ITB_September-October 2023

Eat, sleep, repeat

It has been an autumn of Group 1 plenty for Ballydoyle

Family Power: the boys at Tradewinds Stud will be busy buying and selling yearlings this October

Horse talk: James Thomas chats to the industry’s new podcast presenter, consignor Jamie Railton

Paying breeders for sex: Winchell Thoroughbreds has taken a novel approach with Copper Bullet

Online market place: ThoroughBid is looking forward to its inaugural Online Yearling Sale

First yearlings realised €310,000, €170,000, €140,000, £95,000, €90,000, £85,000, etc.

10 sold to date have averaged £94,000

6

Starlust – Gr.3 winning 2yo colt in 2023

Lezoo – The winner of 4 Stakes races including the Cheveley Park Stakes, Gr.1

Miaharris – Stakes winning 2yo in 2023

Gr.1 winners and 40 Stakes winners Sire of the European Champion 2yo filly from his first European crop.

A RICH HISTORY

BAYSIDE BOY

IBERIAN Gr.2 Winner

Current GRADUATES include*:

ACQUITTED

· 2nd Winter Stakes LR

BAYSIDE BOY

· Queen Elizabeth II Stakes Gr.1

· Champagne Stakes Gr.2

BE YOUR BEST

· P. G. Johnson Stakes LR

· 2nd Del Mar Oaks Gr.1

BURGARITA

· Prix Casimir Delamarre LR

· Prix de la Seine LR

· 2nd Prix Corrida Gr.2

· 3rd Prix de Diane Gr.1

CARL SPACKLER

· Hall Of Fame Stakes Gr.2

· Saranac Stakes Gr.3

EL DRAMA

· Dee Stakes LR

· 2nd Jebel Hatta Stakes Gr.1

· 2nd Rose Of Lancaster Stakes Gr.3

· 2nd Strensall Stakes Gr.3

Current GRADUATES include*: Gr.1 Winner

FRANCESCO GUARDI

· Moonee Valley Gold Cup Gr.2

GARRUS

· Prix de Ris-Orangis Gr.3

· Abernant Stakes Gr.3

· 3rd Prix Maurice de Gheest Gr.1

HAQEEQY

· HH The President Cup LR

· Lincoln (Heritage Handicap)

IBERIAN

· Champagne Stakes Gr.2

· 2nd Vintage Stakes Gr.2

IMPACT WARRIOR

· 3rd Del Mar Oaks Gr.1

JIMI HENDRIX

· Royal Hunt Cup, Royal Ascot

· 3rd Summer Mile Gr.2

JUMBY

OF

OF

· Hungerford Stakes Gr.2

· John of Gaunt Stakes Gr.3

KING'S GAMBLE

· 3rd Gimcrack Stakes Gr.2

LONE EAGLE

· Zetland Stakes Gr.3

· 2nd Irish Derby Gr.1

· 2nd Ormonde Stakes Gr.3

LUCKIN BREW

· 2nd Silver Tankard Stakes LR

MAMAHEART

· 3rd Premio Nogara LR

MARISTELLA

· 3rd Garnet Stakes LR

SAFFRON BEACH Gr.1 Winner

*Horses bred, consigned or raised by Ballylinch since 01/01/22

*Horses bred, consigned or raised by Ballylinch since 01/01/22

Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny, Ireland

SUCCESS

NEW ENERGY

· 2nd Irish 2,000 Guineas Gr.1

OVIEDO

· Zetland Gold Cup

· 3rd Acomb Stakes Gr.3

· 3rd The Steventon Stakes Gr.3

PLACE DU CARROUSEL

· Prix de l'Opéra Gr.1

· Prix Foy Gr.2

· Prix Cléopâtre Gr.3

· Prix Gontaut-Biron Gr.3

ROSE BLOOM

· €200,000 Arqana Series de Pouliches

DON’T

SAFFRON BEACH

· Prix Rothschild Gr.1

· Sun Chariot Stakes Gr.1

· Duke of Cambridge Stakes Gr.2

· 2nd Matron Stakes Gr.1

· 2nd 1,000 Guineas Gr.1

SAVVY VICTORY

· Gala Stakes LR

· 3rd Chester Vase Gr.3

SELF BELIEF

· Meld Stakes Gr.3

· Trigo Stakes LR

SHUWARI

· Star Stakes LR

SOLDIER RISING

· 2nd Man o' War Stakes Gr.1

· 2nd Manhattan Stakes Gr.1

· 2nd Saratoga Derby Gr.1

· 2nd Sword Dancer Stakes Gr.1

STARRY HEAVENS

· Prix de Liancourt LR

STATEMENT

· Concorde Stakes Gr.3

· Navigation Stakes LR

STREETS OF GOLD

· €300,000 Tattersalls Ire Sales Stakes

· £100,000 2YO Series Final

· £100,000 York Nursery

· 3rd Jersey Stakes Gr.3

· 3rd Surrey Stakes LR

MISS our

SWEET BELIEVER

· 2nd Fortune Stakes LR

· 3rd Gillies Stakes LR

· 3rd John Musker Stakes LR

VIOLET GIBSON

· 3rd Honey Ryder Stakes LR

WONDERFUL TIMES

· Prix Urban Sea LR

YOU CAN’T WIN YOU’RE NOT IN IF

BREEDERS’ CUP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS

Santa Anita Park • Nov. 3 & 4, 2023 • 14 Grade I Championship Races

$31 million in Purses and Awards

It’s time to take your place on the world stage, pre-entry for the 2023 Breeders’ Cup World Championships opens October 1 and closes at Noon (PDT), on Monday, October 23. All Breeders’ Cup World Championships races are non-invitational and are open to all thoroughbreds competing around the globe.

Purses and awards total $31 million and each race pays through the 10th finish position! Each Breeders’ Cup World Championships starter receives a travel award up to $10,000 for North American horses and $40,000 for international horses shipping into California.

Participants experience exclusive world-class treatment on racing’s biggest stage, including the best seats, hotel accommodations, executive car service, and invitations to private events.

10 First Word

Having recently re-read a 1980s Dick Francis novel, the bloodstock world of then is unrecognisable to today’s industry

14 Ted talks

Our man reports from his recent US tour that included supervising the establishment of Stonereath Farm under Blue Diamond Stud’s new ownership

16 Girls Aloud

Cathy Grassick reports from a successful Irish Champions Festival which saw great promotion of the Irish racing and bloodstock industries

20 7-up

Amy Bennett reports on a cracking Irish Champions Festival and a St Leger meeting that saw Ballydoyle in unstoppable form

29 Gone too soon

Arrogate’s son Arcangelo secures his spot at the top of the US rankings, and Keeneland September produced a top price of $3 million

35 Trials and tribulations

Jocelyn de Moubray reviews the Arc Trials from ParisLongchamp where Warm Heart collected her second Group 1 in a fortnight

38 European stallion statistics

Courtesy of Weatherbys, featuring leading European stallions

46 Talking horses

In February, Jamie Railton launched a new podcast called On The Coalface. The consignor explains the concept behind the series

52 Paying mares owners for sex

Martin Stevens meets up with Stuart Fitzgibbon of Darby Dan Farm and discusses Winchell Thoroughbred’s unique strategy used to kick start Copper Bullet’s stud career

60 Family Power

James Thomas talks to brothers Alex and Shane Power whose fledgling career has really taken off with the pinhooked, well-sold and now Group 2-placed filly Brilliant Diamond

66 Three is NOT a crowd

The young online sales company ThoroughBid believes there is enough room in the British and Irish sales calendar for a third (online) auction house

72 An AI bloodstock agent

Byron Rogers has spent a lot of time and effort developing a machine-learning bloodstock assistant. In the first of a two-part series he explains his methodology

80 Photo finish

Two men integral to the formation of the modern bloodstock industry both made appearances at Arqana August, and even shared a private room for their bidding teams

Continuous and Auguste Rodin

Photo by Debbie Burt & Alamy

THE long journey home from Deauville was made more enjoyable with the purchase and re-reading of an iconic 1980s-written Dick Francis stud-based crime novel.

Francis always based his fictional stories on reality, but so much has changed since he penned his words

Different times

MY RETURN ON THE Dieppe to Newhaven ferry from the long weekend in Deauville after an enjoyable time at the Arqana August Sale had looked as though it would be a very boring few hours, spent in my cabin with nothing to read or watch.

My usual well-plotted pre-journey strategy of downloading a few films, TV programmes or books in order to pass the time on such occasions had been forgotten over the busy sale weekend. With no accessible wi-fi on board (the ferry’s lauded internet far too weak to even register on my phone let alone allow films to be streamed), it looked as though I had a very dull few hours ahead of me.

After a failed attempt at some sleep, I wandered up to Duty Free for some window shopping, such a bizarre mix of goods in the shops, and to buy my nephews some giant bars of Milka chocolate (a present always greeted with awe).

There was a small book stall and I browsed, not expecting to find anything to read, the stand housing trashy badly written stories; click-bait novels without a decent story line and characters devoid of personality have rather worn thin.

But, bizarrely, nestled in amongst the rom-coms and the repetitive spy stories, was a Dick Francis. And it was one of the “originals” – Banker.

As a teenager I read all of the author’s books, fell in love with every brave and daring and courageous hero, who always shrugged off broken limbs and death threats as mere inconveniences but yet was still endearingly vulnerable.

The heroes were always in touch with emotions, kind,

generous and, of course, always men and always good-looking; the James Bonds of the racing world.

Francis’s books were a massive part of my growing up experience, and were the first set of “adult” books I read with polite references to sex and love.

However, for me, the far more influential references were to the brave jockeys riding steeplechasers at thrilling speeds over fences; with hindsight I am convinced the books massively stoked my own desire to ride racehorses.

Merrick Francis, son of the late jockey and blockbuster writer, was at Arqana that weekend – he has sold his successful Lambourn Racehorse Transport business but was in France still overseeing operations – so I decided that purchase of his father’s book was meant to be.

I gleefully handed over the euros – I can’t remember the last time I bought a print version of a book – and returned to my cabin with the enjoyable prospect of revisiting my teenage crushes.

Banker, written originally in 1981, and the version I had purchased reprinted in 2014, is a tale of, as you would expect, a banker named Timothy Ekaterin, and he is our hero. He had some childhood involvement in racing due to a mother who gambled away the family fortune (would not have happened under affordability checks), but he had left the sport to concentrate on his finance career, and to bury unhappy memories.

He was approached by Oliver Knowles, a stud owner and stallion man, to help fund the purchase of a colt to stand at a fictional farm in Hertfordshire. Of course, the individual was a true Francis equine hero: he was

“As a teenager I read all of the author’s books, fell in love with every brave and daring and courageous hero, who always had the bravery to shrug off broken limbs and death threats as mere inconveniences but yet was still endearingly vulnerable

a brilliant racehorse and had won the 2,000 Guineas, finished fourth in the Derby, got back to winning ways in the King Edward VI Stakes at Royal Ascot, the “Diamond” Stakes and the Champion Stakes, which was run, as was the case then, at Newmarket.

The colt was typically handsome with a Classic pedigree and promised to propel Knowles’s small-scale stud to a new level of prominence in the bloodstock industry.

As the story unfolds Ekaterin, who had not been involved in the bloodstock industry, has to gain a quick understanding of the financing of a stallion and Francis uses this opportunity to explain how (as recently as the 1980s) that was strategised – Ekaterin finds a helpful bloodstock agent named Ursula Young to explain the money to him.

“Well, a stallion covers 40 mares in a season. Some can do more, but others get exhausted. So 40 is the accepted number,” she says.

She continues: “So to fix the stallion fee for the first three years you divide the price of the stallion by 12o, and that’s it. That’s the fee charged for the stallion to cover a mare. That’s the sum you receive if you sell your nomination.”

Ekaterin, a good man for the sums, quickly did the figures: “That means that if you sell your nomination for three years you have recovered the total amount of your original investment. And after that... every time, every year you sell your nomination, it is clear profit? And how long does that go on?”

Young said: “Ten to 15 years, depends on the stallion’s

potency. It is one of the best investments on earth!”

Easy money...!

For the purposes of the story line, and to ensure that Ekaterin’s bank was immediately on board with the investment, Francis has conveniently ignored all the things that can, and do, go wrong when a colt’s second career is developing.

This book was written in the 1980s and has not been subsequently updated. Then, as Young helpfully explains, a stallion would have in the region of 120 foals on the ground by the time his first crop reaches the racecourse. Some 35 years later those figures have exploded.

While farms still plan to “get out” of the horse by the time his stock make it to the racecourse, after dramatic shifts in management and techniques, stallions can now cover in the region of 150 to 200 mares a season, and all the figures have been dramatically extrapolated upwards.

Now a commercial stallion, who has full books of mares, could have nearly 600 foals born before he even has a runner; and the industry has been completely transformed due to the complete revision of the stallion business.

The changes have produced both good and bad outcomes the industry.

With books no longer limited to just 40, so many more mare owners have access to stallions they might wish to choose, books are not limited to just the elite few.

This, of course, can mean that better horses as whole are bred… broodmare owners can send their mares to better quality sires than they had to resort to previously.

The massive prices that developed in the 1980s for

that if you sell your nomination for three years you have recovered the total amount of your original investment?

Left: the 2014 reprint of Banker, the book bought in August on the Dieppe-Newhaven ferry, and, far left, the original hardback version produced in 1981. The image on the original cover not only captures the storyline of the book, but also the tight financial line walked by all in the bloodstock industry. But, hopefully, breeders and stud managers don’t have to deal with villains such as Calder Jackson

stock by Northern Dancer et al were created to an extent by the rarity value.

With only a handful by the ground-breaking sire coming onto the market each year, demand for stock by such sires went skywards; it made stallion nominations excessively expensive and led to the downfall of many over-extended farms as the bubble burst in association with the subsequent financial downturn.

While the industry has grown and mare owners perhaps have more opportunities, the overall broodmare bands have not expanded so much and the industry, in ways, has also contracted… the big-name sires, or the “sexy” new commercial first-crop stallions, can now take the bulk of a region’s spring coverings in a region.

It means that respectable stallions outside of the main echelon, don’t really get much of a look in.

It is such a number’s game now… a stallion struggles to succeed as a long-term proposition if he does not have large books and a stallion manager, standing a stallion perhaps not from the top bracket, has to weigh up possibly conflicting aims of filling a book whilst maintaining some level of mare quality.

Breeders, who are planning to sell the offspring, have

mare, no matter how carefully they have planned the mating, might not from that stallion’s select harem.

With such a focus on a few sires with such large book sizes it explains why that oft-term “fashion” has become so important at the foal and yearling sales.

It is also makes the sale of foals or yearlings so vital to the owner… not often can they rely on any rarity factor to boost a sale, a decent price relies on hope value of that individual created by its physique, its own pedigree and, importantly, its stallion’s profile.

WITH FASHION (aka recent stallion results or mere gossip on the sale ground) dictating so many buying decisions at the sales the breeder needs to make plenty in the sale ring from any “in vogue” yearlings in order to make up for the ones who do not meet market expectations. It is very difficult now for the more “random” sire to make a success of his job.

It is big business now – a stallion covering 150 mares at a commercial fee of £15,000 produces a turnover of £2,250,000 p.a.; his purchase price will reflect this early income and and now only the big farms with big backers can only stand a young colt with a profile that will be high

If he had been writing today, Francis’s man Knowles would have struggled to get his chance to stand the Classic winner under his farm’s own finance.

Big business brings in big investors attached by the huge gains that can be made if a stallion hits his target. And in today’s world run on bigger, faster and larger finance, bloodstock has to be able to hold its own within a myriad of investment opportunities for those with the ready cash available to make more cash.

With such big business it requires vigilance to ensure that the our industry is not merely a way to launder big money by those who with ill-gotten gains.

And as for so much of the racing industry the changes over the last half decade has seen the bigger entities getting bigger and the smaller individual units struggling to make an impact. We are in danger of producing an industry that is not vertically aspirational.

In the 21st century Francis would definitely have had to explore a differing story line for his book.

Knowles’ ambitions to break through into the higher echelons of the industry may have had to see him court a range of Middle Eastern-based investors, or breed, produce and race colts himself with a view of then selling a good one for a lot of money to a large established farm.

And, instead of a dodgy horse guru featuring as the novel’s bad man, maybe a big time money swindler would be a more appropriate crook in today’s story.

“If he had been writing today, Francis’s man Knowles would have struggled to get his chance to stand the Classic winner under his farm’s own finance

Dick Francis CBE: Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger Lifetime Award winner

TED TALKS...

are a good match.

Feed supplements to increase bone density have been meticulously researched by the company for use in the heart of the Bluegrass.

The last but not least important ingredient is the pure spring water –many of the best farms I have visited have spring water paddocks.

Kentucky Downs

VISITS TO

LEXINGTON for stud farmers are always stimulating and exciting, the constant searching for an edge to raise a good horse being the ultimate aim.

I have enjoyed several visits to Kentucky this year culminating with the purchase of a farm for Imad Al Sagar’s Blue Diamond Stud.

The 252-acre Stonereath Farm is well situated in the famous Bourbon county on Route 460 between Paris and Georgetown.

Months of due diligence and reviews of painstaking reports concluded in relief that, of the farms available, Stonereath is indeed worthy to raise a select group of mares who can qualify under the elusive “Kentucky-bred” banner I had an advantage when considering buying options as I have worked for Spring Oak, Mill Ridge, Clear Sky and Glennwood Farm – all of which gave me plenty of knowledge to draw on whilst looking for the ideal farm.

I have also lived and run a business in Lexington, have visited annually to consign horses and have always visited as many properties as possible, seeing many of the farms that can raise a good horse.

The availability of fresh pasture and clean water is pressed home right from Pony Club horse management classes, but it is so important and is a maxim held true by successful breeders world wide.

The Stonereath land was tested for us by The Farm Clinic, run by the Allman family, and gives a clear indication that there is a phosphorous rich pasture that can raise an elite racehorse.

We had visits to Hallway Feeds and Woodford Feeds and we will be able to balance any deficiencies in the land with the best feed available.

Hallway Feeds is found in downtown Lexington on Louden Avenue and is a family-run feed company that has fed 13 Kentucky Derby winners – five reared on the vine of land bought by Imad Al Sagar.

It soon became obvious that Hallway Feeds and Bourbon county

Kitten’s Joy’s owner-breeder Ken Ramsey even bought the piece of land that houses the spring’s source, just so he could control the water quality.

For water needs, Moses Drilling was our first port of call as we would like to reinstate the aquifer and drill down to the sulphur-smelling water table.

All that’s left is to add mares with good pedigrees, mate them well and

manage the property with good a horseman or woman!

Labour in the horse industry is difficult with many farms struggling to find staff with the experience needed, but Kentucky is fortunate to have a thriving community of excellent horsemen and women, many with Mexican descent, and whose work ethic is second to none.

As in every rural community, there are challenges involved in getting decent internet access, and installation of Elon Musk’s Starlink broadband system is a viable alternative to AT and T.

We’ve had meetings with solar panel companies regarding electricity supply for the staff accommodation, office and barns.

With a 50 per cent grant, 50 per cent depreciation and 30 per

Ted Voute reports on Blue Diamond Stud’s exciting new property purchase, he visits

Turf track and is overwhelmed by the number of millionaires and billionaires at Keeneland September

Blue Diamond Stud’s new Kentucky base, Stonereath Farm

Photos courtesy of Blue Diamond Stud and by Amy Lanigan

cent tax credit – in two years the panels will have paid for themselves.

We have also been engaging vets and farriers and, most importantly, the foot soldiers to run the farm.

We even had a visit to the Paris City Hall to transfer the title on the trucks and convert to the farm plates so they can tow 2600lb in a trailer –it has been a steep learning curve!

KEENELAND SUNDAY

pre-sale is always a quiet day so I decided to head down to Kentucky Downs race track for a day’s racing.

On its website the course states that it is home to “America’s only European-style (all Turf) racecourse, and at one mile and five-sixteenths in length, it is one of the longest tracks in the nation. Unlike other racetracks, which are typically oval, the course at Kentucky Downs is kidney-shaped, featuring undulation and a unique right-hand bend.”

Heading down the I-65 I passed the biggest lithium car battery factory in the world, as well as buildings housing casks of bourbon, turning gently till maturity, possibly to become Jack Daniel’s.

Half an hour outside the city of Nashville is The Mint Casino and Kentucky Downs, which was enjoying its seven-day long meet.

The racecourse entrance is secondary to the casino with the packed crowd pulling one armed bandits so financing the incredible prize-money for this almost hidden grass-only racetrack.

The stands are akin to a posh point-to-point and the racecourse very similar with railings and undulating terrain.

Unique for the US: the kidney-shaped Turf-only Kentucky Downs racetrack

However, the prize-money was on a different scale and included multiple $1,000,000 races, $250,000 restricted Keeneland graduate races and $150,000 maidens.

Horses bred in Kentucky also get a significant extra share of the prize pot from the Kentucky Thoroughbred Development Fund.

For example, a Kentucky-bred winner of a maiden special weight at Kentucky Downs would earn the winner’s share of a $150,000 purse, while a winner born out of state would receive a share of $80,000.

I am sure European jockeys would feel at home riding here, perhaps more so than the locals. It is very easy to get here as there are direct flights from London Heathrow to Nashville, and the airport is just 30 minutes from the track.

I wonder how many Kentuckybreds are catalogued in the Tattersalls Horses In Training Sale this year?

MONDAY saw the arrival of Keeneland Book 1 and I restricted myself to looking at the Curlin fillies, unfortunately, I was somewhat disappointed in the quality of his stock.

Glennwood Farm did sell a particularly nice filly, who ended up making $650,000, but in general I found the sire’s draft disappointing.

Book 1 in any sale is a vendor’s nightmare – everyone wants its existence but no one wants to sell in it!

And although most million dollar

horses come from it, the sessions also produce the most RNAs and outs, which ran around 50 per cent of the catalogue.

The remainder offered is a group of horses who manage to pass the vet but also the numerous expert eyes which all tend to select which are the best horses. Everyone is good at the selection process and all land on roughly the same horses.

America is currently seemingly stuffed full of millionaires and billionaires all wanting to team up with others and play the game in partnerships in order to reduce their risk.

It’s a fickle market, but when your playing with million dollar chips the stakes are high, yet everyone wants to find the next Flightline or Baaeed.

Watching millionaire and billionaire breeders selling, or staying, in partnerships; it was quite a humbling experience as a voyeur.

All the chat was still focused on the Saratoga fatalities and a possible switch to synthetic surfaces.

If indeed this were to happen it could be a game changer and draw US racing even closer to the European racing.

The leading sires’ title would change dramatically drawing it ever closer to a Turf-like statistic leaving behind the A. P. Indy line, and as yet unconsidered sires would rise from the ashes to change the breeding industry and with it the buying patterns of the participants.

The jurisdiction could align and become one and interchangeable and for the first time in decades, or at least since Gainsway stood Irish River, Riverman and Vaguely Noble.

We could get a joined-up industry, interchangeable and unified in both sales and racing.

....Girls aloud

THE WONDERFUL SPECTACLE that has become the Irish Champions Festival was a fantastic way to celebrate and appreciate the importance of Irish racing and breeding in Europe and, indeed, globally.

The weekend saw increased crowds flock to Leopardstown and The Curragh, despite strong sporting competition coming from events such as the Irish Open Golf at the K Club, the Rugby World Cup and even an Irish European soccer qualifier.

Both racetracks had done an incredible job to ensure that the course and the facilities were in tip top shape for patrons, both equine and human, and their teams must take huge credit for such an excellent job.

It was fantastic to see so many people enjoying the crème de la crème of the bloodstock world. This year’s Festival attracted some of the best horses from Ireland, Britain and France to compete in top class Irish racing and it was also great to see, as a crowning spectacle, Aidan O’Brien train his 4,000th winner on Sunday at The Curragh, a marvellous achievement.

Steve Parkin’s Clipper Logistics enjoyed a fantastic weekend with Group winners at both Leopardstown and The Curragh, courtesy of Flight Plan and Fallen Angel.

Parkin has been a huge supporter of racing and breeding on both

sides of the Irish Sea and has recently purchased Dullingham Park Stud. His sponsorship at Leopardstown was rewarded with victory in his own race, the Group 2 Dullingham Park Stakes with Flight Plan.

He bred Fallen Angel out of his race filly Agnes Stewart and many congratulations must go to Parkin’s bloodstock advisor Joe Foley.

It was a wonderful weekend of racing, but also of fashion, food and entertainment; it was a superb Festival for all the family. I have heard nothing but rave reviews from those who attended.

I was especially pleased to see that Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) had pop-ups all around the tracks highlighting and showcasing to the racegoers the important facts and figures of the industry.

Sometimes these numbers and statistics can be forgotten amongst all the excitement of such a big day, but it was nice to see the economic relevance of the sport being promoted on such a big occasion.

The Irish thoroughbred racing and breeding industries are inextricably linked and rely on each other for supply and demand of high-quality thoroughbred horses at home, as well as our export markets.

There are Irish breeders in every county in Ireland providing vital employment and investment in rural communities.

In light of such a fantastic weekend at the Irish Champions Festival it is difficult for many to see what is perceived as the threat

Cathy Grassick, chairman of the Irish Thoroughbred Breeders’ Association, reviews the ever-improving, and successful, Irish Champions Festival

Trainer Aidan O’Brien gives his 4000th winning de-brief after Henry Longfellow’s win in the Group 1 Vincent O’Brien National Stakes at The Curragh

of the Gambling Regulation Bill that could undermine the viability of racing in Ireland.

This Gambling Regulation Bill has been to the forefront of many minds in the bloodstock industry in Ireland as it is currently at the fourth stage of the Oireachtas and moving closer in the process of becoming law.

The racing and breeding industries in Ireland are highly supportive of gambling regulation and encourage constructive moves to protect vulnerable people and children, while maintaining a strong and vibrant thoroughbred business.

THERE IS EXCELLENT work being done by HRI and other stakeholders in the industry such as the Irish Thoroughbred Breeders’ Association, the Irish Racehorse Trainers Association and the Association of Irish Racehorse Owners to, hopefully, ensure that minister James Browne can deliver legislation that protects the people of Ireland from the threat of gambling problems without adversely affecting the Irish bloodstock and racing industries.

It is vital to the thoroughbred breeding and racing communities that, while providing adequate and necessary regulations, our business does not fall foul of unintended consequences that could have severe economic repercussions.

This indigenous and rural industry makes a significant

horses in Europe and third globally behind only America and Australia. In 2021, 20 of the world’s best 100 racehorses were born in Ireland. The Irish thoroughbred breeding industry is incredibly diverse, ranging from global bloodstock entities with farms and stallions in several countries, to several thousand breeders who own four or five broodmares.

Across the world, Irish horses, breeders, trainers, racehorse owners and jockeys command the highest respect amongst their

If anyone needs to see proof of that they need look no further than the Irish Champions Festival.

One of HRI’s pop-up infographics on show at the Irish Champions Festival

A good Plan: Flight Plan wins the Group 2 Dullingham Park Stakes for the sponsor, Steve Parkin’s newly established farm in the UK

M OHAATHER

THE EXPLOSIVE GROUP 1-WINNING MILER

FIRST YEARLINGS 2023 SUSSEX STAKES STAR

Won a vintage renewal defeating Group 1 winners Circus Maximus, Kameko and Siskin

A GROUP WINNER

AT TWO, THREE AND FOUR

SHOWCASING’S BEST SON

Official rating: 123 | Timeform: 129

“

” I haven't seen as brilliant a closing burst since Dancing Brave mowed down a mega field in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe and that was 35 years ago.

- Brough Scott on the Gr.1 Sussex Stakes (The Times, 30th July 2020)

A fine stint for Ballydoyle was topped by Auguste Rodin’s Irish Champions Stakes victory, and, inset, Continuous’ win in the St Leger. Jockey Ryan Moore made the most of this year’s improved scheduling to take the opportunity to ride both the Classic winner as well as the Leopardstown hero

IT IS A LONG TIME since the result of the St Leger has excited much interest in Flat breeders, with winners of the world’s oldest Classic bound almost without exception for the NH ranks in their second careers.

The current fixation on speed means that even the most talented of winners is seen as “tarnished” with the staying brush, with any Flat mares appearing in his future books as the exception rather than the rule.

It seems too much to hope that this will change with the victory of Continuous on Town Moor in this year’s last Classic, but surely the pedigree of Aidan O’Brien’s seventh winner of the St Leger will raise at least an eyebrow of Flat interest?

It is undeniable that the European stallion ranks are packed to the rafters with descendants of Sadler’s Wells and, to widen the net a little, positively saturated with the blood of Northern Dancer – albeit at rather more of a remove these days.

So then, will a son of the late Japanese sire

Auguste Rodin’s Irish Champions Stakes win headed a fine late summer stint for Ballydoyle, including a seventh St Leger success for Aidan O’Brien, writes Amy Bennett, who is hoping that the Doncaster winner Continuous, by the late Japanese sire Heart’s Cry, might eventually secure himself a place at stud within the Flat ranks

Heart’s Cry provide a little taste of diversity somewhere down the line?

Perhaps not – despite being a Group 3 winner at two, Continuous has committed the cardinal sin of winning over 1m4f when landing the Great Voltigeur Stakes (G2) at York, as well as the 1m6f St Leger (G1) – but his talent is undeniable.

The Coolmore partners have already reaped great rewards from the sendingtop-Galileo-mares-to-Japan strategy to the court of Deep Impact, and they have hit the jackpot once again with Continuous... this time with a different sire albeit one who, in common with Deep Impact, is a son of the breed-shaping Sunday Silence.

Heart’s Cry registered his sole top-level victory in his native Japan when downing the mighty Deep Impact in the Arima Kinen (G1) in 2005. The following year he won the Dubai Sheema Classic (G1) and was third to Hurricane Run in the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes (G1).

Retired to stand at Shadai Stallion Station, Heart’s Cry was pensioned from stud duties in June 2021, and died in March this year.

Although he has been a top-class sire in Japan, European breeders have not seen many of his progeny in action.

Cheval Grand and Yoshida (a dual Grade 1 winner in the US and now at stud at WinStar Farm) failed to fire in the UK, while Just

A Way, a Group 1 winner in Dubai, was unplaced in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe (G1), while Suave Richard was third in the 2019 Dubai Sheema Classic (G1).

It is noteworthy that Continuous’s dam, the Navan maiden winner Fluff (Galileo), has produced only the handicap winner National Ballet from two earlier trysts with

Deep Impact, but has hit the jackpot when sent to Heart’s Cry.

From the family of the Classic winners Dancing Rain and Dr Devious, she is a full-sister to the Group 1-winning juvenile and Classic-placed Maybe (Galileo), who, of course, produced the Classic winner and sire Saxon Warrior (Deep Impact), as well as Group 3 winner Drumroll, from her own Japanese adventures.

Fluff also visited Lord Kanaloa while in Japan, by whom she has a juvenile filly, but she is now back in Ireland where she has foaled a yearling colt and a filly foal, both by Wootton Bassett.

A week earlier, Coolmore had reaped more

The Coolmore partners have already reaped great rewards from the sending-top-Galileomares-to-Japan strategy

Henry Longfellow: the son of Dubawi impressed in the Vincent O’Brien National Stakes (G1)

A unique achievement: a delighted David Egan and Eldar Eldarov secured a rare Leger double

SEA THE MOON STUDY OF MAN

CHAMPION SIRE IN GERMANY SIRE OF 4 GROUP 1 WINNERS

EXCITING FIRST CROP RUNNERS IN 2023

• Sire in 2023 of 6 Group Winners of 10 Group races

FANTASTIC MOON – Gr.1 German Derby, Gr.2 Prix Niel, Gr.3 Derby Trial and Gr.3 Preis des Winterfavoriten at 2

MUSKOKA – Gr.1 German Oaks (his other runners KASSADA and SEA THE LADY were 2nd and 3rd), Gr.3 Brümmerhofer Stuten-Meile and Listed Henkel Stutenpreis.

ASSISTENT – Gr.2 Grosser Hansa Preis, Gr.2 Carl Jaspers Preis and Listed Grand Prix Aufgalopp.

TERM OF ENDEARMENT –Gr.3 Give Thanks Stakes and 3rd Gr.3 Lanwades Stud Fillies Stakes

KASSADA – Gr.3 Diana Trial and 2nd Gr.1 German Oaks

SELENAIA – Gr.3 Honeymoon Stakes

• A SUCCESSFUL FIRST CROP SIRE IN 2023 WITH AN IMPRESSIVE 36% WINNERS TO RUNNERS

• Already sire of:

DEEPONE (dual winner and Stakes-placed), GHORGAN (debut winner of BBAG Sales race), FRANCOPHONE (debut winner), JUBILEE WALK (novice winner) and LINGUA FRANCA (novice winner)

• Winner of 3 races at 2 & 3, including the ‘Stallion Making’ Gr.1 French Derby and £1,033,142

• The only son of legendary DEEP IMPACT at stud in England, sire of AUGUSTE RODIN – winner of the Gr.1 English Derby, Gr.1 Irish Derby and Gr.1 Irish Champion Stakes in 2023

BOBBY'S KITTEN

Sire of:

SANDRINE (Winner of 4 Group races, including Gr.2 Park Stakes (in 2023), Gr.2 Lennox Stakes, Gr.2 Duchess of Cambridge Stakes and Gr.3 Albany Stakes (also Gr.1-placed x2). Now a Group winner at 2, 3 and 4); MONAASIB (Gr.2 placed), KITTY KITANA (Gr.3 placed x2), FIGHTING KING (Listed-placed), etc.

Don't miss their yearlings selling at the upcoming sales

rewards from its seam of golden Japanese covers as August Rodin (Deep Impact) bounced back from his flop in the King George to defeat stablemate Luxembourg (Camelot) and the game filly Nashwa (Frankel) in the Irish Champion Stakes (G1).

Just as his victories in the Epsom Derby (G1) and Irish Derby (G1) eclipsed his failure in the 2,000 Guineas (G1), so his Leopardstown romp has made up for his defeat at Ascot.

Auguste Rodin announced his arrival on the big stage in 2022 when winning the Champions Juvenile Stakes (G2) at the same meeting, which this year went the way of Diego Velazquez (Frankel), who stayed on well to justify odds-on favouritism and put himself in the Classic picture.

A day later his stablemate Henry Longfellow made up for the late-declared

non-appearance of City Of Troy (Justify) when romping home in the National Stakes (G1).

Henry Longfellow is yet another top level racehorse bred on the cross of Dubawi and Galileo – he is out of the seven-time Group 1 heroine Minding and his victory has come 19 years after Dubawi landed the same race.

Dalham Hall Stud’s super sire followed up 30 minutes later when Eldar Eldarov completed the surprisingly rare double of the St Leger (G1) and the Irish St Leger (G1), claiming the latter race 12 months after his success at Doncaster and after a fairly moderate run of form this season.

Dubawi’s sire sons enjoyed their own good weekend at Leopardstown and The Curragh, with Flight Plan landing the Dullingham Park Stakes (G2) for Night Of Thunder and Fallen Angel giving first-crop sire Too Darn Hot a breakthrough first top-level success in the Moyglare Stud Stakes (G1).

First-season sires firing in winners

Bred by Steve Parkin’s Branton Court Stud, Fallen Angel became her sire’s first winner in May, his first black-type performer when

A bounteous summer in the sprint division with new names at the top

THE SPRINTING DIVISION has been the gift that keeps on giving this year.

Shaquille (Charm Spirit) made headlines when scooping top prizes at Royal Ascot and the July Festival, and Live In The Dream created the story of the meeting when denting some big reputations to land the Nunthorpe Stakes (G1) at York’s Ebor Festival.

Neither Live In The Dream’s trainer Adam West nor jockey Sean Kirrane had previously won so much as a Listed race prior to the 5f dash, but their son of Prince Of Lir gave them a red-letter day when defeating last year’s winner Highfield Princess (Night Of Thunder) and the King’s Stand Stakes winner Bradsell (Tasleet).

Bred by Lorna Doyle out of the unraced Approaching Autumn (New Approach), the four-year-old gelding, who cost only £24,000 at the 2020 Goffs Sportsman’s Sale, is a half-brother to the Listed-placed handicap winner Live In The Moment (Zebedee).

His sire Prince Of Lir was sold to stand in India last year, but he began his stud career at Joe Foley’s Ballyhane Stud, where he sired the Royal Ascot-winning juvenile The Lir Jet in his first crop.

It is interesting to note that Foley snapped up Approaching Autumn for 35,000gns, sold in-foal to James Garfield, at last year’s Tattersalls December Mares Sale.

Having been sent off favourite at York, Highfield Princess was on a retrieval mission at The Curragh for the Flying Five Stakes (G1) on Day 1 of the Irish Champions Festival, but she managed only fifth.

Instead, the spoils went the way of another surprise sprint winner in Moss Tucker, who defeated Get Ahead (Showcasing) by half a

length, with Equality (Equiano) in third.

A dual Listed winner and successful in August’s Phoenix Sprint Stakes (G3) over 6f, Moss Tucker is by the former Coolmore inmate Excelebration, who now stands at the Moroccan National Stud.

Live In The Dream: the surprise Nunthorpe Stakes (G1) winner

Henry Longfellow is yet another top level racehorse bred on the cross of Dubawi and Galileo

runner-up in the Listed Star Stakes in July, then his first Group winner when triumphing in the Sweet Solera Stakes (G3) in August, and, finally, his first Group 1 winner.

Her dam Agnes Stewart (Lawman) was denied her own Group 1 success when beaten half a length into second by Together Forever – dam of this season’s star juvenile City Of Troy – in the Fillies’ Mile (G1) in 2024.

The dam of four winners, she is also responsible for Divine Jewel (Frankel), who was Listed-placed at Longchamp at three and this season runner-up again in Listed company at Chester, as well as being beaten only a head in the Stanerra Stakes (G3).

Just four days after Fallen Angel’s smart Group 1 victory, Darnation, another daughter of Too Darn Hot, added a second Group success to her tally when landing the

May Hill Stakes (G2) at Doncaster.

Already successful in the Prestige Stakes (G3) at Goodwood in late August for ownerbreeder Newtown Anner Stud, the filly hacked up at Doncaster by 3l.

She is out of the unraced Monday Monday (Galileo), a half-sister to the 1,000 Guineas

The now five-year-old gelding was bred by Donal Spring out of the Pastoral Pursuits mare Rare Symphony, a winner both on the Flat and over hurdles. Perhaps her more recent matings are slanted more towards that hurdles win – she has a two-year-old by Poet’s Word and a yearling filly by Sumbal.

A day earlier, another top sprint contest saw a shock result, with Shaquille a well-beaten favourite behind Regional in the Betfair Sprint Cup (G1) at Haydock.

As in the Nunthorpe, the victory also gave connections their first top-level success – trainer Ed Bethell and jockey Callum Rodriguez claiming the spoils.

It was also a first Group success for the five-year-old Regional, who won the Listed Achilles Stakes over 5f at Haydock in June, before finishing a close fifth in the Nunthorpe.

Bred by Razza del Sole Societa Agricola out of the Italian Listed winner Favulusa (Danehill), the gelding was purchased for just 3,500gns at the Tattersalls July Sale in 2021 for the syndicate Future Champions Racing Regional.

He was sold then by Richard Fahy’s Musley Bank Stables having previously been in the ownership of Isa Salman Al Khalifa (Regional).

He won on his race debut in 2020, had a couple more runs for the yard (including when fourth to the subsequent 2021 Nunthorpe Stakes (G1) winner Winter Power in the Listed Harry Rosebery Stakes at Ayr that September) before an enforced lay off caused him to change trainers. He made a winning reapperance at Haydock in September 2021 for Bethell..

The gelding’s dam has a yearling filly by Too Darn Hot, and she was purchased at the Tattersalls December Foal Sale for 46,000gns last year by Julie Wood.

(G1) and Irish Oaks (G1) heroine Blue Bunting, a daughter of Dynaformer. Darnation may have run in the Rockfel Stakes (G2) by the time you read this.

Fifth placed behind Fallen Angel in the Sweet Solera was Carolina Reaper, also by Too Darn Hot, bred by Lordship Stud and picked up for only 46,000gns by Johnston Racing in Book 2 of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sales.

The filly boasts an attractive page – she is out of the Listed-winning Shamardal mare Dark Promise, herself a half-sister to Lordship’s Oaks (G1) heroine Love Divine, but her price tag fell well below the average price of £118,304 garnered by her sire’s first crop at last year’s yearling sales.

However, horses are unaware of their prices and Carolina Reaper was well enough regarded to line up in the Listed Chesham

New Group 1 sprint winners: above, Regional, and, below, Moss Tucker

Darnation, another daughter of Too Darn Hot, added a second Group success to her tally

Stakes at Royal Ascot as a once-raced maiden, finishing sixth.

She broke her maiden in style at Newmarket in July and went on to become her sire’s second Group winner when triumphing by a neck in the ZukunftsRennen (G3) at Baden-Baden.

Doncaster’s St Leger meeting also proved a happy hunting ground for another of Darley’s freshman sires in Blue Point.

The son of Shamardal has held sway at the top of the first-crop sires’ table since the start of the season, and few now would bet against him scooping top honours by season’s end.

With 35 winners on the board by the end of the St Leger meeting, he is well in advance of his nearest rival Soldier’s Call,

and was the first of his compatriots to break seven figures in prize-money as well.

Numbers and prize-money are the name of the game, but breeders still want to see some class as well, and Blue Point has performed in that category as well, with seven black-type horses.

BIG EVS gave his sire a first stakes success when landing the Listed Windsor Castle Stakes at Royal Ascot, and three months later, Mick Appleby’s charge became Blue Point’s first Group victor when making all in the Flying Childers (G2).

Over-faced when entered for the Nunthorpe Stakes (G1) in August, the colt was dominant back among his peers, and it will be no surprise to see further success for the Rabbah Bloodstock-bred colt, who is out of a winning Oasis Dream daughter of crack juvenile Queen’s Logic (Grand Lodge).

A trip stateside is the next plan for the speed ball.

“Once Big Evs got three or four lengths up on them, I knew they weren’t going to catch him,” reported Appleby post-race and recorded in the Racing Post

“You’ve got to be at the front on this ground. It wasn’t ideal for him but he got the job done well.

“He’ll go straight to the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint. It’s 5f at Santa Anita and should be ideal for him.”

Blue Point came close to siring a famous juvenile double at the St Leger meeting when Rosallion, a Listed winner at Ascot in July, finished third in the Champagne Stakes (G2), behind the exciting-looking Iberian (Lope De Vega), while his daughter Les Bleus was third to Darnation in the May Hill.

Lying in second place by number of first-crop winners at the end of the St Leger meeting, Ballyhane Stud’s Soldier’s Call has been quietly chipping away all season, amassing 23 winners.

His juveniles are also hitting their stride in terms of black-type as well, with Dawn Charger triumphing in the Prix Eclipse (G3) in September.

A previous runner-up in the Prix d’Arenberg (G3), the race in which Soldier’s Call made his own stakes breakthrough in 2018, the filly was bred by trainer Jim Bolger out of the unraced New Approach mare Dushlan, and was picked up for €40,000 at the Tattersalls Ireland September Yearling Sale last year by Karl and Kelly Burke.

The very first race of Irish Champions Festival weekend also gave a stakes race breakthrough to Invincible Army, who stands at Yeomanstown Stud.

His daughter Kitty Rose, having broken her maiden in late August, gave a good account of herself to win the Listed Ingabelle Stakes over an extended 7f. She is out of the daughter of the winning Choisir mare Varnish and was bred by Carmel Stud.

Big Evs: lined himself up for a trip across the Atlantic later this autumn with his Flying Childers win

LOT 33

Bay colt by Frankel

Ex Prefer

From a prolific black-type winning family incl. SWs

Hearthstead Maison (G3), Rave Reviews, (LR), Dirgam (LR). Immediate family of Groom Dancer

LOT 203

Bay colt by Dubawi

Ex Worth Waiting

Dam winner of 5 races incl.

Dahlia S (G2), Prix Minerve (G3), Aphrodite S (LR), 4th Prix Vermeille (G1)

LOT 245

Ch colt by Frankel

Ex Bahia Breeze

Dam dual Listed winner, placed 11 times incl.

Sandown Mile (G2), Prix

Jean Romanet (G2), Rose Of Lancaster S (G3), Princess Elizabeth S (G3)

RARE JEWELS

TATTERSALLS OCTOBER YEARLING SALES

1641 C Invincible Spirit / Magical Journey

1734  F Expert Eye / Ruffled

1748 F Havana Gold / Sightseeing

1761 C Study of Man / Stagiaire

1767 C Ulysses / Surprise

1780 F Cracksman / Travelling

1783 C Golden Horn / Tuolumne Meadows

1793 C Havana Gold / Want The Fairytale

1797 F Expert Eye / Yaa Mous

1808  F Invincible Army / Always Gold

1818  F Land Force / Anya

1834  C Territories / Beyond Fashion

1838 C Ulysses / Boadicee

1852 C Ulysses / Chapel Choir

1879 C Without Parole / Dularame

1883 C Masar / Eager Beaver

1901 C Kameko / Fourth Way

1905 F Invincible Army / Galactic Heroine

1914 F Ghaiyyath / Gravity Flow

1917 C Invincible Army / Gwael

1932 F Earthlight / Hoyamy

BOOK 3

1567 C Cracksman / Flying Cloud

1585 C Showcasing / Havergate

1604 C Mohaather / Itiqad

1973 C Land Force / Lyricist

1985  C Ghaiyyath / Mehronissa

BOOK 4

2060 C Tasleet / Bright Girl

2066 F Earthlight / Dawn Delight

Take a good look at our draft which includes some rare jewels...

Gone too soon

The early loss of Arrogate is being felt keenly as his son Arcangelo heads to the top of this year’s US three-year-old division, writes

IT WAS YET another year of wondering who the top three-yearold colt would be as we went into the Saratoga meet over the summer, but Arcangelo (Arrogate) made it clear he’s the front runner for the spot after a length victory in the Grade 1 Travers Stakes, writes Melissa Bauer-Herzog.

The colt burst onto the scene a week after Mage (Good Magic) won the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby when he won the Peter Pan Stakes (G3) on his stakes debut.

A month later he secured a Classic with

victory in the Grade 1 Belmont Stakes before connections gave him a mid-season break before the Travers.

His accomplishments would have all but guaranteed him a spot at stud, no matter his sire, but being the best runner by Arrogate ensures his connections will be courting plenty of offers from farms around the world.

Sadly, Arrogate had just three seasons in his second career, but has already sired five Grade 1 winners with his final crop of juveniles hitting the track this season.

While none of Arrogate’s juveniles have won a stakes race so far this year, the stallion’s four juvenile stakes performers as of September 15 is the fourth most of any stallion. That group is led by the Grade 3 Schylerville runner-up Saratoga Secret.

Justify, another young stallion, leads the all North American stallions by juvenile stakes winners with four.

Named Australia’s champion freshman sire a few months ago – the first US-based shuttle stallion to do that since More Than Ready – Justify is proving to be a top stallion

Melissa Bauer-Herzog

The Belmont winner Arcangelo takes the Grade 1 Travers Stakes by a length under jockey Javier Castellano for trainer Jena Antonucci

around the world with 13 worldwide juvenile stakes winners from those early crops, including graded stakes winners in five different countries, led by four Grade 2-winning juveniles including the top European two-year-old City Of Troy.

His first crop of three-year-olds are performing just as well with six stakes winners, and they include a Dirt sprint Grade 1 winner as well as a Turf Grade 1 winner.

Arabian Lion won the Woody Stephens on the Belmont under card to give Justify his first Grade 1 winner in June, but the colt

had to settle for third in the H. Allen Jerkens Memorial (G1).

That race saw another sophomore stallion sire the winner – Army Mule’s One In Vermillion took the top spot, while Verifying, another by Justify, finished second.

Tragic breakdowns lead to investigation

However, in what was a rough summer in Saratoga, the race was marred in tragedy when New York Thunder (Nyquist) looked like he’d be an easy winner before breaking down a 16th of a mile from the wire.

It was the second high profile breakdown during a meet riddled with injuries.

A few weeks before that tragedy, the racing world had came together to mourn the loss of Maple Leaf Mel (Cross Traffic), who had looked like another sure Grade 1 winner before her fatal injury.

The filly was only a few strides before the wire in the Grade 1 Test Stakes when she fell and had to be euthanized.

Pretty Mischievous (Into Mischief) was the first to cross the line in that race, but owner-breeder Godolphin forewent the winner’s presentation and trainer Brendan

IT WAS A STRONG OPENING to the 2023 Keeneland September Yearling Sale and the two-day Book 1 sale saw 23 yearlings fetching seven figures.

In what turned into another sales ring coronation for Into Mischief, the stallion’s $3 million sale topper (Lot 261) purchased by Sonson, Woodford and West Point with LEB, led home the stallion’s 11 seven-figure yearlings sold during the book.

Those horses helped him make history – with 14 Into Mischief yearlings sold for seven figures this yearling sales season, it is one more than Storm Cat and three more than Northern Dancer.

The sire’s’s sale-topping colt, who is the most expensive horse sold at the sale since 2019, comes with a stacked pedigree.

Bred by Repole Stable and sold by Lane’s End, he is a half-brother to the Grade 1-winning Outwork (Uncle Mo) and to the stakesplaced Nonna’s Boy (Distorted Humor). The duo are out of the Grade 1-placed Nonna Mia (Empire Maker).

The mare is far from the only stakes producer in the family with her own stakes-winning dam producing the multiple Grade 2 winner Cairo Prince (Pioneerof the Nile) among her stakes performers.

Overall, there are 11 stakes runners named on the page, and there could soon be more – Nonna Mia’s daughter Nonna Bella (Stay Thirsty) is dam of this year’s impressive Saratoga debut juvenile winner Fierceness (City Of Light). He is the dam’s third foal and first runner.

“Beautiful colt,” said Terry Finley of West Point. “I was up at Saratoga when Fierceness won. I was awestruck by that performance. Young family [and] with Into Mischief, you don’t have to say much [more].

“He was always at Lane’s End so we knew a little about his upbringing. We are really excited and have a new group of partners who are in on him. We will try to get to the Derby in 2025.”

The colt’s breeder was also the leading buyer during the first book with 21 horses purchased for a gross of $8.135 million and average

of $387,381. The group was led by another Lane’s End consignee bought by West Bloodstock on behalf of the owner for $725,000.

A Quality Road colt, he is the first foal out of the stakes-winning Great Dane Sister (Will Take Charge) (Lot 144). His Grade 2-placed dam is a half-sister Grade 3 winner Ocho Ocho Ocho (Street Sense) with the family including the graded stake winners Divine Oath (Broken Vow), Auntie Joy (Uncle Mo), and Interactif (Broken Vow).

“I’m trying to be the No. 1 buyer and No. 1 seller at the same sale!” Repole joked. “It’s just a great sale. I love the game whether it’s claiming a $25,000 horse or buying stallions or buying mares or weanlings or two-year-olds. I just have a lot of fun with the game.”

In all, eight different stallions had yearlings sell for $1 million or more with Uncle Mo second to Into Mischief on four.

Into Mischief and Uncle Mo controlled the top nine prices with Uncle Mo also the sire of the most expensive filly at $2.5 million.

$3 million top price: the best at Keeneland September since 2019

Walsh gave the blanket of flowers to Maple Leaf Mel’s connections.

“It’s just cruel what happened,” said Walsh after the race. “I just feel terrible for Melanie [Giddings, trainer] and that whole team. That must be gut-wrenching. My filly ran her race, but that’s another story. I don’t know what to think right now.”

After the string of breakdowns on both the Dirt and Turf at Saratoga during the meet, the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority [HISA] worked with the New York Racing Association [NYRA] to put additional safety procedures into place.

The updated procedures enacted through the closing week included a HISA veterinarian take part in the pre-race medical inspections of entered horses, while a Track Surface Advisory Group was formed to review both surfaces.

“NYRA is strongly supportive of the work HISA is doing here in New York State and throughout the country to enhance safety and protect the integrity of the sport,” NYRA’s vice president of communications Pat McKenna said. “NYRA welcomes additional veterinary scrutiny of horses at Saratoga Race Course and we are working

Purchased by Gavin O’Connor on behalf of John Stewart – who was second only to Repole by numbers purchased on 10 – from the Denali Stud consignment, the WinStar Farm-bred filly is a half-sister to the three-time Grade 1 winner Shedaresthedevil (Daredevil) and Grade 3-placed Mojovation (Quality Road) (Lot 337).

THEIR WINNING DAM Starship Warpspeed (Congrats) is out of a half-sister to Grade 2 winner and the multiple Grade 1-placed Crafty C.T. (Crafty Shaw).

“She is a lovely filly,” O’Connor said. “I know the family personally; I worked for WinStar for five years.”

He added: “She is an unbelievable broodmare prospect. The residual value is there; we feel like we have a safe asset. [The price] was a little bit more than we wanted to go, but John is a buyer.

“John was on the phone, and he was giving us the clearance to keep going. We’ve had an incredible sale, and I think we are sealed up now. We’re done, we have a total of 10. For John as a first-time owner, he has a really exciting stable of horses.”

A diverse group of buyers were on the grounds for the first few days of selling with 16 different ownerships buying the 23 seven-figure offerings.

The figures for the first book were mostly higher than last year with 221 horses bringing $116,925,000, for an average of $529,072 and $400,000 median. The gross rose by 2.87 per cent, while the average increased 2.41 per cent. The median did see a 11.11 per cent dip from the $450,000 last year for 220 sold.

“The depth and diversity of the market are really encouraging,” said Keeneland vice president of sales Tony Lacy. “It was great to see new money still here. Japanese buyers were very active today. People are saying they are enjoying themselves again.

“It’s good to see people happy. The average is up a little bit, the median is down a little bit. There was some softness in places. There’s no doubt about that. But when you look at last year’s comparable figures, we beat the gross over what was a really strong Book 1 by $3.5 million.”

closely with HISA’s Track Surface Advisory Group to ensure we are providing the safest possible environment for racing and training at Saratoga.”

The Saratoga meet concluded with Nutella Fella (Runhappy) winning the Hopeful Stakes (G1) to put a cap on the meet and make a noise in the juvenile division. While the colt came into the race with a debut win, he wasn’t given much respect on the tote board with odds of 54.50-1.

Through the early stages of the race, it looked as if bettors had made the right decision with the colt trailing in last place,

Far left, the sale top lot, the colt by the sale-leading sire Into Mischief, and out of the Grade 1-placed Nonna Mia (Empire Maker), is a half-brother to the Grade 1 winner Outwork. The colt was bred by Repole Stable and sold for $3 million

Below, the top-priced filly is by Uncle Mo and cost her new connections $2.5 million. She is a half-sister to the three-time Grade 1-placed Shedaresthedevil

but that changed in the stretch.

The colt rallied from his position to win by a length and a half.

It was the first Grade 1 winner for champion sprinter Runhappy, who is quietly sitting amongst the top stallions, and the colt is from a strong fourth-crop group by the sire.

His 12 stakes winners from his first few crops puts him sixth in the group , while he has sired 19 stakes performers putting him eighth on that ranking.

The stallion is also one of just four North American stallions to have sired a juvenile Grade 1 winner this year.

Runhappy wasn’t the only fourth-crop sire to end the Saratoga meet with a big winner after Outwork sired his second straight Grade 1 Spinaway Stakes winner – on the final Sunday of the meet Brightwork secured a maiden Grade 1 victory.

This year’s fourth-crop sires’ class has proven to be a strong one and is led by Not This Time (Giant’s Causeway).

That sire’s nine stakes winners this year are led by the Grade 1-winning duo of Up To The Mark, who has won over 1m2f on the Turf, and Sibelius, who won going 6f on the Dirt.

In addition to Uncle Mo’s Outwork, his Grade 1 Kentucky Derby winner Nyquist is also making an impression as one of the stallions in that generation – with 19 stakes performers in 2023, his winners include the Grade 1 Alabama Stakes winner Randomized.

In all, eight of the 17 Grade 1s run at Saratoga this year were won by horses sired by stallions who entered stud in 2017 or later.

White v Bright v Knight

The older male division has been muddled since the beginning of the year and the Saratoga and Del Mar meets didn’t help clear up the picture over the summer.

White Abarrio (Race Day) threw his name in the ring early in the meet with a second career Grade 1 victory in the Whitney Stakes.

The victory came one year after his maiden Grade 1 win in the Florida Derby as a three-year-old.

In what has been a common trend in recent years amongst Whitney winners, White Abarrio skipped the Grade 1 Jockey Club Gold Cup at the end of month (that race

replaced the Grade 1 Woodward Stakes), leaving it open for another horse to make tracks in the division.

That horse was Bright Future, who was one of five stakes winners for Curlin at Saratoga, including three Grade 1 winners.

It was a big step up for Bright Future, who had only made one other stakes start, that being an eighth place finish in the Grade 2 Brookyln Stakes.

“It was a good spot to try a Grade 1 and he delivered a big performance. In order to go to the next [Breeders’ Cup Classic], he’s going to need to make another move forward. It appears to be pretty wide open, the older horse division.

“I guess we will learn a little more in California tomorrow or Monday. We’ll see,” said trainer Todd Pletcher.

California didn’t clear up the picture for the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Classic, but it did make it clear that the East Coast older males are a stronger group than the California contingent shortly.

That batch lined up against multiple three-year-olds in the Grade 1 Pacific Classic Stakes (G1), and it was the younger horses who filled out the top two spots.

Uncle Mo’s three-year-old Arabian Knight was given a spring rest by Zedan Racing Stables after winning the Grade 3 Southwest Stakes in January and after a third in the Grade 1 Haskell Stakes in June connections decided to tackle the Pacific Classic.

It was a different picture at the wire than last year when the generation-defining Flightline won by over 19l, but, much like that performance, Arabian Knight controlled nearly every step of the race.

The colt had to fight off another threeyear-old in Geaux Rocket Ride (Candy Ride), but was able to stay a neck in front and avenge the Haskell loss that had been handed to him by Geaux Rocket Ride with Grade 1 Kentucky Derby winner Mage (Good Magic) in third.

Arabian Knight is out of a mare by Astrology, a son of A.P. Indy, and is bred on what has quickly turned into a golden cross with Uncle Mo.

The colt is one of three Grade 1 winners, seven graded stakes winners and 18 stakes performers for Uncle Mo out of A.P. Indy granddaughters.

White Abarrio: the son of Uncle Mo is battling for older horse honours with success in the Whitney

From the team behind Blue Point and Too Darn Hot...

GH A I Y YATH

Horse of the Year, a spectacular talent and the best ever by an extraordinary sire of sires.

EARTHLIGHT PINAT UBO

Shamardal’s undefeated French Champion juvenile who ran the fastest G1 Middle Park.

Incredible Horse of the Year as a two-year-old. By Blue Point’s sire and from Kodiac’s family.

Their in-demand yearlings: they simply must be seen.

Enjoying that Warm feeling

The Galileo filly Warm Heart wins two Group 1s in a fortnight, writes Jocelyn de Moubray

WARM HEART WAS not the biggest of the eight fillies who lined up for the 1m4f Group 1 Prix Vermeille at Longchamp, nor probably the bestlooking either, but there is no doubt she is the best of the group at this distance.

The three-year-old daughter of Galileo gave her trainer Aidan O’Brien his 3999th career winner and first in this championship event, a race he which his top fillies Snowfall and Magic Wand have previously finished second.

The Andre Fabré-trained Pensee Du Jour, now running in the Wertheimer colours as she was part of the group of mares and racing stock purchased from Diane Wildenstein’s Ballymore Thoroughbred Racing in August, set a moderate pace and tried to quicken into a decisive lead off the home bend.

It was a tactic which never looked like being successful as a succession of challengers lined up to take her on in the final sprint.

Warm Heart was one of the first to be hard ridden but, like many of her father’s progeny, she proved to be the most willing and determined and, having got to the lead, she held the late challenge of the four-year-old Gleneagles filly Melo Melo to win by a neck.

Warm Heart: took her Group 1-winning form to France and success in the Prix Vermeille

She ran the final two furlongs 13 per cent faster than her race average.

It was a slightly disappointing race renewal as Blue Rose Cen, Above The Curve and Pensee Du Jour all ran well below their best and finished together in fifth, sixth and seventh. However, there is no doubting Warm Heart’s class and toughness and she was winning her second-hard fought Group 1 in only just over two weeks having won the Yorkshire Oaks only 17 days beforehand.

Warm Heart is the fifth by Galileo that her dam Sea Siren has produced – the sixth is the winning two-year-old Bremen – and Warm Heart is by far the best of her foals to date.

Sea Siren won three Group 1s in Australia as a four-year-old over 6f and 7f and a Listed race in Ireland over 6f. Warm Heart is very likely to win again at this level before becoming yet another top class Galileo filly to join Coolmore’s broodmare band.

THE PRIX NIEL (G2) was a more confusing race and proved once again, after a similar demonstration in the National Stakes at The Curragh on the same day, that it is worse to have a pacemaker with no plan than it is to have a falsely run race.

The race also proved that Liberty Racing’s Fantastic Moon is one of the top three-year-olds in Europe, and that this year’s Deutsches Derby is shaping up to have been one of the best in recent years and close to the level of 2020 when In Swoop beat Torquator Tasso with horses such as Kaspar and Grocer Jack further behind.

Jean Louis Bouchard’s Feed The Flame, the impressive winner of the Grand Prix de Paris (G1) in July, was sent off a short-priced favourite for the Niel and his connections ran the useful King Of Records as a pacemaker.

King Of Records went off in front but for the first part of the race he set only a slow pace, followed closely by Fantastic Moon and Rene Piechulek, while Soumillon anchored Feed The Flame at the rear of the field some 8l off the lead but more importantly 5l behind the Deutsches Derby winner.

As the field raced down the hill towards the straight jockey Simon Planque on the leader seemed to realise he hadn’t gone fast enough. He accelerated into a clear lead, but

unfortunately for Feed The Flame, the rest of the field ignored King Of Records and let him race into the straight with a 4l lead.

Fantastic Moon, who had travelled comfortably in the perfect place from the beginning had no trouble quickening past and into a winning lead.

Feed The Flame and the third-placed Bravais ran the final 400m faster than the winner, but they never had any chance of catching him and Fantastic Moon held on for a comfortable

two and a half length victory.

Fantastic Moon has an almost perfect record of five wins and two places from seven career starts. He won Germany’s top race as a two-year-old, and this year’s Derby and now the Niel; his only two defeats have come on soft ground on his home track in Munich.

While some top horses apparently don’t like flying to race meetings it seems that Fantastic Moon relishes long distance box travel.

Owned by Lars Baumgarten’s Liberty Racing [as featured in our July-August issue], Fantastic Moon is trained by Sarah Steinberg. She has only 27 horses in her Munich-based stable, but has trained two Group 1 winners: Mendocino successful in 2022 and now Fantastic Moon adding to her cv.

Her latest top level winner, a son of Sea The Moon, was bred by Philip von Stauffenberg and sold as a yearling for €49,000.

Stauffenberg purchased Fantastic Moon’s third dam Fraulein Tobin in 1996. She is a daughter of Fruhlingstag, who finished second in the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches (G1) and produced Running Stag, a top horse on Turf and Dirt for Epsom trainer Philip Mitchell.

Since then the family has produced some useful winners and high-priced yearlings, but Fantastic Moon is much the best in recent generations.

He is the second foal of his dam, the Jukebox Jury mare Frangipani. She only ran twice as a two-year-old winning on her debut and then finishing down the field in the Winterkonigin.

Frangipani has Fang Mich, an unraced two-year-old Starspangledbanner filly, and a yearling filly by Masar.

Fantastic Moon is a well-balanced athletic son of Sea The Moon and is a most attractive racing and stallion prospect.

Feed The Flame is a son of Kingman and out of the Montjeu mare Knyazhna. When he finally fills out his frame he will also be an impressive individual, and there will be another day for him.

The final major winner on the Arc trials day at Longchamp was Al Shaqab’s Lope De Vega filly Place Du Carrousel, who had too much speed for fellow Group 1 winners Iresine and Sammarco. She held on for a narrow, if decisive, win by a neck and a half length in the Group 2 Prix Foy.

The Fabré-trained filly won the Prix de l’Opera (G1) on heavy ground last year and is

The Prix Niel was a more confusing race and proved once again, after a similar demonstration in the National Stakes, that it is worse to have a pacemaker with no plan than it is to have a falsely run race

Fantastic Moon

likely to take her chance in the Arc this year.

Place Du Carrousel is out of the Groupplaced Duke Of Marmalade mare Traffic Jam, and this is a cross which has also produced Antonia De Vega and the high-class Germantrained filly Quantanamera.

Fantastic Moon was originally due to run a week earlier in the Group 1 Grosser Preis von Baden and was withdrawn on the morning of the race when his connections decided the ground was too loose.

This left a field of six headed by the 2021 Deutsches Derby winner Sisfahan, this year’s runner-up Mr Hollywood and the Yann Barberot-trained Zagrey, a son of Zarak who had finished not far behind some of the best horses in the world, including Equinox, Westover and Nations Pride, in Dubai.

Mr Hollywood set a very slow early pace and the race developed into a sprint, which may have suited the French-trained Zagrey except

The Lope De

that for most of the straight he and jockey Christophe Soumillon were trapped behind Mr Hollywood and Straight with nowhere to go.

Inside the final furlong Mr Hollywood just hung away from the rail giving Soumillon the gap he need and Zagrey quickened through to snatch victory by a half-length with Straight coming from last place to take third only another half-length behind. The final time of 1m39.77 was the slowest Grosser Preis this century, but despite the false nature of the race Zagrey and Mr Hollywood proved they are both genuine Group 1 horses.

Mr Hollywood was bred by Gestüt Ammerland and is one of only five three-yearolds from the first crop of Iquitos, a Group 1-winning son of Adlerflug.

One of the others, the filly Drawn To Dream, has been Group placed, and Iquitos has since moved the Gestüt Gradiz and will surely cover more mares in the future.

three making

EUROPEAN TWO-YEAR-OLD RACING doesn’t really get going until the end of August, but amongst the French-trained juveniles to have impressed at this early stage are three by Lope De Vega.

Philippe Allaire’s Beauvatier completed a fourtimer with another impressive win in a Group 3 at Longchamp at the beginning of September.

The Yann Barberot-trained colt defeated Ramantuelle in May and since then has shown great acceleration to defeat high-class fields at both Deauville and Longchamp.

He is the current leader among French-trained colts, but another contender is the Niarchos family’s Supercooled. Trained by Fabré he came from last place to defeat some experienced horses at Saint-Cloud on his debut in September.

The China Horse Club’s Lope De Vega filly Rose Bloom won one of the valuable Arqana sale graduate races run at Deauville in August and the Nicolas Clement-trained filly confirmed her class by making all to win a conditions race at Chantilly at the beginning of September.

All three are likely to be tried at a higher level in the future.

The same comment applies to Peter Bradley’s Metropolitan, a Mario Barrati-trained Zarak colt who made a winning debut at Deauville and followed this up by beating another Deauville debutant winner, the Aga Khan’s Siyouni colt Elbaz, in a conditions race in Chantilly.

The Group 3 Prix de Chenes lost some of its interest when

mark on the European juvenile scene

Edouard de Rothschild’s Alcantor, a son of New Bay who had beaten the useful Ten Horns at Deauville, was withdrawn due to the unseasonal and exceptional prevailing heat.

In his absence the finish was contested by the Wootton Bassett colts Zabiari and Grey Man, who finished so close together there was an enquiry after the race.

The Aga Khan’s Zabiari was allowed to keep the race and both colts are likely to compete at a higher level before the end of the year.

The German two-year-old racing is even further behind timewise, but, for the time, being the best-looking winners are two Gestüt Karlshof homebreds.

The Havana Grey filly Three Havanas made a rare winning debut in one of the BBAG’s valuable 6f sales races at Baden-Baden easily beating some fillies who had shown some good form beforehand.

Her third dam is the Arc winner Three Troikas.

Maigret, a colt by Karlshof’s own stallion Counterattack, a son of Redoute’s Choice, had made an excellent debut at Hanover in August coming from behind in a slowly run race to defeat a previous winner and followed this up with an easy win in a Listed race in Dusseldorf in early September.

Counterattack was Group 1 placed in Australia over 6f and from his first three crop in Germany of around 25 foals a year he has already produced a some good class performers, including See Hector and See Paris.

Vega

their

Zarak: Zagrey became his first Group 1 winner

stallion stats

Leading European Flat sires (by prize-money earned to September 9, 2023) Courtesy of Weatherbys

Leading

European

sires of

two-year-olds (by prize-money earned to September 9, 2023) Courtesy of Weatherbys

TATTERSALLS AUTUMN HORSES IN TRAINING SALE

Over 1600+ Horses/Fillies in Training

82

ZAAKI winner of Mackinnon Stakes , Gr. 1 , Underwood Stakes , Gr. 1 , etc. purchased at the Tattersalls Autumn Horses in Training Sale for 150,000gns

REGIONAL winner of Sprint Cup Stakes , Gr. 1 , etc. purchased as a Horse in Training at Tattersalls for 3,500gns

SALUTE THE SOLDIER winner of Al Maktoum Challenge , Gr. 1 , (twice) purchased at the Tattersalls Autumn Horses in Training Sale for 380,000gns

Group/Listed Winners including 7 Gr. 1 Winners

Since 2020

FEV ROVER winner of Beverly D Stakes , Gr. 1 , etc. purchased as a Horse in Training at Tattersalls for 695,000gns

Monday 23 - Friday 27 Oct. FIVE DAY SALE

Leading European Flat broodmare sires (by prize-money earned to September 9, 2023) Courtesy of Weatherbys

Breeders & Consignors know they can rely on SARACEN HORSE FEEDS.

For that extra bit of back up and support, SARACEN are here to help.

THIS INTERVIEW is something of a role reversal for Jamie Railton. The leading consignor and high-rolling pinhooker has become accustomed to being the one asking the questions as the host of his podcast, On The Coalface.

The show is billed as being by “industry professionals and for industry professionals”, and has already gained cult status among the racing and bloodstock community.

Although still in its relative infancy, with episode one dropping only in mid-February, Railton has grilled a diverse cast of major industry names, from Angus Gold to John Francome, Ralph Beckett to Joe Foley.

Explaining how the concept originated, Railton says, “It was probably January or February, and we usually do a quarterly newsletter then. I was thinking how dull and boring that was so I was wondering what we could do that was different.

“That’s when I came up with the idea of a podcast. Although I didn’t really think it was feasible because, on the whole, I’m quite a quiet person and I don’t like talking at all – if you’d thought of the last person on planet earth to do a podcast, it probably would’ve been me.

“The sheer fact that it seems to have taken off and people listen to it just amazes me. I’m completely out of my comfort zone and public speaking definitely isn’t my thing. You get far more out of life if you challenge yourself, though.”

Railton may not think of himself as a natural host, but the podcast makes for easy and engaging listening. There is insight, opinion, honesty and humour.

“I wanted it to be of benefit to the industry, rather than it be something that’s used to massage somebody’s ego,” says Railton. “It’s about discussing points that need discussing, without raking over the same old subjects such as prize-money, which can become incredibly boring.

“There has to be a degree of education, a degree of discussion and people seem to like the human aspect to it as well. People seem to enjoy it when it’s warts and all.”

The human aspect is arguably the most compelling part of the podcast, with challenging subjects such as mistakes, regrets and setbacks tackled head on.

On The Coalface has seen Shadwell’s long-serving racing manager Angus Gold speak candidly about causing hurt to those dearest to him, and leading bloodstock agent Charlie Gordon-Watson address being the victim of a blackmail campaign that

resulted in explicit photos being leaked.

Railton stresses that balance is crucial once you start delving into peoples’ lives away from the bloodstock world. Even though honesty and authenticity are paramount to the success of the podcast, given the nature of the industry, relationships and reputations need to be respected.

“We’re in the business of selling horses so I’m not going to throw somebody under the bus intentionally,” says Railton. “If they want to do that themselves, that’s up to them, but it’s certainly not my intention.

“At the end of the day, I’d like to sell these people a horse two weeks later, so one has to be measured in one’s approach. But at the same time I’m not going to beat about the bush and not ask about something that needs addressing because that’s the whole purpose.”

Industry matters have also come under the microscope, including first-season sires, declining levels of horsemanship and the staffing crisis. While the human side of the story makes for absorbing listening, the discussions around wider industry topics is where Railton feels On The Coalface is at its most valuable.

“At the end of the day, the podcast needs to have a purpose,” he continues. “Humour should be in there so it’s enjoyable, but there has to be a purpose. If it can raise a subject that we can then help make a difference to and improve things, that’s important. Whether that’s talking to a breeder, a consignor, a trainer or whatever. The purpose is to improve our industry.”

RAILTON IS also determined to improve his output, too. Plenty of research goes into each episode, and the host says he operates an open door policy towards feedback.

“I write lots of notes and ideas, most of which end up in the dust bin or in the wrong order,” he says.

“It takes a while to get it to a position where you have an introduction, a meaty bit, a controversial bit and a happy ending.

“I’m no expert though, I’m self taught and self trained and I just hope I’m getting a tiny bit better each go. If people have suggestions or ideas, I’m all ears.”

Although he doesn’t rule out the idea entirely, Railton laughs off the suggestion that he should turn the spotlight on himself some day.

“I’ve often thought about how I’d feel if someone

It was probably January or February, and we usually do a quarterly newsletter then. I was thinking how dull and boring that was so I was wondering what we could do that was different.

Talking horses

Pinhooker, consignor and new podcaster Jamie Railton tells James Thomas that it was essentially boredom that led to the creation of On The Coalface

Photo: Laura Green | Tattersalls

Looking for Classic winners...

Fantastic Moon

Muskoka

October Mixed Sales: 13th and 14th October

Winner IDEE 154. Deutsches Derby, Gr.1

Winner 165. Henkelpreis der Diana, Gr.1

asked me these questions,” he says. “It would be quite amusing, but if you got me talking about the mistakes I’ve made we’d be there all day. And that would just be volume one!”

Railton highlights the contribution of a key team member whose efforts away from the mic are central to the podcast’s production.

“Luckily, I have a very good PA, Chloe Battam, who’s far more technical than I am – she knows all about the logistics of sound quality,” he says. “She’s the one who puts it together and we’re very lucky to have her and her expertise, otherwise it wouldn’t happen at all.”

He also expresses his gratitude to sponsors Saracen Horse Feeds and the owner communication platform The Racing Manager. But the biggest share of appreciation is reserved for those who take to the On The Coalface hot seat.

“I feel very grateful to the people who’ve given me their time and an insight to their knowledge,” he says. “The funny thing is, everyone [who listens] seems to have their own particular episode that they like the most, rather than just one [episode being popular]. That’s probably a good thing.”

On The Coalface may have developed into a labour of love, but there is also the small matter of

the day job to worry about, too. With the yearling sale season at full tilt, this is an intense time of year for the Jamie Railton Sales Agency.

Four lots across the two books of the Goffs Orby Sale will be followed by 44 yearlings catalogued throughout the duration of the Tattersalls October Sale. There will be significant consignments of horses-in-training too, and plans are afoot to return to the blue-chip Arqana Arc Sale.

The man at the helm has been encouraged by the results from the key summer dates.

“I think, all things considered, one would have to be incredibly pleased with the thirst and appetite there appears to have been for a horse,” he says. “What I liked about the Somerville Sale, in particular, was there was the odd person I’d never seen before. That’s really encouraging as usually when you go to sales it’s just the same old faces.”

However, Railton raises concerns that many in the industry share about the seemingly exponential growth of the sales calendar across the whole spectrum of public auctions.

“Without wishing to upset anyone, we all have to be aware of the duty we have to our industry,” he says. “And that means not just working on our own bottom line, which I feel is a factor when you see all

Jamie Railton (Agent)

Tattersalls October draft 2023

Lot Pedigree

Book 1

7 Kameko-Out of The Flames (Showcasing) b, f.

436 Frankel-Kiyoshi (Dubawi ) b, c.

450 Sottsass-Lady Osborne (Fastnet Rock) b, c.

Book 2

644 Zoustar-Rosie’s Premiere (Showcasing) ch, c.

665 Zarak-Savage Rose (Rock of Gibraltar) b,f.

686 Dark Angel-Siendra (Refuse To Bend) b, c.

715 Showcasing-Speculating (Xtension) b,c.

739 Iffraaj-Sunchisetagioo (Exceed And Excel) ch,f.

814 Mohaather-Wake Up Call (Noverre) b,c.

1264 Earthlight-Lynique (Dylan Thomas) ch,c.

1281 Lightning Spear-Marine Bleue (Desert Prince) ch,f.

1286 Land Force-Matron of Honour (Teofilo) b,c.

1306 Sea The Moon-Mirror City (Street Cry) ch,c

Book 3

1376 Time Test-Puzzler (New Approach) b,c.

1393 Nathaniel-Sauvalanche (Redoute’s Choice) b,c.

1394 Zoustar-Savanne Sauvage (Lope De Vega) b,f.

1495 Make Believe-Brassica (Australia ) b,c.

1526 Territories-Daddy’s Daughter (Scat Daddy) b,f.

1531 Kameko-Deep Sea (Deep Impact) b,c.

1546 Earthlight-Earth Goddess (Invincible Spirit) b,c.

1608 Mohaather-Jufoon (Dubawi) gr,f.

1620 Sergei Prokofiev-Kuriosa (Rip Van Winkle) b,f.

1626 Harry Angel-Lawless Secret (Lawman) b,c.

1700 Al Kazeem-Play Street (Tobougg) ch,c.

1730 Territories-Roman Spinner (Intikhab) b,f.

1778 Kameko-To The Moon (Sea The Stars) b,f.

1816 Showcasing-Angel Of The South (Dark Angel) b,f.

1829 Nathaniel-Battery Power (Royal Applause) b,f.

1878 Zoustar-Dubaya (Dubawi) b,f.

1889 Lightning Spear-English Heroine (Nathaniel) ch,c.

1893 Mayson-Fanfair (Royal Applause) b,c.

1919 Golden Horde-Habbat Reeh (Mastercraftsman) ch,c.

1958 Masar-Lady Marl (Duke Of Maramalade) b,f.

1963 Zoustar-Lavetta (Peintre Celebre ) b,c.

1993 Havana Gold-Mountain Bell (Mount Nelson) ch,f.

The day job: Railton sold this filly by Earthlight at the Goffs UK Premier Sale for £160,000, pinhooked for 62,000gns

Photos: Sarah Farnsworth | Goffs UK

the sales companies introducing yet another sale. I’m not sure that’s really the way forward, personally.”

While changes to the sales calendar have not been universally welcomed, Railton is more upbeat about the reforms taking place on the racecourse.

A raft of innovations set to be introduced in Britain in 2024 include a new Premier tier of racing that will receive additional prize-money in a bid to boost competitiveness, a two-hour Saturday shop window for the sport and the trial of six Sunday evening floodlit fixtures.

Railton sees the general thrust of these ideas as having a positive impact on the bloodstock market.

“I think potentially these could be exciting times with the piloting of premier meetings and the potential increase in prize-money,” he says.

“In theory, the more a horse can win, the more it’s worth. All this will lead back to competitive public auctions, which is what we want.

“I’m very much in favour of it. We’re very old fashioned in this country, but change has to happen. We can’t just carry on because that’s how it’s been for the last couple of hundred years. Whether you’re a big racecourse or a small racecourse, you’re going to have to adapt accordingly. It is a pilot scheme and I’m sure there will be refinement along the way, but I’m sure it’s a step in the right direction.”

He continues: “The important thing is progression, rather than shoving our head in the sand and saying ‘this is how it’s always been’. We’ve got to improve the product we’re selling. That can only happen with competitive racing and a suitable reward where a horse can pay for itself with prize-money.”

The rise of On The Coalface is not the only thing that has kept Railton’s name in the headlines of late – he was responsible for selling the rags-to-riches star Via Sistina, who completed her transformation from bargain buy to Group 1 heroine in the Pretty Polly Stakes at The Curragh in July.

The George Boughey-trained daughter of Fastnet Rock has not only captured the imagination for the giant strides she has made in recent times, but also for having cost owner Stephen Hillen the scarcely believable sum of 5,000gns.

While some could be forgiven for being left frustrated at selling such a significant talent for a mere chicken feed price, Railton feels the tale provides an important reminder of the nature of the racing business.

“It just goes to prove that money doesn’t guarantee you success,” he says. “Good management increases your chances massively.

“She is a filly who benefitted from

exceptional management, and all the right decisions and time and patience have been given to her. She has had a chance to fulfil her potential.

“She’s the reason why it’s such a fascinating business, because you just don’t know who’s going to be the next Group 1 winner.”

Although the progressive mare had plenty to recommend her on pedigree, being out of a Galileo half-sister to top sprinter Kingsgate Native, Railton remembers her as a particularly backward type who would have ticked few of the commercially desirable boxes at the yearling sales.

When asked if he had any idea that Via Sistina would go on to scale the heights she has, Railton responds unequivocally.

“Not in a month of Sundays!” he says. “And neither did anyone else, including Coolmore, as she was a foal share.

“It wasn’t a case of wondering why people weren’t concentrating when she sold, everyone was concentrating. But you have no idea of what’s going on between the ears of a horse, or their aptitude for being a competitive athlete – or not. Most yearlings in the December Sale are there because they need time. She needed time and imagination. Luckily she was bought by people who gave her both.”

Via Sistina

It just goes to prove that money doesn’t guarantee you success –good management increases your chances massively

Photo: Sarah Farnsworth | Goffs UK

Tattersalls October Yearling Sales 2023

BOOK ONE

Lot 90 B.F. Belardo x Sensationally (Montjeu – One So Wonderful)

Lot 99 B.C. Kingman x Shirocco Star (Shirocco – Spectral Star)

Lot 166 B.C. Too Darn Hot x Twist ‘N’ Shake (Kingman – Hippy Hippy Shake)

• JAZZI TOP • SPEEDY BOARDING • DEUCE AGAIN • CAROLINAE • BALLET CONCERTO • STARCASTER • AL SUHAIL

Lot 267 B.F. Teofilo x Bizzi Lizzi (Muhaarar – Izzi Top)

• VALUE PROPOSITION • HOO YA MAL • CHECKANDCHALLENGE • ZAGATO • EMERAATY • ANAPURNA • TWIST ‘N’ SHAKE • TELECASTER • DASHING WILLOUGHBY • CAROLINAE • ALESSANDRO VOLTA • OPERA HOUSE • ZEE ZEE TOP • DASH TO THE FRONT

Lot 354 Br.C. Ten Sovereigns x Farzeen (Farhh – Zee Zee Gee)

Lot 379 B.C. Showcasing x Galaxy Highflyer (Galileo – Colorspin)

Lot 421 B.C. Frankel x Izzi Top (Pivotal – Zee Zee Top)

Lot 427 B.F. Sea The Moon x Jazzi Top (Danehill Dancer – Zee Zee Top)

Lot 447 Advertise x Lady Mascara (Cacique – Avon Lady)

Lot 457 B.F. Camelot x Likeable (Dalakhani – Balalaika)

Lot 494 B.F. Blue Point x Miss Dashwood (Dylan Thomas – Dash to the Front)

BOOK TWO

Lot 1045 Ch.F. New Bay x Elmetto (Helmet – Italian Connection)

Lot 1072 Ch.F. Lightning Spear x Familliarity (Nayef-Millistar)

Lot 1183 B.F. Ulysses x Interstella (Sea The Stars – Hyperspectra)

Lot 1238 B.F. Kameko x Last Tango InParis (Aqlaam – Strictly Lambada)

Lot 1322 Br.F. Bated Breath x Monzza (Montjeu – Zee Zee Top)

BOOK THREE

Lot 1361 B.C. Ribchester x Perfectly Spirited (Invincible Spirit - Design Perfection)

Lot 1603 B.C. Time Test x Italian Connection (Cadeaux Genereux – Bianca Nera)

Fillies eligible for GREAT BRITISH BONUS Scheme

1983 – 2023 MEON VALLEY STUD have bred the winners of 1,204 races, £22,845,382 (approx) (including 71 stakes winners of 140 stakes races)

www.meonvalleystud.co.uk

STALLION STUDS have produced some attractive deals down the years, but the offer made by the owners of up-andcoming Kentucky sire Copper Bullet to broodmare owners a few seasons ago takes a lot of beating.

Winchell Thoroughbreds, whose silks the son of More Than Ready carried when he won the Grade 2 Saratoga Special by 4l in 2017, didn’t offer a big discount, or a free season, or equity in the horse in exchange for a number of paid covers; it actually paid the breeders who sent mares to him in his first three years.

It wasn’t a free-for-all, but rather an academic pursuit, explains Stuart Fitzgibbon, stallion director at the storied Darby Dan Farm, where the strapping bay stands.

“Winchell Thoroughbreds and Willis Horton Racing bought Copper Bullet as a yearling at Keeneland for $200,000 and raced him in partnership,” he says. “Winchell assumed full control of the horse and decided to stand him with us upon his retirement.

“Winchell are very clever people. They have given the world two exceptional stallions in Tapit and Gun Runner, an exciting young sire in Epicenter, and Tapiture, a very good horse we have here. They’re arguably the most successful ownerbreeders in America, and one of the best acquirers of stock at the sales.

“They came up with a plan to stand the horse with us, as the property of Winchell, and to invite applications from mare owners to use him, with those selected on certain criteria being paid $5,000 when the mare went in foal at 45 days.”

Readers might be thinking “who do they think they are, assuming they know the unknowable: which mares will produce the best runners?”.

But this wasn’t any ordinary selection panel. The process was overseen by Dr Dave Lambert, the renowned veterinarian and expert on equine sports physiology who advised Winchell Thoroughbreds on the purchase of Tapit and Gun Runner.

Paying mare owners for sex

Martin Stevens chats with Darby Dan Farm’s Stuart Fitzgibbon about the alternative strategy

Winchell Thoroughbreds has taken with its young stallion Copper Bullet

POLISHED AND READY TO SHINE FLAT FOALS, YEARLINGS & BREEDING STOCK

17 November 2023

€10,000

WORTH OF SAPPHIRE SALE VOUCHERS DISTRIBUTED TO LEADING PINHOOK PURCHASERS AT THE SEPTEMBER YEARLING SALE 2023

“We received around 300 applications for Copper Bullet in his first season and Dave Lambert and Winchell Thoroughbreds reviewed every single mare,” says FItzgibbon. “The first thing they looked at was age, race record, family and production record.

“If the mares passed the first filter, a pedigree and a conformation photo was sent to Lambert’s team for analysis. The photos were uploaded into the FotoSelect programme that he has developed, and algorithms based on the biomechanical measurements of the mare gave a good indication of whether she had the best chance of producing a good horse to Copper Bullet.

“I don’t think anyone is saying it’s a foolproof system that will guarantee an infinite number of Grade 1 winners, though. It’s just another tool that puts the odds of producing a superior athlete a little more in your favour.”

In the end 50 mares were accepted, resulting in a first crop of 37 live foals, who were born in 2021. The market certainly seemed to buy into the horse, and the attempt to engineer a successful stallion career from him, as his stock sold remarkably well.

His debut yearlings made an average of $30,000 and median of $20,000, hitting a high of $160,000 paid by SGV Thoroughbreds for a Darby Dan-bred half-brother to three-time Grade 1 winner Colonel Liam, while his two-year-olds sold for an average of $90,000 and median of $60,000, led by Kerri Radcliffe giving $275,000 for the pinhooked Colonel Liam sibling.

“He’s been very commercial,” says Fitzgibbon. “People could have been forgiven for asking themselves what he’s all about, as he didn’t breed big numbers and it’s an unusual way of managing a horse. But as it turned out they reacted favourably.

“It was good to see Kerri Radcliffe buy the top-priced two-year-old, and besides that

Pin Oak Stud, who have just won the Haskell with Geaux Rocket Ride, bought a colt for $260,000, and Winchell Thoroughbreds purchased another colt for $175,000.”

Commercial success is all well and good, but the real proof of the pudding for sires is the racecourse test. Copper Bullet is showing promise on that front too, with four winners

Skin in the game: Ron Winchell of Winchell Thoroughbreds with Epicentre after the colt’s Travers win

It’s just another tool that puts the odds of producing a superior athlete a little more in your favour

Fitzgibbon

from 14 runners at the time of writing –figures that need putting in context for those outside of America.

“That might not sound a whole lot from a European perspective, but the leading freshman sire at the moment, Maximus Mischief, has 18 winners and our own Flameaway, who’s doing really well too, is on 12,” says Fitzgibbon.

“It’s not like in Europe where a horse such as Blue Point can quickly rack up 30-odd winners. Copper Bullet is doing well for a horse with such a small crop in relative terms, and seems to have the market’s respect.”

One of Copper Bullet’s early winners Copper Em suggested she has an especially bright future by bolting up on debut in a maiden special weight over 5f at Ellis Park in June.

The Steve Asmussen-trained filly carries the colours of Winchell Thoroughbreds, having been bred by Winning Bloodstock out

of the winning Scat Daddy mare Lovely Em.

“He’s had winners at Delaware Park and Lone Star, and he’s got plenty of horses working on good tracks like Del Mar, Saratoga, and Belmont, so it’s exciting,” says Fitzgibbon.

“The bloodstock business is very fickle, of course, and buyers can soon go off sires if they don’t have winners for a few weeks, so he’ll need to maintain momentum for the rest of the year. But there’s good talk around him and I think he’s done enough to be busier in the breeding shed next year, his second season without the deal applying.”

Being paid to use a stallion, especially one with as solid credentials as Copper Bullet, almost seems too good to be true, but it has to be wondered whether European breeders would have greeted the deal with more cynicism, thinking there must be a hidden agenda, or outright dismissing the deal as a gimmick.

“Maybe,” says the Irish-born Fitzgibbon

as he reflects on differing attitudes on either side of the Atlantic. “There’s more of a ‘glass half full attitude’ here, and the American market is used to all sorts of stallion promotions at various farms, such as Share the Upside, profit protection programmes and so on; certainly more so than in Europe.

“But don’t forget, too, that this horse was a very good racehorse by a top sire in More Than Ready out of an Unbridled’s Song mare, who is a fabulous broodmare sire, with an excellent physique – he’s a big, strong horse standing 16.3hh. So it’s not like they were trying to contrive interest in an unraced or lightly raced horse.

“On top of that, people know Winchell Thoroughbreds get things right a lot of the time, and they’re well aware of how they helped build Tapit and Gun Runner into successful sires, so they will have been eager to join them in this project at ground level.”

Copper Bullet raced solely on Dirt, and all his runners have been in America to

Copper Bullet is a son of More Than Ready and out of a Peintre Celebre mare related to Loup Breton and Loup Sauvage

believes he has every chance of getting Turf runners and stock who could suit racing in Europe

date, but his pedigree suggests he could be effective in Europe. His sire More Than Ready was an outstanding influence on all surfaces, and his winning dam Allegory is out of the Irish-bred Peintre Celebre mare Louve Royale, from the Wildenstein family of Loup Breton, Loup Sauvage and Loup Solitaire that goes back to the great racemare Lupe.

“Unbridled’s Song is a strong commercial speed influence on Dirt but More Than Ready was a brilliant sire all around the world, especially in Australia, and it’s a famous Wildenstein family so there’s no reason why he shouldn’t work on Turf,” says Fitzgibbon.

“I can see his progeny running and excelling on Dirt and Turf, and I get the impression he’s not being pigeonholed for either surface. I think there’s less of that nowadays, anyway.

“Horses don’t know their nationality, do they? And who’s to say what’s more natural for them to run on, Dirt or grass? The market can make stallions look more surface-dependent than they actually are. There are a lot of owners here who’d buy solely Dirt horses, but there’s a growing Turf programme in the US, so the gap might be closing.”

Copper Bullet is not the only member of the Darby Dan roster who could sire capable grass runners if given the chance, as happened in an earlier era of greater transatlantic commerce in bloodlines, when legendary sires Ribot and Roberto stood at the farm.

Darby Dan has 15 stallions, most of whom are syndicated with the farm owning shares in them, as is the case with Kentucky Derby winner Country House, while a handful of others are owned by prominent breeder Chuck Fipke and managed on his behalf.

Asked for a few highlights who should be on European breeders’ and buyers’ radars, Fitzgibbon says: “Tapiture is one everybody should be sitting up and taking notice of.

“If you look at the stats for fifth-crop sires on Dirt in North America he’s unbelievable, he’s well ahead of American Pharoah and Constitution in terms of winners. He’s got very high strike-rates, so he gives you a very good shot of getting a racehorse.

“And Flameaway is one that the European

market needs to look at a bit more closely.

“He’s by Scat Daddy, who’s become an important sire of sires in Europe, and he’s from Pat O’Kelly’s brilliant Flame Of Tara family. He’s had six winners, divided equally between Dirt and Turf, so looks versatile.

“I definitely think he could make an impact on the Turf in Europe if he got the chance, but it’ll be hard as he stands at only $7,500 and so Europeans might not recognise him.”

Dialed In is another stallion close to Fitzgibbon’s heart. The Grade 1-winning son of Mineshaft stands at $15,000 and has supplied two outstanding talents in Defunded and Gunnevera, as well as a narrowly beaten Norfolk Stakes (G2) runner-up in Pocket Dynamo from limited chances in Europe.

“He’s flying this year, with Defunded winning the Hollywood Gold Cup and Gambling Girl beaten a neck into second in the Kentucky Oaks,” he says. “He’s a

really precious commodity as a mid-market stallion in that $7,500 to $20,000 bracket who gives breeders a chance of making a few dollars and getting a good racehorse without spending too much.

“It’s the biggest complaint I hear, that there aren’t enough stallions like that. The ones at that price are usually either completely unproven, or proven but shown not to be very good.”

In summary, Fitzgibbon says: “All our stallions were good racehorses by top sires. Higher Power, an easy Pacific Classic winner by Medaglia D’Oro with first yearlings, is one I have high hopes for, and Modernist, a Grade 2 winner by Uncle Mo, has thrown some impressive first foals. They all have upside, though.”

Copper Bullet certainly had more upside than most for his earliest supporters. It would be quite something if the sire whose owners paid breeders to use him ascended to the top of the pecking order.

Winners on the board: Copper Bullet has made a solid start to his stallion career with first runners

Copper Bullet is doing well for a horse with such a small crop in relative terms, and seems to have the market’s respect

WHO’S NEXT?

What do these trainers have in common?

All have won €10,000 Irish sales bonuses for their owners through the IRE Incentive scheme. Buy Irish & target scheme races to secure your piece of the action. Over €3,500,000 already awarded.

Family POWER

Beautiful Diamond went from a 30,000gns foal pinhook to a £360,000 yearling to a Group 2-placed Royal Ascot juvenile. James Thomas meets the filly’s pinhookers and consignors, the brothers Shane and Alex Power of Tradewinds Stud

REPUTATIONS ARE HARD EARNED and easily lost in the horse trading business, especially for those just getting started. Brothers Shane and Alex Power, who operate under the banner of Tradewinds Stud, have already gone a long way to earning their stripes in only a short matter of time.

The siblings caught the headlines during this year’s Doncaster Breeze-Up Sale when their Twilight Son filly, subsequently named Beautiful Diamond, went from 30,000gns yearling to £360,000 smash hit via the bid of Richard Brown.

Beautiful Diamond wasn’t the first big result the brothers have enjoyed, and all known form suggests it won’t be their last either.

The siblings have no immediate family connection to the bloodstock industry, so made their way towards the business from the world of eventing. Shane, 30, enjoyed plenty of success in that sphere, too, including when he claimed a team medal at the young riders European Eventing Championships in Malmo in 2012.

It was through eventing and the pony club that Shane formed an important connection with Robert O’Callaghan, whose family run Yeomanstown Stud, and Roderic Kavanagh of Kildaragh Stud.

“From hanging around with them I got a job at Yeomanstown one summer doing the yearling prep when I was 18 or 19,” he says. “I’ve done a couple of seasons riding out

breezers at Kildaragh too, and it’s all gone from there basically.”

Where Shane went, Alex, 24, invariably followed. Their eyes were opened to the prospects of pinhooking being a viable career option with the formative purchase of a Champs Elysees filly late in 2015.

Her price tag of 9,000gns may have seemed innocuous enough, but she did Shane and his friends a good turn when she was sold for €65,000 the following year.

We’ll never know how Tradewinds’ trajectory would have unfolded if the Champs Elysees filly had slipped through their fingers. Sure, they’d have bought something else, but there’s no guarantee that would have proved anything like as fruitful. However, even if the purchase had a profound impact on future events, the contribution of a popular auctioneer means Shane recalls the moment as being anything but monumental.

“I knew the auctioneer Alastair Pim very well from the eventing,” he says. “Myself and John Kennedy, who now works at Coolmore Australia, bid 8,000gns and somebody else bid 8,500gns. Alastair just looked at me with his hands on his hips, and I think he could tell I was getting ready to walk away when he said ‘Ah come on now Shane, 500gns more between the two of you!’

“Everyone started laughing so we had to bid again after that, and when it got to 9,000gns he knocked it down fairly quickly. You need something to go your way in the start.”

Photo: Sarah Farnsworth | Goffs UK

The Tradewinds team at Goffs UK (from left): Shane Power, the Twilight Son filly Beautiful Diamond, Nicola Short and Alex Power

Although 9,000gns may be relatively small fry by pinhooking standards, the sums involved still represent a significant enough outlay for the guys in their early 20s, especially when there is no promise of a return.

“It can be daunting trying to face into it in the beginning, especially because there’s a lot of experienced and highly successful people doing it,” says Shane. “But I think those in the business like seeing young people coming into the industry and giving it a go. Everyone’s always been very helpful, and even now I could ring up any of the big consignors and ask them anything.”

Shane continued his equine education by completing the Irish National Stud course in 2016 before a breeding season and round of yearling prep with Australian powerhouse Arrowfield. Alex has taken a similarly global approach to gaining knowledge with spells at Newgate in Australia and Woods Edge Farm in Kentucky.

When Shane returned from the southern hemisphere, he and Alex rallied the troops and invested in more young stock. They

sold their first horse under the Tradewinds banner at the Doncaster Breeze-Up Sale the following spring.

The £26,000 Rumshak may not have left a life-changing profit, but the sale still had a positive impact as the Arcano colt went on to win two races for trainer Michael Dods. Tradewinds’ next significant touch was landed during the 2018 yearling sales when a son of No Nay Never was sold just as the stallion was on his way to being crowned champion first-season sire. The €25,000 foal was resold to Joe Foley for €65,000.

While each profitable result enabled the Power brothers to make incremental gains in terms of quality and quantity of their pinhooks, they weren’t afraid to re-evaluate their methods in search of bigger and better results.

Expanding on their selection process, Shane says, “In the first years I was probably guilty of focussing too much on stallions and the crops they had coming through, and trying to get an angle that way. I wanted to buy a Fast Company in the year he had his big crop coming through. I managed to get one eventually, but I was probably looking at all the Fast Companys with rose-tinted glasses because I really wanted to have one by the sire.

“Now we go to the sales with much more of an open mind and try not to worry about one stallion, we just try to find the nicest individual we can.

“You can’t ignore the stallion, but we’ve done much better since we’ve angled away from that and just tried to buy as good an individual as possible.”

THE SUCCESS OF their honed approach can be seen in last year’s yearling sale results as they sold the highest-priced lots by Twilight Son, a 110,000gns colt to Alastair Donald, and Ribchester when Joe Foley went to 85,000gns for their filly by the Darley sire. They also sold the second-highest priced youngsters by Caravaggio and Due Diligence.

“I did a good couple of foal sales with Yeomanstown and I did a couple of days at a yearling sale with Nick Bradley, which was very interesting, as well as bits and pieces with Kildaragh,” says Shane as he expands on where he learned to work the sales.

“But ultimately you really only start learning when you’re putting your own money on the line. Or you definitely start learning faster anyway.”

Teamwork is a vital part of the process, and Aaron Costelloe and Alison Connolly have helped keep the Tradewinds show on the road in recent times.

Working alongside a sibling can make for an interesting dynamic, but with the division of labour split equally Shane says

Beautiful Diamond taking third place in the Queen Mary Stakes (G2) two months after breezing

I think those in the business like seeing young people coming into the industry and giving it a go

his and Alex’s relationship works well. For the most part at least.

“We seem to fight plenty over the small, insignificant stuff but when it comes down to the more important things, like buying and selling horses, we seem to be on the same page,” he says. “We have our moments though, for sure!”

While the brothers might have their moments, family is clearly important as their parents, Niall and Liz, are readily nominated as the people who have had the biggest impact on the rise of the Tradewinds team.

“Even though Dad didn’t have a huge interest in horses, he’s always been very encouraging to Alex and I, especially on the days when it wasn’t going well,” says Shane. “I’m sure there were times when he was scratching his head about what we were getting into, but my parents have always been so supportive the whole way through.

“And my sister, Rachael, always helps when she’s around too. We drag her out and get her mucking out a few boxes and holding the odd horse.”

It may appear as if it’s been plain sailing for the brothers, but no venture into the thoroughbred business goes entirely without incident. Shane says the start of 2020

proved particularly challenging when their three-strong breeze-up squad ended with one filly they couldn’t sell, another that made a loss, while the third died before she reached the sales. “That year started out giving us a fair kick in the teeth,” he says. “It can be unbelievably good some days and very tough on others.”

Having the temperament to deal with the highs and lows is probably an underestimated piece of the pinhooking puzzle. Although the brothers are very much among the younger generation of thoroughbred practitioners, there is a distinct sense of maturity about the way they go about their business.

“Sometimes horses just do the kind of thing horses do,” says Shane. “Whether it’s colic or injuries or whatever. But from doing the eventing and being involved with horses from an early age, we’ve had those disappointments that come with horses, as well as the highs they can bring too. It’s all about trying to stay somewhere in the middle.”

Remaining on an even keel during this year’s Doncaster Breeze-Up Sale was easier said than done. The team knew they were taking a promising filly to South Yorkshire, but a bid of £360,000 exceeded even their wildest expectations.

A bullet breeze saw the filly clock the fastest 2f splits and bidders duly piled into the ring when she came under the hammer. Eventually matters wrested between Richard Brown of Blandford Bloodstock and Conrad Allen.

“When the bidding got to £200,000 I thought that was a great day’s work, but then it almost seemed to be going stronger the higher the price got,” says Shane. “I was just so surprised.”

Brown’s confidence in the Tradewinds product was underpinned by events of the previous year when the Blandford man bought Bright Diamond for Sheikh Rashid Dalmook Al Maktoum from the brothers’ Goresbridge draft.

The €23,000 yearling became a €52,000 two-year-old before going on to win a

When the bidding got to £200,000 I thought that was a great day’s work, but then it almost seemed to be going stronger...

Sale ring action, above, the boys watch on as Beautiful Diamond sells at Goffs UK, and, below, Shane in bidding action at the Somerville Sale restocking the stable for next year’s breeze up sales

Photo: Sarah Farnsworth | Goffs UK

Photo: Alisha Meeder | Tattersalls

Newmarket maiden by 9l and finishing third behind Commissioning in the Group 1 Fillies’ Mile.

Buoyed by that experience, Brown was not to be denied. His £360,000 play left Shane floored. Almost literally.

“I went into the office as Richard was signing the docket and he asked if I was okay,” he recalls. “And I had to say ‘No, not really!’ so he told me to sit down and gave me a glass of water. I also went to thank Conrad Allen and he said ‘Sorry about that’. I just burst out laughing and said, ‘You know what, don’t worry about it!’”

SHANE EXPLAINS that the success was very much a team endeavour, with breeze-up rider Gordon ‘Flash’ Power (no relation) and Cathal Gorman having important roles to play.

“I gave Cathal, a good friend of mine, a leg in Beautiful Diamond and in return he helped me with the riding out during the winter,” he says. “The two of us worked hard during the winter so I was delighted for him.

“Our jockey Flash Power got off her after the practice breeze and said she’ll fly

tomorrow. When he got off her after the breeze he said there won’t be anything that goes up there faster than her. I thought that was a fair statement, but he was right.”

The Powers had been operating out of a small yard attached to their family home close to Sallins in Kildare until the purchase of an 80-acre farm five minutes up the road at the end of 2022. Such a monumental pinhooking touch provided a useful injection of cash.

“We’re just putting in a new barn here so that’s obviously going to help pay for that, and go a long way towards stocking it as well,” says Shane. “It’s come at a really good time.”

The sale of Beautiful Diamond wasn’t the only thrill the Powers got from the daughter of Twilight Son – she debuted for Karl Burke six weeks later and put in a dominant performance to land a Nottingham maiden by three and a half lengths. She followed that up by running third in the Queen Mary Stakes (G2), a run that suggested there will be bigger days ahead.

“We got a huge kick out of the day in Doncaster, but we got just as big a kick when she won her maiden in Nottingham as well,” says Shane. “It’s not like we were begging

Lot Pedigree

Book 1

341 Teofilo-Ejaazah (Acclamation) b,c. 523 Nathaniel-Nibbling (Invincible Spirit) b,f.

Book 2

598 Showcasing-Queen Sarra (Shamardal) b,c. 735 New Bay-Suite (Invincible Spirit) b,f. 844 Churchill-Adelina (Union Rags) b,f. 1095 Kodiac-French Blue (Iffraaj) b,c.

Book 3

1480 Coulsty (IRE) / Atlas Silk (Dansili) b,c. 1566 Kodi Bear-First Party (Royal Applause) b,f.

anyone to buy her at that price, they wanted her, but it legitimises the whole thing when they can go and win a maiden like that only a few weeks after leaving our yard.”

More horses will be leaving the Tradewinds yard this autumn as the operation offers its biggest draft of yearlings bound for Tattersalls Ireland’s September Sale, the Goffs Orby and Tattersalls October Yearling Sales.

“We have a very nice Teofilo colt in Book 1, the only colt by the sire in the sale,” says Shane as he outlines their key lots. “And we also have the only filly by Nathaniel, they’re two nice horses. There’s a lovely Invincible Spirit colt in Goffs and a Churchill filly in Book 2. She’s very nice and the stallion is having a good year, too.

“We had a good year with the yearlings last year and we rowed it all back buying foals. We had seven last year and there’s 13 this time around.

“We’ve upped the numbers every year for the last few years now, so hopefully we’re going the right way.”

The Tradewinds team have already come a long way in a short space of time.

But with no shortage of ambition and an ample helping of talent, all the evidence points to the Power siblings only just getting started.

Photo: Sarah Farnsworth | Goffs UK

The press huddle gets the story after the sale of Beautiful Diamond with the all-smiling Power

HASCOMBE & VALIANT STUD

2023 is an exceptional year for Hascombe & Valiant Stud. A record 18 colts were born in 2022 and the decision has been made to offer all 18 exciting colts at the upcoming Tattersalls Yearling Sales. All fillies will be retained. Every colt will have x-rays and scopes available to view in the repository.

Tattersalls October Yearling Sale, Book 1

Colt by AMERICAN PHAROAH (top American sire) ex Auntinet

Colt by FRANKEL ex Bizzarria (a 2YO winner from the family of Starcatcher)

Colt by LOPE DE VEGA ex Dame Malliott (a dual Gr.2 winner & Gr.1-placed)

Coly by LOPE DE VEGA ex Frankly Darling (a Gr.2 winner & Gr.1-placed)

Colt by NIGHT OF THUNDER ex Riviera Belle (immediate family of GOLDEN HORN)

Colt by PINATUBO ex Dawn Horizons (a three-time winner)

Colt by SEA THE STARS ex Our Obsession (a 2YO winner and Listed winner)

Tattersalls October Yearling Sale, Book 2

Colt by BLUE POINT ex Tempest Fugit (a Listed winner)

Colt by BLUE POINT ex Nyarhini (a 2YO & 4YO winner and Listed-placed as a 3YO)

Colt by ULYSSES ex Token Of Love (colt a full-brother to Gr.3 winner MIGHTY ULYSSES)

Colt by CRACKSMAN ex Valiant Girl (a Gr.3 winner from the family of Courage Mon Ami)

Colt by TOO DARN HOT ex Precious Ramotswe (a Gr.3 winner & Gr.2-placed)

Colt by CRACKSMAN ex Plucky Lass (family of COURAGE MON AMI)

Tattersalls December Yearling Sale

Colt by CRACKSMAN ex Primevere (colt a half-brother to LR winner BARTZELLA)

Colt by GOLDEN HORN ex Frankellina (a 2YO winner & Gr.3-placed)

Colt by GOLDEN HORN ex Palitana (dam a full-sister to FOOTSTEPSINTHESAND)

In 2013 GOLDEN HORN was led out of the ring unsold... Don’t miss your opportunity to buy a potential Derby winner.

Three is NOT a crowd

James Richardson, CEO of the young auction company ThoroughBid, sees online selling as an integral part of the bloodstock sales arena, and is looking forward to the organisation’s inaugural Online Yearling Sale

Its On The Line ridden by jockey Derek O’Connor on their way to winning the Champion Hunters Chase at Punchestown. The horse was bought for £8,000 at the ThoroughBid March Sale 2022 by the Its On The Line Syndicate

COVID wrought many life changes – people had to find new ways of working, doing business, interacting, communicating and keeping themselves amused. Some of those aspects of pandemic life have since become entrenched into our daily lives –working from home and zoom meetings have become the new normal, however, on the flip side, some of those enthusiastically embraced new hobbies and in-house exercise regimes were soon abandoned.

In the bloodstock industry a new digital business sprung up through the adversity of the global pandemic; it has since taken roots and is now another legitimate option for the buying and selling of racehorses.

ThoroughBid was founded by Ross Alberto and Will Kinsey, who took the idea of online bidding from the back of an envelope to reality. The pair was joined by now CEO James Richardson, and the team took the company from concept to market place at appropriately viral speed.

Two years down the line the founders and the management team have greater goals than just providing an online bidding platform developed through adversity, and are keen to “create” rather than disrupt.

They also certainly believe they provide the market place with a legitimate third auction house option.

“We feel that an independent auction house and a new addition to the market has a benefit and a place, we feel that we can do a job,” says CEO James Richardson.

The company was set up in July 2020 and in September celebrated the second anniversary of its debut sale, but the business goals are more altruistic than merely taking advantage of a global catastrophe.

“It was more borne out of the frustration felt by the founders and myself that sometimes at physical sales the buying experience for participants is not always great,” rues Richardson. “Owners could head to a sale on a wet day with a short list of five horses, and find that three have not turned up and one looks lame.

“We really felt there could be a better buying experience for both purchasers and for vendors.”

Selling online obviously means that the horse does not leave the trainer’s yard or stud farm until sold and cash has exchanged hands, and in this busy world of wall-to-wall racing and busy daily lives, Richardson reports this has massive cash and logistical benefits for those selling horses.

“It is incredibly time consuming to sell at market and online offers both cost suppressions for the vendor and helps with staffing, it is very important today to transact without disrupting the entire yard.

“For trainers selling during the main Flat or NH season to have staff come to the sales when there might also be staff away from the yard at the races, well it is not viable.”

Obviously as has been seen in the market place professional consignors are being used more and more for the sales process by trainers, so taking away that logistical issue of getting horses to sales, but Richardson counters that even the large scale professional sales consignors have successfully made use of the online platform for transactions.

And, as Richardson says, horses are certainly selling and making their money on the platform.

“Particularly with the horses in training it has been proven around the world that it is a perfectly legitimate way to sell; not many can say that they did not make the money they felt they should have by selling online,” he says, adding: “Anecdotally we have horses who have made way more than anticipated.

“Horses have sold around the world

It is incredibly time consuming to sell at market and online offers cost suppressions for the vendor

Maskada: ThoroughBid’s first Cheltenham Festival winner was bought at this year’s March Sale by Coolmara Stables for £80,000 – the gelding by Masked Marvel won this year’s Grand Annual

now online for seven-figure sums,” he adds referencing the dispersal of the Valachi Downs broodmare band on the New Zealand Bloodstock-owned Gavelhouse platform, which saw Baggy Green (Galileo) bought by the Written Tycoon Syndicate for NZ$1.75 million.

The ThoroughBid team is keen to provide the market with the advantages of liquidity and speed that the private sales arena enjoys, yet with the safe financial embrace that can be given by selling within the

auction house environment.

“Transacting online brings all the benefits of a private sale yet with the guarantee and warranty of an auction process,” says Richardson.

Selling horses privately can be fraught with problems, and this is where the advantages selling through ThoroughBid can be seen.

“People might think they have a brilliant private sale sorted out, but it can fall through very easily and the consignor can

then be left with an asset that is difficult to sell – other people suddenly think there is something wrong with the horse, not just that the buyer found another option or just walked away.

“We have really tried to set up to protect both sides of the deal, and both sides have the security that the horse is safe in its stable at home and is only going to leave that stable when it is paid for.

“We are trying to really concentrate on compressing a massively long process into

The ThoroughBid team of James Richardson (CEO, far left), Ross Alberto (co-founder, second from left) and Will Kinsey (co-founder, far right) presenting connections of Grandero Bello, owners Josie Reed and Robert Caddick, with their £5,000 Point2Rules Bonus cheque awarded to buyers of an Irish or UK point-to-pointer at a ThoroughBid auction who goes on to win a first start under Rules. Grandero Bello, an Irish point-to-point winner, was bought at the December 2021 Sale and went on to win a maiden hurdle at Punchestown on his first start for new connections

as short a time as possible without cutting corners.

“The buyer still has five days to review the animal subject to getting it out of the property in the allowed time; we think we are giving everyone a fair crack of the whip.”

That liquidity the online market can offer is key, he enthuses.

“You can sell a horse at a time of your choosing whether that is to make maximum benefit of its race performance or record, or, alternatively, to mitigate losses.

“We automatically pay out after seven days and, for vendors to be paid just a week after selling, is a big plus.”

Providing a third wing to the thoroughbred auction industry, a business historically made up of a strong duopoly, he also feels is good for a competitive market place.

“The feedback we have had from the market is that competition is important –in the UK and Ireland there are only two providers and I think at times that does lend itself be the most competitive.”

Richardson, however, admits ThoroughBid is not going to rework an industry that has 200 years of history and

that the people actually like going out for a day at the sales, the venues also providing a sociable and networking day out, a place to do equine business and an amphitheater in which people want to buy horses.

However, Richardson believes that the online world of transactions of racehorses can offer a more secure environment

“The nature of online transaction removes the need for credit, which as we have seen over the past year has not been

the most appropriate way for the industry to conduct itself.

“Online sales, as they happen so much more frequently, means buyers are not needing credit because, when they want to buy there is a horse to buy and they don’t have to buy all of the stock at various times of the year on spec because there are no other opportunities.”

He also believes online transactions help to stop buyers getting carried away with purchasing as can happen in the pressurised cauldron of the sale ring.

“I don’t think there is the danger of purchasers suffering from the same degree of buyer’s remorse,” he says. “They are not going to a physical sale with various parties anticipating a purchase and feeling that pressing need to ‘buy’ a horse, being in danger of buying and coming home with a horse perhaps they should not have bought.

“Buying at home or in office – it is a far more calculated purchase.”

Although Richardson and the team respect the age-old history of the auction world, they are keen to try and re-imagine how things are done, and see if they can’t be done at least a little bit better.

Belfast Banter: the £130,000 ThoroughBid-sold son of Jeremy after his ground-breaking Grade 1 jumps success in the US this summer

If we are able to attract a new audience and new participants because the online mechanism is an easier process then that has to be of benefit

He is particularly keen to help make the bloodstock industry and the buying and selling of horses more user-friendly to the new entrant.

Richardson recalled a pre-launch conversation that firmed in his mind the need for a user-friendly online portal.

“Before we even launched ThoroughBid I was sat around a table with ten very successful City business people and to a person they said that they would love to have a horse but would not know where to start,” he reports, adding: “I’d challenge any person randomly picked off the street to come to a sale ground and just locate a specific horse.

“For instance, if we told them to go and find Lot 32, they wouldn’t be able to walk straight to Lot 32, instead they would walk around the sale ground for a good length of time before finding the horse, and they would be armed only with a black and white pedigree in a catalogue.

“From that little information they are expected to suddenly judge whether or not that is the horse for them.”

ThoroughBid’s mantra is to provide a wiki-type platform where all the information pertaining to a horse is clearly available on one page or within one mouse click.

RICHARDSON SAYS: “We have created a portal that is a one-stop shop.

“We have all the race form and race replays in one place, detailed veterinary certificates… we are empowering the person who is writing the cheque to make some sort of observations themselves.

“The pedigrees are colour-coded so that the less educated in the horse world can actually see straight away and understand the relative value and measure of the pedigree just by the fact that it has got lots of colour on it

“Of course, we are not looking to remove the need for industry professionals at all, but the more we empower and better educate potential owner is has got to be good for the market.

“If a new entrant into the industry or the overseas client can get a greater

Online yearlings

WITH ThoroughBid successfully gaining BHA accreditation horses sold on the platform are now eligible for auction races, and this brings in the online platform into a new world of yearling sales.

As we know there are many “in-horse” yearling sales, but Richardson believes that there is still a niche to sell yearlings online.

understanding as to what is happening, it has to be good. If we are able to attract a new audience because the online mechanism is easier then that has to be of benefit for everyone.”

Richardson likens the process to the developments in the online car sales industry in which people can buy a car online without even a viewing, the car will be delivered and warranted and all the requirements taken of by the sales team.

He is also hoping that online transactions can do something to fix racing’s major issue relating to the retention of owners.

“Liquidity in the market has got to help with owner retention – if a horse is not satisfying the goals without the opportunity of an online sale there might not be a chance to sell for a length of time and the costs of selling are going to be quite significant … it is not surprising that owner does not reinvest or not to the level that we’d like them too.”

The world of online buying is here to stay – all of the major auction houses conduct their own online sales, and there are a number of bespoke companies in existence around the world.

The worth of a sale and a sales house is always judged by the ongoing performance of its graduates, and already ThoroughBid has sold Cheltenham and Punchestown Festival winners and this summer a US jumps Grade 1 victor – Belfast Banter, who was sold at the November 2021 Sale bought by Danny Mullins for £130,000.

With these results under its belt, a new sale planned this autumn and broader aims for the industry’s benefit, ThoroughBid certainly believes that there is a long term viability for three auction houses in Britain and Ireland.

“The biggest market is the yearling market and I think that, despite the vast number of physical sales, there still is a stock of horse that is not getting into the right sales for various reasons,” he outlines, adding: “The consignors are getting bigger and bigger and there is potentially the argument that they are shunting down and shutting out the smaller producers – it is just how things are going. I certainly think we can provide options.”

As regards viewing horses and the feeling that yearlings need to be seen to believed he counters: “It was proved through Covid that online yearling sales worked well, I think if you have the right photos and videos with the horse’s profile it goes a long way.

“And, of course, people can still go and see the stock, we are just giving another option for buyers and sellers.”

Yearlings bought in the company’s November Sale have the opportunity to win their connections a £5,000 bonus, if successful first time out.

“With the prize-money situation as it is I think it is nice to be rewarding success for all rather than just the ‘elite’,” says Richardson. “There are not many sales bonuses available for horses outside for the top five per cent or so and, while some of the auction races might be for stock slightly lower down the tree, those horses are one of the many just trying to get into a race let alone trying to win it.”

“Of course, it is still not easy to win first time out, but we’d like to reward owners and like to be seen to be helping the industry.”

He concludes: “We are trying to be a force for change and a force for good. We are not evangelical preachers about this, but we were set up with the mind set of trying, if we can, to make things a little bit better.“

I’d challenge any person randomly picked off the street to come to a sale ground and locate a specific horse...

An AI bloodstock agent?

THIS YEAR has seen the arrival of AI technology into the mainstream and even those of us without a computer-literate brain can understand its potential, but can AI’s tendrils stretch to the world of bloodstock? Could computers really help buyers pick those yearlings who will become the next racecourse superstars?

Byron Rogers of Performance Genetics has spent a lot of time, effort, finance and brain power building a machine-learning application; he certainly believes technology has its place and sees the computer as a vital “co-pilot” for the production of a short-list of selections at a yearling sale.

In the first of a two-part series taken from his business blog, Rogers explains how he went about building his AI-based bloodstock agent

I HAVE BEEN WORKING at Performance Genetics for nearly a decade now. We’ve found many elite racehorses, faced some bitter disappointments, and learned valuable lessons from the data we have collected.

During that time we’ve explored pedigree data, biomechanics and kinematics, cardiovascular parameters, and DNA

The challenge of selecting yearlings

When we started to look at how to use data to better select yearlings, it took me, at least, a little while to understand what we were trying to do, or more specifically what we were trying to take advantage of.

It turns out that what we are doing, is trying to exploit the learning weakness that occurs with every single person when they go to a yearling sale and try to buy what they hope will subsequently become an elite racehorse.

Consider this:

• About three out of every 10 yearlings anyone looks at at a sale don’t get to the racetrack. Those three don’t give you any meaningful

markers, continually refining our predictive approach based on the data that we have collected and the outcomes on the racetrack.

The ground truth from that data is this – most horses are predictably slow, but the truly exceptional ones stand out. Our journey has brought us closer to understanding what variables are most critical in predicting racehorse performance.

information to form your selection process on (other than they might have a conformation defect that meant racing wasn’t possible). As humans, we are unaware of this outcome when we observe a horse, so can we discard the input from those unraced horses as useless? Answer - we can’t.

• A further one out of 10 yearlings doesn’t make more than three lifetime starts, so they also fail to yield sufficient information on which to base a reasonable assumption of their potential ability.

• So only six of 10 yearlings at sales will give you information to learn from. How do you know which six do and which four don’t? (the answer is, you don’t know)

Byron Rogers: applies technology to bloodstock

Photo: Laura Green | Tattersalls

In addition to the imperfect samples to learn from at a sale we also have three further issues which make things even more difficult for us:

1. Retention of visual information

It’s nearly impossible to remember exactly what a yearling looked like and match that to an outcome two years later, especially when evaluating thousands of horses annually.

You might remember the odd one or two good ones each year, but the retention of all information is poor, especially of the examples that help you the most.

2. Bias in memory

We tend to remember those true positives (horses we liked who turned out to be good) and discount the difference between true positives and false positives (horses we thought would be elite but were in fact slow).

We also fail to remember false negatives (horses we thought would be slow but were fast).

The false positives and false negatives are the ones we learn the most from but we don’t recall them well enough.

3. Overwhelmed by negative cases

The truly elite racehorses make up only three to six per cent of all horses at a sale. Our brains are overwhelmed by the negative cases, making identification of the elite horse more difficult.

Don’t worry, unless they are specifically trained to find it (like credit card fraud detection) it is the same problem most machine learning models have if we have that type of imbalance in the dataset.

Given the above (and setting aside trainer effect on outcomes) it is no wonder that those that are considered the best judges on the planet, are striking at 12% accuracy!

The role of AI in racehorse selection

Given these challenges, we realised that what we were building would act like a copilot at the yearling sales.

By knowing all the subsequent racetrack outcomes as the data matured and building predictive models iteratively, the models could, if fed data consistently, overcome human limitations, namely:

• The computer doesn’t “forget” what a horse looks like. It has the data for both good and bad horses.

• It wouldn’t be confused by horses that provide no data.

• It would learn from both false negatives (horses it thought were slow but were fast) and false positives (horses it thought were fast but were slow).

Building an AI/machine learning application

In mid-2019, I was approached by Google to beta test what was to become VertexAI. Ultimately, I wanted to develop an application that could:

• Easily scale to handle tens of 1000s of records.

• Be fairly “hands-off” without requiring much manual editing.

• Improve its predictive power over time as more horses had their data collected as yearlings, aged into the dataset.

I had been using Google’s custom video-recognition models for the year prior and that allowed me to train a model that predicted how “good” a cardio was [see Byron’s blog post on www. performancegenetics.com], but the VertexAI platform was more what I was looking for – something that could be used as the backbone for a completely managed end-to-end application.

Google subsequently launched Vertex AI in May, 2021 and, starting in June 2021, (thanks Covid) I did a complete re-write of the Performance Genetics platform.

I started from the basics – getting the data in, training models, refining models

based on what features/variables that were found to be important, and expanding the dataset to be as large as I could make it.

It has been a two-year project to build what is now internally known as Velox (Latin for swift or rapid) up and going with the scale and operation that I was after – it is now battle ready.

Much of what is discussed in this article will encapsulate the “secret sauce” on how we developed Velox and how we now go about racehorse selection at Performance Genetics. So let’s begin:

Understanding the

problem – how

do we try to define and predict elite horses? To begin the process of trying to create a set of models to help us predict elite racehorses, we had to start by defining how we wanted to approach the problem, and how we planned to overcome some of the issues that come up along the way.

In data science terms there were two options available:

1. Binary classification task

We could set the task up as a binary classification where the goal is to classify instances into one of two possible classes –elite or non-elite racehorses.

2. Regression task

We could set it up as a regression task where the goal is to predict a continuous numerical value. So, we could take a rating of a horse (Timeform, Equibase, etc) and try to build models that predict the rating that a horse could achieve.

It’s crucial to identify whether the problem is a binary classification or regression task at the outset, as this will guide our choice of algorithms, evaluation metrics, and overall approach and outcomes.

We went around this first problem a few times and each of the approaches has their positives and negatives, but in the end we settled with a binary classification.

First, we did try it as a regression problem and tried to predict the exact rating of a horse (we used Timeform ratings to start with as we could get ratings in Europe

It’s nearly impossible to remember exactly what a yearling looked like and match that to an outcome two years later

and the US) but found that it was really difficult from a data science viewpoint as we ran into two major issues.

1. In a general commercial population of yearlings and their subsequent racetrack performance, the distribution of Timeform ratings is heavily skewed.

Most of the ratings are clustered around 50-70 with only a few yearlings getting to 100+ ratings. While we tried methodologies to address the imbalance within the dataset, even after doing this the models did not perform well for those outliers because they optimise for the majority distribution.

2. It also suffered from what is known as heteroscedasticity.

The models consistently predicted more accurately (less error) for lower-rated horses and less accurately for higher-rated horses.

I think that this comes down to the fact that when you look at a large population of horses, in performance/effort terms there isn’t that much difference between a 90-rated horse that is a good allowance/ handicapper, and a 100-rated horse that is a Listed level horse, but there is a big difference between that 90-rated horse and one rated 110.

Also, for those that are rated 110+, they are different (leaders/backmarkers, Dirt/Turf, peak as two-year-olds/threeyear-olds/older) and a small portion of the dataset so, while there are some core variables that separate out elite and nonelite horses, getting a good number of them to represent each possbility of elite performance is almost impossible.

Said more plainly, the regression models were really good at predicting the average horse correctly, but couldn’t predict the elite horses as correctly as it should.

I think this is a major issue that competitors in our space that are trying to predict racehorse outcomes and are using regression models have failed to overcome.

Given the above, we then developed our solution as a binary classification task, but to understand that properly, we also need to firstly discuss our own worldwide rating, how we built it and how we determined who was elite (1) and non-elite (0) in our datasets.

Creating a worldwide rating – the challenge of an international dataset

One of the other challenges we had is finding a rating that we could use to accurately describe performance. As I said earlier we initially used Timeform ratings. The reason for this is that, generally speaking, I have found the ratings are an accurate measure of performance and they are a metric that can be found in both Europe and the US and have a similar basis of comparison (so European Timeform ratings are roughly calibrated with US Timeform).

After using Timeform for a few years it became logistically very unwieldy to use. Not because the rating was wrong, rather:

1. We had a large portion of the data set racing in Australia/New Zealand/Asia that Timeform didn’t cover.

2. As the data set expanded it was very difficult to manually look up and insert ratings into the database. I know, I should have got an API call from Timeform to automatically update it but it was two companies (the US is different to the UK) and the issue above with lack of data in all racing jurisdictions was the primary concern.

So, eventually we had to go about creating our own rating. To do this we partnered with a database that gets worldwide racing results and started to think about how to create a rating that reflected performance in every country that races around the world.

How did we do that?

It would seem simple to use the Pattern/ graded stakes system as it is a worldwide structure with some boundaries to the

annotations given to each race so Group and Grade 1 races should be roughly comparable worldwide, but we also needed a way to rate the majority of horses that didn’t race in group races.

That part was more difficult as it is hard to compare allowance level races in the US, for example, with a benchmark 64 in Australia.

While some might say it is imperfect, we settled on a prize-money based rating as the best that was available.

Generally speaking prize-money is quite well distributed relative to racing class in each country with better races having higher prize-money values, and lesser races having less. There are some problems with races such as The Everest in Australia that skew a little, but they are not that many and those issues can be overcome.

First, we “normalised” prize-money per race. So, we took the full value in prizemoney for a race and then proportionally distributed it across all runners in the race, so, even if a horse was finishing 10th of 10 in a race, it got some prizemoney from that race assigned to it for that performance.

This smoothed out the distribution of money somewhat across all horses that competed in races, but didn’t diminish the achievement of winning the race.

After that, we then created an index. We did this by comparing:

• Horses of the same sex (i.e. only males compared to males and females compared to females)

• Horses of the same year of birth

• Horses racing the same year

• Horses racing in the same countries

So, for example, if Horse A is a filly born in 2019 who raced in 2023 in England, then we get all the prize-money earned by the same horses as Horse A (filly, 2019, raced 2023, England) and find what the average prize-money earned for that subset is.

That value is given an index of 1.0.

If Horse A has earned three times the average it will have an index of 3.0. If she has earned 50 per cent of the average it will have an index of 0.5.

Country weights

Once we have the value for each horse, we then had to weight it by the country that the

Generally speaking prize-money is quite well distributed relative to racing class in each country

horse performed in.

We had to do this as if you left it unweighted, you would see some absolutely silly results in small countries where a high-class horse has astronomically high numbers compared to others, but has been beaten out of sight when its competed in other racing jurisdictions.

A horse with a high unweighted race rating in, for example, Hungary, starts off with a similar value to one in France, but we weight the country so France is higher than Hungary and the adjusted rating more accurately reflects the actual level of performance.

Getting this weighting right took some time as we had to study horses that had raced in multiple countries and look at their relative performance.

We used some pair wise ranking techniques to make sure it was right (there is a good R package named SportR for those that are interested).

For example, when you consider all horses racing in all jurisdictions the data would suggest that the performances of horses in Argentina are roughly 60 per cent of the value of a performance in Australia.

This doesn’t mean that the best horses bred in Argentina aren’t good, it means that the average horse there isn’t as good as the average horse in Australia.

A lot of the smaller racing nations got a weight of zero (0) which meant that no matter how good the horse was in that country, its adjusted race rating was zero.

That might seem unfair, but there was enough evidence to show that even the best horses coming out of lower tier countries to compete in other countries were getting well beaten.

There were some issues with countries such as South Africa/Zimbabwe and South Korea where their performances are isolated from outside competition (e.g. there is not much cross pollination of horses in other racing jurisdictions) but after producing all the data, looking at what weights were assigned to each country, looking at the distributions of adjusted race ratings and consulting people such as Alan Porter, I believe we have it broadly right.

The result of all this is a Race Rating index that goes from as low as 0.01 to as

high as 300 (for what it is worth, the highest rating we had when this was written is for an Argentine-bred but US-raced Candy Ride at 307.30) which can be found and applied for any horse racing in any country.

It allows us to automate the process of

assigning class to a horse without worrying where the horse ends up racing after we get data on it as a yearling.

Once we had this worldwide rating, we then went back and matched the Race Rating against Timeform Ratings and the Pattern/Graded system to verify its worth. What we found was:

1. A Race Rating of 3.0 on our rating is roughly equivalent to a horse that runs 100 Timeform rating – a Listed level horse.

2. About 4.5 per cent of all horses sold will run a Timeform of 100 or greater. About 6.5 per cent of all horses by the top one per cent of stallions will win any stakes race (Listed or better).

Horses we measured as yearlings that end up with a Race Rating of 3.0 or greater are six per cent of our database so it roughly

About 6.5 per cent of all horses by the top one per cent of stallions will win any stakes race (Listed or better)

Rogers believes that machine learning can compliment the human eye

Photo: Sarah Farnsworth | Goffs UK

aligns with Timeform (4.5 per cent) and Foals/SW for the top one per cent of all stallions (6.5 per cent)

3. For horses with yearling measurements, the top two and half per cent of Race Ratings in our database is a rating of 4.7 or better.

That rating equates to a Group/Graded stakes winner in our database.

Around 2.3 per cent of offspring by the top per cent of stallions win a Graded/Group race so if you look at the truly elite horses (the top 2.5 per cent) the database is broadly reflective of a commercial population.

Building the data set – getting the balance

Once we had the rating sorted out, what we also did was create an API (a programmable

interface that can ping their database for new information on command) to the database that created the rating for us so that every month, every horse in our database is firstly checked to see if it is 1250 days old (so it is three and a half years old) and if so it is updated with any changes to:

• It’s name

• It’s raw Race Rating (which we then convert with the country weight)

• Number of starts

• Date of last start

• Average distance raced

• Country it raced in (to lookup the country weight and convert the Race Rating)

We also use the average distance raced to form some basic distance categories (5-7f, 6-8f, 8-10f, 10f+) so we can predict optimal

distance in addition to racing class.

This process allows us to build a new data set each month for any model that we are training, with an ever expanding number of horses, to retrain the models on.

Depending on the time of year, in a given month we can have over 500 new records that age into the data set by turning 1,250 days old.

Additionally in that month, about 10 per cent of our database will have their starts updated to where they have at least three lifetime starts, so can be used in a model data set, and a further 60 per cent of the records will have changes to the number of starts and their Race Rating. This process starts to fulfill one desire to have an automated system that is more “hands off”.

The data sets change each month a fair

bit giving the models more information to learn from. We build the model datasets by:

• Finding records where the horse is at least 1,250 days old

• Finding records where the horse has had three or more starts

This means that any data set that the models are asked to learn from are only horses that have had the opportunity to have at least three lifetime starts and are three and a half years of age or older.

On average it takes a horse three starts to break its maiden, and seven starts to win a stakes race.

In our database the average number of starts by a horse that is included in any data set for the models to learn from is 15.21 with one record having 121 starts!

The API keeps updating the records every month until a record hasn’t had a change in it’s date of last start for 1,000 days (so once the horse hasn’t raced for three years) at which point it stops requesting the update as we presume the horse is retired.

Building a data set

Once we have all the ratings for all the horses that have three or more starts, we then get down to the more important part of how we construct the data set for the models to learn from.

There were quite a few considerations to take when we construct the data sets and to be honest, a lot of this was about trial and error where we created the data sets, trained a model and then tested the data sets on unseen samples to examine its performance.

There was a lot of cost involved in this part but we found there were a few things to consider:

1. When building a data set, the size of the sample set plays a crucial role. Too few samples can lead to “underfitting”, where the model might not learn the underlying patterns of the data.

Conversely, too many samples without adding new information might lead to “overfitting”, where the model becomes too specific to the training data and performs poorly on new, unseen data. Intuitively, a larger data set generally provides a more

comprehensive representation of the underlying distribution of the data.

However, the law of diminishing returns applies; after a certain point, adding more data may not lead to significant improvements in model performance.

2. Binary classification problems involve predicting one of two possible classes, in our case “elite” or “non-elite”.

The distribution of these classes in the database can significantly influence the performance of the model.

In our real-world database of all records, the prediction target – elite – is imbalanced and significantly underrepresented.

If we take all data as our data set, 95 per cent will be “non-elite” samples and five per cent “elite” samples; it is quite easy for a model to achieve 95 per cent accuracy by merely predicting “non-elite” all the time.

It’s like a bloodstock agent or trainer going to the sales and saying “this is a slow horse” to all the horses in the sale, they are going to be right 95 per cent of the time, but they aren’t useful to buy a fast one at all!

We looked at different ways to tackle these two problems and built a lot of different data set sizes, we looked at splits where it was 60:40 non-elite:elite, 70:30 split and other percentages.

We also looked at oversampling the minor case using resampling the elite samples and also looked at synthetically creating elite samples. We found the following:

1. As we found with the regression modeling we tried earlier, using samples of horses whose performance rating is too close to what is defined as elite is a mistake. The binary models can’t find information in the shape of the data to disciminate between those that are elite, and those that are nearly elite.

2. To capture the variation of data in the samples in the dataset that reflect the samples that are not included in the dataset the model is trained on, you need at least 750, preferably 1,000 samples.

The reward for more samples caps out at about 1,500 samples as beyond that the models start to overfit the data.

3. It is best to get a 50:50 balance between elite and non-elite samples. The balanced data set of the two provides a far more effective data set to learn from and operates well on those samples not found in the data set.

So, if the max number of samples you need per class is 1,500, a data set of 3,000 total is enough.

4. While 3,000 seems a small number, given that elite horses, those that rate 3.0 or better, are just six per cent of our database, and we need at least 750 elite samples (preferably 1,500), we had to get at least 12,500 samples overall.

This isn’t just 12,500 samples of horses, it is 12,500 samples of horses that have had three or more starts, so you actually need to get ~20,000 samples in the database to have at least 750 elite samples to use in a model.

There is a difference between what data you have, and what data you need, to collect the right number of samples for a data set.

5. As the models never learn off the full data set, rather they learn off the elite horses compared to the most non-elite, we use the Race Rating itself to weight each row of data so that the model treats the highest scoring elite horse a little more importantly than the lowest scoring elite horse.

The data for the worst horse in the data set is more important to learn from than those that are less bad. This weighting of the rows is important.

Building the data sets and getting the balance right took a lot of time, effort and money to get right but as you will see in the next issue, it is worth it.

It’s like a bloodstock agent or trainer going to the sales and saying “this is a slow horse” to all the horses in the sale...

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It’s a competitive market place: be in control of your stallion’s profile

THIS YEAR’S ARQANA AUGUST SALE

saw two of the last half century’s most influential people in global horseracing and bloodstock on the Deauville sale ground: above, John Magnier (75), and, right, Sheikh Mohammed (74), both patriarchs enjoying the Deauville air and in France to oversee their team’s buying operations.

It has been some years since the pair, who have traded blows in the auction ring and on the racecourse since the 1980s, have been seen publicly at a bloodstock sale at the same time.

At one point, in order for the Godolphin team to enjoy some privacy from the busy ring, the private buying room annually used by the Irish team was opened up for both entourages to share.

It would have been an interesting fly-on-the-wall moment and could well have brought back memories for both from 1985 when the two chiefs and their advisors met in the Dubai desert to discuss a ceasing of the sales ring hostilities that had led to those vastly hugely inflated prices created in the 1980s.

Photos: Laura Green

“When you have a great horse, everything is possible.”

BY design VICTORY

Stakes winner at two, Classic winner and Cartier Champion at three

Gr.1 Eclipse Stakes