shanghai Glory and

Choose Me, a Listed-winning Choisir mare. She has been her dam’s most successful broodmare daughter so far producing Persuasive, as well as the Listed winner Tis But A Dream, by Dream Ahead, in successive years.

Her yearling Dark Angel colt was purchased by Sackville Donald this year for 100,000gns at Tattersalls October Book 1. She has a 2020-born filly foal by Dark Angel, her final daughter.

Whether homebreds or boarders, graduates of the Owenstown nursery have excelled over the last decade, but Tuthill is modest to a fault and dismisses any suggestion that he has any particular influence over the career trajectories of the horses once they have left his watchful stewardship.

“There are a lot of factors and my input stops at the sales so it is very much in the hands of the trainers, the jockeys, the work riders, the grooms. After my little bit of influence ends, there is a lot more and all credit goes to them,” he says modestly.

“I just have a farm on great land, it is fantastic land for thoroughbreds, there is no denying that.

“But, as regards what I do, I try to produce a racehorse first, then I hope that the one I have bred before that particular one turns out to be good enough to bring a decent price in the sales!”

TUTHILL’S CONCENTRATION always is to breed an athlete, looking beyond the sales ring to the horse’s future career on the track, and he has assembled a strong team which begins with the staff on the farm and encompasses vets, farrier, feed company.

“I breed to sell as yearlings, which doesn’t make it any easier, but I try to produce an athlete and a racehorse.

"I hope that, by the time my influence stops, I have produced an athlete, and if what I have produced goes out and wins a maiden as a two-year-old or as a three-year-old I feel that is as much as I can have done. I have sown the seed and it is others that nuture and grow it to fruition.”

Luck, he emphasises, is also a vital component and he points to the story of the Tuthill-bred three-time Group 1 winner Excelebration. He had the misfortune to be born in the same year as Frankel and finish runner-up to that extraordinary horse in three further Group 1 contests.

Luck isn’t the only variable in life beyond our control as this surreal year has demonstrated in abundance and the full consequences of the global pandemic will only be known years from now.

What is already clear, however, is the impact it is already having on the economic well-being of the world, an impact that has a direct effect on the bloodstock industry as demonstrated this autumn at the yearling sales.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty and worry for people and that is bound to have an effect on the demand for racehorses,” says Tuthill, adding: “Discretionary spend is much reduced which is understandable, and Brexit is looming.

“We are 58 days out from Brexit [at the time of interview] and we do not know what is going to happen yet.

“It could be a nightmare, or they could do a deal which works out and things don’t change, which would be great.”

As a consequence of the significant drop in sales prices and the continuing uncertainty created by COVID and Brexit, Tuthill is, in common with many breeders, reconsidering his plans for 2021 including.

“It has made me look very long and hard at which mares I cover, and what I cover them with and what price range each covering will be in.

“Price has got to be a huge factor because the yearling sales were very, very tough and that’s something we have to look at and by necessity we have to cut our cloth.”

HOWEVER, Tuthill believes that the current hazy economic atmosphere is only compounding a critical issue that has bedevilled the racing and breeding industries in Ireland and Britain especially; the chronic lack of investment in prize-money that has resulted in a looming crisis of ownership.

“The yearling sales put everything into sharp focus really, and what is at the back of it is decades of poor prize-money,” he says.

“For instance, if you could be sure that if you won a 0-60 handicap or a Class 4 handicap in the UK the prize-money would cover a year’s training fees then you would encourage a whole lot of enthusiasts into owning a horse, because it would be within their grasp to have an inexpensive hobby.

“But, at the moment, to balance the books you have to get a bit of form and sell. You are doing away with your bit of fun because you have to sell to be able to get anywhere.

“Owners should be able to decide – for instance, if a horse has won once and been placed twice so training fees are covered for the year, they should be able to decide either to sell now with a bit of form and buy another one, or carry on and next year try to do the same.

“If you can then build a bit of a day out at the races with your pals at the same time, then the whole experience becomes so much better.

“The equation is so badly wrong that it is turning people away; it has caused undue pressure on everybody and it has been cumulative.

“This has been going on for decades, effectively you win so little as an owner it is pretty much a rosette and a pat on the back, like at Pony Club!

“In terms of the costs of training, of breeding, of buying a yearling it doesn’t stack up.”

Looking at other countries with broader access for owners and greater participation in the sport, the common denominator is a Tote monopoly which funds higher prize-money levels.

A similar model for here, would be the answer in his ideal world.

“Throughout the COVID pandemic, the industry has kept going and it would be nice if we could manage to do something through the levy to underpin the prize-money, that would be my dream,” Tuthill confides.

Excelebration (by Exceed And Excel and out of Shower (Indian Ridge)) winning the QEII Stakes in 2012