11 minute read
Moor the merrier
Joe and Edel Banahan of Moortown House Stud enjoyed a fine Goffs Orby touch when selling their sole offering, a filly by New Bay out of their mare Coco Rouge, for the stud’s best-ever sale ring price of €480,000.
Ronan Groome chats to Joe, who breeds horses alongside his day job is as a race starter for IHRB
WHEN JOE BANAHAN watched the price for his New Bay filly soar past the €400,000 mark at the Goffs Orby Sale earlier this month, it all became a bit too surreal, and he got lost in his own abyss for a couple of seconds.
The slam of the gavel, a clap on the back and a few congratulatory outstretched hands clicked him back into the room, and he soon became enveloped in a sense of pride he has never felt before. When the dust settled, it felt like everything he had done as a breeder up until that moment and everything he’d do after it was all worth it.
“We knew there was a lot of interest in her and, after the couple of days, we thought we might get a little more than we had initially hoped for,” reflected Banahan.
“Everything went to plan with her. You felt the interest was there. I thought maybe she might hit €300,000, which would have been incredible, but you never know, do you?
“She went past that mark and it was like rapid fire, the bidding just took off. When she got to €400,000 you just go numb. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. I said, to myself, ‘This is our animal in the ring. We created this animal!’
“I got a bit of a tingle all right. It was an unbelievable feeling.”
The sale of the sixth foal, a filly by New Bay, out of his mare Coco Rouge was easily the biggest touch landed by Moortown House Stud, which is based just outside Navan, County Meath. The farm is run by Banahan and his wife Edel, having previously been developed into a stud farm by Joe’s parents Percy and Elaine.
Their operation is small and select because it has to be. Banahan has worked for the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board for 25 years and his job as a race starter requires him to travel the length and breadth of the country. There are only so many hours in the day and consequentially, so many mares at home, where Edel also plays an integral role.
Like plenty of small scale breeders their budget for prospective broodmares is comparatively very low and so they’ve already defied huge odds in breeding a filly that, at a sales price of €480,000, was the eighth highest-priced lot sold at the Orby Sale.
Of course, luck played a part, but if there are two things that describe the Banahan operation, it’s attention to detail and patience, and in this case those characteristics paid off in spades.
“I had Coco Rouge picked out before I went over to Newmarket,” recalls Banahan when remembering how he came to buy the daughter of Shamardal. “She is a half-sister to Jacqueline Quest, who was first past the post in the 1,000 Guineas, but was demoted in the stewards’ room. Coco Rouge won a maiden for James Fanshawe and we got her for £17,000.
“When we first started going to Newmarket, you’d have numerous mares to choose from for a €15,000 budget but the market exploded, and it is four or five times that price now. There were stints when we came home with nothing.
“So now we’ve adjusted to buying a mare in the hope you can make something happen for her. We like a young mare who has a bit of black-type in the first dam, and enough class to warrant her to go to reasonable sires. Coco Rouge fitted that bill.
“It didn’t happen for her early on and, to be honest, we were probably getting close to the stage where you’d have to sell her on and cut your losses. But we really liked what we saw in her daughter You Send Me and it would have been foolish to have sold the mare until we had seen what this filly could do.”
You Send Me, sold for 100,000gns at Tattersalls October Book 2 2021 and now trained by Fozzy Stack, didn’t appear on the racecourse until September 2022 when a 10l fifth in a Curragh maiden. It didn’t look anything really special, but it was a game-changer for Banahan.
“She fell out of the stalls, finished fifth, probably should have been fourth, but the weakness caught her out,” he recalls. “Everything about the run said she was going to improve something fierce and she was going to be a very good filly the following year.
“The next week they gave her an entry in the Irish 1,000 Guineas. At the time we had the New Bay filly entered in the foal sales, but we just thought that we should really hold on to her and roll the dice to sell her as a yearling. It was well worth the risk.”
That decision immediately started to look better by the day. Bay Bridge and Bayside Boy further enhanced New Bay’s reputation with Group 1 wins on British Champions Day the following month, while early this season You Send Me bolted up in a Cork maiden, before finishing second in the Group 3 Amethyst and fifth in the Irish 1,000 Guineas.
Most importantly, the New Bay filly herself developed into a stunning individual and the potential is clearly there for her to make up into a top-class filly.
With the one filly on the track already a Group 1 performer and another lovely filly to race for the farm next season, Banahan’s dream of breeding a Group 1 winner is very much alive. That quest began all of 34 years ago when he bred his first yearling.
“I used to rent a flat off a woman named Mrs Cuddy in a place down on The Curragh,” he recalls.
“Her husband was a developer in England and he made a lot of money. He had horses with Liam Browne, who trained two Moyglare Stakes winners for him.
“When he passed away, Mrs Cuddy wanted to off-load the horses and one of them was a half-sister to one of the Moyglare winners called Royaltess. I knew the pedigree well enough and so offered her IR£5,000 and she was happy enough to sell.
“Sadler’s Wells was all the rage at the time and he had a full-brother called Fairy King, who raced just once. I went down to see him and thought he looked exactly like Sadler’s Wells, so I took a chance on him for IR£5,000.
“Luckily, I got a colt foal. My parents helped me to prep him and I took him to Goffs for the foal sale. I didn’t have a clue what I had. Philip Myerscough had bred Fairy King so he came down to have a look at this foal. He came back 20 minutes later with none other than Vincent O’Brien himself.
“Vincent had just retired from training; I couldn’t believe it. Here was the maestro himself, spending 20 minutes looking at my first-ever foal. They ended up buying him for IR£18,000. I thought I’d won the lotto! I was hooked forever more after that, addicted to it.”
JOE AND EDEL married in 1995 and around the same time bought a mare called Chaturanga, the first foal out of 1990 Pretty Polly winner Game Plan. She was a wonderful mare and provided a number of nice touches, including a Footstepsinthesand colt bought by John Magnier for €160,000.
Once Banahan began his own quest into bloodstock, he was able to develop his parents’ breeding interest further and, uniquely, they benefited off each other.
“My parents bought Moortown House in 1981,” he recalls. “They always had a mare or two, but one was worse than the other.
“After I’d been to Newmarket, I told them they had to go over, that it was a different world.
“My mother got a bit of inheritance from her parents and we went over to the Tattersalls December Sale and they bought the first-ever foal out of Al Bahatari, a Dancing Brave filly called Almaaseh.
“She was an incredible mare for them. The very first foal that she had was the top-rated Irish two-yearold, a horse called Almaty, trained by Con Collins and owned by Peter Savill. As a result of that horse they were able to go to some of the best sires around.
“She bred a Peintre Celebre filly called Artisia, who produced Red Cadeaux, who earned over €5 million, and she bred Miss Brown To You (Fasliyev), who bred Big Orange.
“She had a lovely Galileo filly who was heading to the Houghton Sale, but she got injured. As a result Coolmore let the mare into Oratorio at a reduced fee. The resulting foal only sold okay but he was subsequently bought to race in Hong Kong and was champion out there – Military Attack.
“My parents had the best part of 15 years of huge excitement and enjoyment out of that. That mare was basically the only one they had, they didn’t need any more.”
Both Banahan’s parents have passed away but they left him and Edel with a base in Moortown and a really unique sense of pride when it comes to rearing and prepping foals.
“My parents always wanted to fly their own flag,” Banahan says. “They did the work themselves and they never had anybody else; they took the mare to stud, foaled them down, prepped them for the sales; they were in for the long haul.
“Myself and Edel do the exact same thing. You have to say you’d be very proud of what Moortown House has done. We take great satisfaction out of producing a nice horse at the sales so there is a lot to selling your own product.
“That would be one of the reasons we’re happy to stay as small as we are, you get to have that unique touch. Our goal is always be to have our horses looking nicer than the fella next door at the sales.”
The Banahans have five mares on the books at the moment, and the breeder says that is an absolute max.
They will still travel to Newmarket for the Tattersalls December Mare Sale for as much of a social occasion as anything else, while the exciting task of going to see the new stallions in the new year is always something they look forward to.
In the spring, Banahan is heading to Saudi Arabia, to start the races for the two-day Saudi Cup meeting, which he considers a huge privilege.
“I’ve been with the IHRB/Turf Club for 25 years now,” he says of the day job. “I did all everything you could think of on track before taking up the role of a full-time starter 15 years ago.
“I suppose the job has changed a lot since then. There is now a lot more scrutiny and pressure, and starting races isn’t an exact science.
“But I like the job – it’s great to be able to travel around the country to work with different people.
“I couldn’t work in an office, the monotony of it! And the horses are a great release when I come home.”
Coco Rouge has a Space Blues filly on the ground and is in-foal to Starspangledbanner. There is much to look forward to.
“We’re hoping for fillies now and thank god we have one by Space Blues,” Banahan says. “If we got another filly by Starspangledbanner, we’ll have to seriously consider keeping one of them – it would be lovely to keep the family going. The dream we’ve always had has been two-fold – to produce a yearling for €1 million and produce a Group 1 winner. A tall order!
“But you have to believe it is going to happen because if you didn’t believe it, you wouldn’t do it.
“The New Bay filly gives us a chance. If she goes on to become a top racehorse, we have her progeny coming along behind. It’s a huge ask, but it’s what we strive for.”
