11 minute read
Blue Chip stock
After a decade-long absence from the Tattersalls sale ring, Lady Bamford’s Daylesford Stud returns to sell under its own banner at this year’s October Yearling Sale.
The farm is to consign a quality group of five yearlings in Book 2, colts by Dubawi, New Bay, St Mark’s Basilica and Wootton Bassett, as well as fillies by Nathaniel and Mehmas, and a Sea The Moon colt in Book 3
THE ONLY DUBAWI COLT catalogued in the Tattersalls October Book 2 Sale is from a consignor returning to the fray to sell under its own stud banner for the first time in a decade.
Lady Bamford’s Daylesford Stud, which has recently sold yearlings with the sizeable The Castlebridge Consignment, is returning to the yearling marketplace itself for the first time since 2014.
The farm has a select draft of five to be offered in Book 2 and three in Book 3, while one yearling, Lot 362, a colt by Frankel out of the Listed winner Queen Of Love (Kingman), is heading to Book 1 and to be consigned under Watership Down Stud’s moniker.
Daylesford is keen to make its impact back in the consigning ranks this year.
As stud manager Chris Lock reports this five-strong Book 2 strategic hit with colts boasting some smart pedigrees and exciting sires, was deemed the best way to get the farm back on to the sales ground radar.
“Lady Bamford wants to showcase the stud, and the stock and the Daylesford name,” says Lock. “We’re breeding some nice young horses, and we were keen to show the world what we were producing, so that’s why we decided to go back to consigning under our own banner.”
Explaining the reasoning behind the outlier in first October Sale book: “We had just the one for Book 1 and, as we wanted to make a bit of an impact on our debut, just one lot did not really make it ‘splashy’.
“We thought we’d start off with the five proper horses in Book 2 and send the one for the first book through Watership.
“Hopefully, from next year, we will be consigning the Book 1 horses ourselves, too.”
In exciting news for yearling purchasers, this new strategy will see the stud, set on the Daylesford estate and in the beautiful Cotswold hills, near Chipping Norton, offer its colts itself, as well as the occasional filly, in the commercial market.
As Lock explains: “The plan is very much to go back to the sort of traditional, owner-breeder approach, sell the colts, and generally keep the fillies.
“We do have a couple of fillies in Book 3 this year – we have a few mares who like to produce filly after filly, and there's no point in us having eight or nine members of the same family.
“If it doesn't make sense for us to keep one there will be the odd filly coming through, but predominantly we will be selling colts.”
As Lock agrees every breeder, no matter the size of the purse in place to support the breeding endeavours, needs to keep numbers at a sensible level and according to the individual operation.
“We covered around 32 Daylesford-based mares this year and, so if we do our jobs right, we will be getting a foal crop of around 28, but we still have to rationalise a bit, otherwise things can spiral out of control,” he rationalises.
“We will even look in future to selling a few fillies off the track, too, and we will be a bit stricter as to what gets retired to Daylesford so there will probably be a few more fillies going into December sales at the end of their three-year-old careers.”
Lock, who has been at the stud for the last four years, joining the farm from Chris Wrights’ near-at-hand Stratford Place Stud, is looking forward to the new challenge.
This new approach has not been a decision taken in a hurry, but part of a policy first mooted by Lady Bamford herself at the turn of the year.
Lock is keen to ensure that buyers realise the Daylesford-consigned yearlings are there to be bought, and that this is not a vanity project in any sense.
“The yearlings will 100 per cent be priced to sell,” he says. “There is no point going to Newmarket with huge reserves and us not selling anything, it just means that the following year will become too much of a struggle.
“This is very much the first of, hopefully, year after year of drafts, so we know we need to sell so people believe that they're there to be sold in the future.
“The vast majority of our mares all have good pages behind them and, as a result, the yearlings have all got good, racing pedigrees, too. We always ensure that we use good, attractive and commercial stallions, and we have nice yearlings as a result.
“The Dubawi colt out of Star of Seville could have been offered in Book 1, but we kept him in in Book 2 [Lot 1205] as a standout and, hopefully, we will help to bring the buyers to the draft.”
So will the development of this “underour-own-banner” sales strategy lead to a change in stallion covering plans and the onward development of the broodmare band?
“Even with this new policy our covering plans won’t be changing as we won’t be ‘chasing’ that commercial aspect,” says Lock.
“We will still be an owner-breeder first and foremost, we aim for Classic success.
“Lady Bamford has bred three Oaks winners here – we’d like more, it is very addictive! That will always been the main plan, and that's pretty much what all our mares are geared for.
“We always want the stallions we use to make sense and, if for whatever reason we don’t sell, we are happy to race.”
Specialist yearling staff were recruited at the beginning of summer, and Daylesford’s own version of a Cotswold walking tour began in earnest.
Far from a holiday, one lap of the current yearling circuit is a mile long with a typical Cotswold incline to finish so giving a gentle but firm test to the lungs, the fitness of both horse and human, and bringing those hocks underneath the yearlings to build up their hind-quarter power houses.
When we visited Daylesford at the end of August the draft had worked up to three laps on the three walking mornings, the remaining days the yearlings being lunged. Lock reported that he was delighted with the whole draft’s progress with the eight all developing as a consistent bunch.
He also reported that the staff’s fitness levels were also improving rapidly alongside the yearlings, although the stable talk and morning conversations usually came to a premature end as the incline is faced into for a third time.
An indication that this year’s sale offering will be not be a one-hit wonder is borne out by Lady Bamford’s extended plans –an 88-acre tree-enclosed unit is being taken back from the estate with an idea to create a bespoke yearling walking track that will measure around a mile and three-quarters.
Lock, who happily, and unsurprisingly, admits this his role at Daylesford Stud is his “dream job”, reports that stud improvements are frequently undertaken, Lady Bamford keen that the beautiful mellow Cotswold stone farms retains its continued legitimacy as a prime producer of thoroughbreds.
It would be easy for the stunning farm to rest on its laurels of past achievements and relax into its surroundings, its estate and its rural heritage, much like an aging beauty too accustomed to the continual admiring views but becoming in danger of losing relevance.
“Lady Bamford is keen to keep rolling forward and there are always projects underway,” he says as we admire the future site for the walking track.
In August, a bunch of fillies, newly brought in for their first few days at prep school from their pre-school summer slumbers, were housed in the older and more traditional buildings, while a bunch of yearlings, being prepped both for the sales and to go into training, were housed in a bespoke-built U-shaped yard.
Across the paddocks the early footings and gravel for the building of a new all-weather paddock were visible – this year’s filthy wet spring convincing Lock of the need for such a facility.
Aside from the property improvements and facility gains, the team is keen to ensure that all that can be done, is done and that all sources of wisdom are used to produce quality thoroughbreds.
Daylesford Stud’s wonderful 32-strong broodmare band boasts of such glittering homebred stars as the Oaks (G1) winner Soul Sister, the Prix de Diane (G1) winners and half-sisters Star Spirit and Star Of Seville, the Prix du Calvados (G2) winner and the Group 1-placed Tropbeau, the Group 3 winner Random Harvest, as well as three homebred daughters and a granddaughter of the farm’s own homebred 2009 champion Sariska.
The team is always adding the new fillies to the group, freshening pedigrees and ensuring the quality is maintained and that families don’t stagnate.
And while there is the threat that selling the youngstock from the farm could mean that the connections and the innate understanding as to just what makes some of the families tick could be lost, Lock does not necessarily see this as a given.
“You do have to weigh things up, but who knows what different perspectives can bring,” he says with confidence, adding: “A very different way of campaigning and developing these horses can be a good thing.
“We know we have some lovely, well-prepared horses and we are confident that the very best trainers and connections will be interested in them.”
Of the draft, Lock outlines: “The New Bay colt is very nice, the Dubawi colt is a lovely horse, the Wootton Bassett is a strong horse and I am impressed with the two we have by St Mark’s Basilica.
“They are both big, strong with great walks and brilliant temperaments, we can do whatever we want with them. In total, we’ve got four yearlings by him and they’re all so good. We sent mares back to him and we will do going forwards.”
This year’s early European yearling market has been tough at times and is seemingly in a period of transition.
Has this trend caused the team to think twice about debuting this year, maybe waiting until the commercial market is sailing on calmer waters?
“You have to start at some point and plans were made as far back as the New Year, Lady Bamford and her daughter Alice started talking about it then and we were all on board,”outlines Lock. “Tattersalls came out and viewed the horses and we decided from there and committed to it.
“It might be a tough year, but we believe we’ve got nice horses, at some point you’ve got to choose a year and then go for it.”
And how are the nerves holding up as we close in on the sales dates?
“We are all pretty calm at the moment, all the horses are behaving themselves and seem to be enjoying their prep and going very well,” he smiles. “Obviously, you get nervous at every sale, but we’d like to think we’ll have done the work and they'll be ready.
“We will get them in and settled in good time; they will ship in on Thursday after the end of Book 1.
“This is a busy, working estate and there is lot going on, but being on the sales ground is a very different environment that we want to give them plenty of time to adjust.”
