12 minute read
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.”
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 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 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
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.
