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DALIKA was bred in Germany by Gestut Ammerland, who sold her in the spring of her three-year-old career. The US result maintains the great day for Ammerland, who topped Day 1 of the Arqana August Sale with its Shamardal colt out of Lady Frankel, who sold for €1,600,000 (Lot 21). Her dam Drawn To Run [&hellip;]

Watch: Dalika win the Grade 1 Beverley D Stakes, great day for Gestut Ammerland continues - International Thoroughbred

Horse racing and Bloodstock magazine and live news

International Thoroughbred

Watch: Dalika win the Grade 1 Beverley D Stakes, great day for Gestut Ammerland continues

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European juvenile winners' round-up - International Thoroughbred

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European juvenile winners&#8217; round-up

Offered: 133 Sold: 112 % sold: 84.21 % Average price: €177,339 Median price: €120,000 Aggreate: €19,862,000 Top price: €1,600,000

Arqana August Day 1 statistics - International Thoroughbred

Arqana August Day 1 statistics

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Lot 133 Sea The Stars x Shamtee

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Haras Du Mont Dit Mont gets the result of the sale –  the farm sells its first foal out of the broodmare Shamtee (Shamardal) for €675,000 (Lot 133).

Sea The Stars first foal out of Shamtee makes €675,000, gives Mont dit Mont the result of Arqana August Day 1 - International Thoroughbred

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Sea The Stars first foal out of Shamtee makes €675,000, gives Mont dit Mont the result of Arqana August Day 1

ARQANA AUGUST THE full-sister to Rumi, a Galileo four-year-old of this year, a Group 2 winner in 2021 of the Prix de la Nonette, is set to join her sister under the Al Shira&#8217;aa Racing banner, bought by the farm for €570,000 (Lot 128). Kieran Lalor, general manager of Al Shira&#8217;aa Racing, said: &#8220;Rumi is running in [&hellip;]

Al Shira'aa Racing buys the Galileo full-sister to Rumi - International Thoroughbred

Al Shira&#8217;aa Racing buys the Galileo full-sister to Rumi

ARQANA AUGUST Michel Zerolo of Oceanic Bloodstock bidding on behalf of MV Magnier and White Birch Farm spends €550,000 on Lot 122, the Siyouni colt out of Sapa Inca (Galileo), the full-sister to Johannes Vermeer, winner of the Criterium International (G1), and Elizabeth Browing, winner of the Group 2 Kilboy Estate Stakes (G2). &#8220;She has [&hellip;]

MV Magnier and White Birch Farm go to €580,000 for Monceaux's Siyouni colt - International Thoroughbred

MV Magnier and White Birch Farm go to €580,000 for Monceaux&#8217;s Siyouni colt

Jumby and William Buick win the Group 2 Hungerford Sta

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© Debbie Burt

THE Eve Johnson-Houghton-trained Jumby, a son of New Bay, collected his first Group race success when taking the Hungerford Stakes (G2)

Jumby wins his first Group 2, Prix de la Foret possible aim - International Thoroughbred

Jumby wins his first Group 2, Prix de la Foret possible aim

THE SIYOUNI half-sister to the Irish 2,000 Guineas winner Native Trail (Oasis Dream) is bought by Al Shira'aa Racing for €550,000.

Native Trail's close sister bought by Al Shira'aa Racing for €550,000 - International Thoroughbred

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Native Trail&#8217;s close sister bought by Al Shira&#8217;aa Racing for €550,000

Luxembourg back to winning ways... just! - International Thoroughbred

Luxembourg back to winning ways&#8230; just!

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Victory Dance ridden by William Buick after winning the Denford Stakes race during BetVictor Hungerford Day at Newbury Racecourse. Picture date: Saturday August 13, 2022.

THE juvenile Listed races in Britain and Ireland won by progeny of the Darley stallion father and son team of Dubawi and son Night Of Thunder

Father Dubawi and son Night Of Thunder sire Listed juvenile winners in Britain and Ireland - International Thoroughbred

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Father Dubawi and son Night Of Thunder sire Listed juvenile winners in Britain and Ireland

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<h3>[it-added-button="<a class="post_btn_class_normal txt-color" href="https://issuu.com/international_thoroughbred/docs/itb_august_2022/62" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Read using the pdf</a>"]</h3>
<h3 class="NextStory__AbsoluteContainer-sc-1g3e28b-2 heLwGa">YANN BARBEROT loves training in Deauville and the ex-jockey is having a fine time of things at present.</h3>
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He won the All-Weather Sprint Championship in April with Bouttemont, had runners in this year’s French Classics, and Sicilian Defense won a Listed race at the start of the Deauville summer season
YANN BARBEROT is a trainer whose time has come. Some 15 years after the ex-jockey launched his new career as a trainer in Deauville, the stable is clearly on the verge of joining the elite group of French-based trainers who compete regularly in the country’s best races.
In 2021, Barberot’s stable enjoyed its best season to date with 60 wins in France, and this year it succeeded in winning its first race in England when Bouttemont took the All Weather Sprint Championship at Newcastle in April. He has also been competing in the French fillies’ Classic races with Daisy Maisy and Sicilian Defense.
“My first plan was to go to Newcastle with a different horse,” says Barberot about his British All-Weather win, “but then when the time came I realised that Bouttemont was the horse at the peak of his form and ready to go. It was a great day, it is very difficult to win in Britain – now we have one winner we shall certainly be looking for more.”
Travelling is however never straight forward.
“My next runner in Britain was Toimy Son in the Jersey Stakes at Royal Ascot,” he adds. “He travelled over from Deauville on a day when the temperature was in the 90s and when I saw him in the paddock before the race I knew he had no chance.
“The horse was just not there and the journey had taken too much out of him. He may not have been good enough to compete, but as it turned out we still don’t know as he didn’t run his race. I will keep trying.
“The prize-money in France is so good, particularly with the premiums for French-bred horses, that it is not always an obvious decision to pay for the transport to go and compete in England or even in Germany but I enjoy challenges and competition is our job.
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<blockquote>“I loved being a jockey and hadn’t really thought about what would come next, even in a little part of my brain!"</blockquote>
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"These days I train for some breeders, and for a breeder the equation is different than for those who are only interested in racing and prize-money.
Barberot was a jockey for nearly 20 years and rode more than 400 winners. He was based in the west of France and rode frequently for the Deauville-based trained Stefan Wattel.
“I loved being a jockey,” he remembers, “and hadn’t really thought about what would come next, even in a little part of my brain! I did have an idea that I might try to be a trainer. I used to go to Cagnes for the winter meeting for Stefan, and while he was away in Deauville I used to oversee the training of the horses who were based there and it was something I enjoyed a great deal.”
The future caught up with Barberot suddenly when his riding career was ended by a heart attack during a race at Craon in 2007.
“Let’s say that at the time I had trouble with my weight and my lifestyle was very far from a healthy one,” he explains.
For a year he stopped everything in order to recover and then had to face up to the future.
“I went to see Stefan and asked him if I could work as his assistant. He said of course I could, but that he thought it was a bad idea and that in his opinion I should set up on my own. In the end he was right.
“I worked as his assistant for about a month and then in 2008 I set out in Deauville as a trainer.”
The choice of Deauville was an easy one at the time and he is more convinced than ever that it is the ideal place to train racehorses.
“Deauville has,” he says, “the perfect climate for training thoroughbreds as it is never either too hot or too cold but a moderate temperature all the year round.
“All of the stud farms and breaking in and pre-training centres are close to Deauville, the summer meeting here is about the best quality racing in France of the year, and now we have a winter meeting on the All-Weather and under floodlights, too.
“Arqana is just across the road from the racecourse and we are only two hours by horsebox from the Paris racetracks. I don’t see where would be a better place to train from.”
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[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="568"]<img class="Photo__Image-sc-114e5q3-1 iiCabd" src="https://assets.isu.pub/document-structure/220804090239-7770e75812f0e2a95caa157bafee0f6d/v1/d592367d4b9d16eea38349113ae67215.jpeg" alt="" width="568" height="429" /> Barberot believes Deauville is the perfect place to train racehorses[/caption]
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The training centre in Deauville is full these days and the successful trainers based there, Jean-Claude Rouget, Wattel and Barberot himself amongst others, have no problem filling the boxes they have available.
Since the arrival of Rouget, whose string is now split between Deauville and Pau, nobody doubts that it is possible to train the best horses and win the best races from Deauville.
“Jean-Claude has raised the profile of Deauville as a training centre,” says Barberot, “and we all have to aim higher if we wish to keep up. He used to keep horses here to prepare for big races before he had an official stable here and so he has appreciated Deauville as a training centre for years.”
Barberot adds: “Jean-Claude is amazing. Sometimes we don’t see him for a week or so and yet when he comes back he not only knows all of his horses by heart but he knows mine, too!
“It is almost irritating as I don’t know his in the same way as he knows mine!
“If it is has been difficult for new trainers to break through in France it is in part because the older generation included remarkable trainers such as André Fabre, Rouget and Alain de Royer-Dupre.”
IN RECENT YEARS Barberot has been able to buy better quality yearlings and the results have followed.
“It is,” he insists, “certainly a lot easier to buy well if you have some money to spend!”
Bouttemont was a €125,000 Deauville August yearling and Daisy Maisy was bought at the COVID-delayed September Sale in 2020 for €240,000.
Daisy Maisy was a close-up fifth in the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches and then sixth in the Prix de Diane.
“She is,” he reasons, “a good filly but just a little below the best. I hope she will be able to win her Group race. I will bring her back in trip – in the Diane the others were just a little too good for her and the distance a little too far.”
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<blockquote>“Training high-class horses is like a drug, once you have had the experience you can only think about how to find new quality horses in order to have the same feeling again."</blockquote>
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These two both belong to Philippe Allaire and partners, a name very well known in the trotting world where the Allaire family has been prominent for many years – Philippe Allaire himself has owned and trained the winners of all of the top races.
“I have learnt a great deal from working with Philippe,” Barberot says. “He knows a great deal and at the same time we have fun and share the same ambition to compete in the best races.
“I know we need to keep winning handicaps and races to bring the money in, but I am always trying to raise the quality of horses we have and we are constantly making a selection of which ones to keep.”
Barberot bought his own stable in Deauville a few years ago and built a new one next door.
Today he has 70 to 75 horses in training all the year round with another 30 or so being either broken in or pre-trained at one of the many establishments in the Deauville area.
“I wasn’t trained to run a business!” he laughs. “Now I have some 20 to 25 employees and so there is a big responsibility and plenty of stress, but I enjoy running a team and trying to bring along young people.
“I have two young apprentice jockeys working for me who both won their first race this year, Dorian Provost and Louis Nomis, and that is something I enjoy doing.
“If I hadn’t been involved with horses perhaps I could have been a football trainer?”
Barberot is hopeful his owners will follow him again at the yearling sales but then as he points out racing is a competitive business.
“Every year we have to start again from scratch,” he says. “Last year we won 60 races but you never know for sure how the next year will turn out and whether the ones we bought are any good.
“In this business you can never be sure of anything and all we can do is to keep doing everything possible to win races.”
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A trainer who loves his job

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<h3>[it-added-button="<a class="post_btn_class_normal txt-color" href="https://issuu.com/international_thoroughbred/docs/itb_august_2022/44" target="" rel="noopener noreferrer">Read using the pdf</a>"]</h3>
<h3 class="NextStory__RelativeContainer-sc-1g3e28b-1 hfgfGq">ARQANA has changed its set-up for its August Sale, has created a new two-day September Sale, and has launched a new race series Executive director Freddy Powell explains the thinking and the initiatives</h3>
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OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS we have became accustomed to bloodstock sale dates and formats changing, it became part of bloodstock life as sales companies adjusted programmes in order to maintain trade during the two years of lockdown complications. Once again this year the Arqana yearling sales has a rather different format – a half day’s sale on the Saturday of the August Sale, no V2 version to conclude business and a two-day September Sale. However the altered format, for once, has nothing to do with pandemics, but rather French bank holidays.
“Monday, August 15 is a bank holiday in France and with traditionally good racing on that day, we could not sell on the Monday afternoon as usual,” explains Arqana’s executive director Freddy Powell.
When the realisation of this emerged the Arqana team considered a variety of differing options. Then when France Galop decided to race on the Tuesday, August 16, it forced a complete reconsideration.
As Powell outlines the changes are maybe part of a natural shift in the make up of the August Sale.
“The August Sale Part 1 and Part 2 started to be a little out of place as there were some really nice horses in Part 2 and by international sires, but a lot of people were not staying.
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<blockquote>“As all the horses have to be on site from the outset and we can’t use the racecourse stables, it means that are constrained by the number of boxes that we have."</blockquote>
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“So we were thinking anyway, let’s have only one part for August so all the horses will be seen by everyone.
“As all the horses have to be on site from the outset and we can’t use the racecourse stables, it means that are constrained by the number of boxes that we have.
“So the catalogue has had to be little smaller and we have taken out 40 or 50 horses who would usually be in the August Sale. As obviously we are trying to keep the best ones in August, it has made it look a really nice catalogue.”
With those horses out of the August Sale, V2 unable to take place, York races starting straight after the sale, the sale company hit upon staging a September Sale.
In reality it is not a ground-breaking solution – a September Sale was something that had to be enacted through 2020 when the whole of the August Sale had to shift back a month.
“It has advantages as it gives a few more weeks for the horses, and sometimes creating a new rendezvous can give a new buzz for the marketing. We will have the V2 horses, but more, V2 was about 150 horses.
“The V2 Sale was always for mature and forward horses with precocious pedigrees. September Sale is forward, mature horses but not necessarily precocious pedigrees as we don’t produce that many of those horses in France.”
Powell outlines the strategic mix for the three Arqana yearling sales this year.
“We will have August, which will be little like Saratoga, then September will be mix of Somerville and Doncaster, then October which is a real Book 2 and it will be graded – the first two days will be the most important for most international people.”
T
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<blockquote>"Deauville in August was one of those things that people missed and is one of the first things that people wanted to do again."</blockquote>
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he vibes are already looking good for the August Sale and, according to Powell, bloodstock and racing people from all around the world, who might not have been able to travel to Deauville for a couple of years, are getting their hotels booked.
“The August Sale is already attracting a lot of people, and reservations are already looking good,” he says. “It is the first year after two years of travel restrictions, lots of Australians, Japanese, Americans are planning to travel – Deauville in August was one of those things that people missed and is one of the first things that people wanted to do again.
“We will put everything in order so that we can welcome everyone and all can have a wonderful few days. We love to again be the place where people want to be.”
Arqana has made a lot of effort over the last decade to position itself as an international quality sale and a destination for international investors and breeders.
However, top quality stock needs to back up the marketing and Powell recognises the financial investments put in by the country’s breeders to achieve these goals.
He says: “The greatest work of all has been from the French breeders over the last few years. They have been buying fillies and mares all around the world and sending them to top stallions, it really means that I am not challenged by any catalogue in the world when I
<h3>Online sales</h3>
As with all global equine auction companies, COVID led Arqana to create dedicated online sales and, while that was something forced into existence out of necessity, they are here to stay.
Powell says: “A lot of people think they are cheaper and easier to run, they are not easy and it is expensive to run an online sale – you have to do the videos, the photos, it is quite a process. Some people love them, but you have to target the right clientele and have the right horses.
“We are planning a more established calendar for online sales, we have recruited Marine Moussa as bloodstock executive – she will have focus on recruitment and finding new opportunities online.
“In Australia the online sales work tremendously, but it is a big country and has just one set of rules and administration.
“Selling horses in France to French people is easy, selling horses in France to international people is easy, but once you start selling a horse based in England or Ireland there are different jurisdictions, logistics, VAT problems, legal issues.
“For instance, if a horses sells in Ireland, but the hammer falls in France and there is a dispute after the sale, which jurisdiction does it come under? We will go step by step.
“And the new online-only companies, don’t have a standard because they are new, they can do it their own way. But if Arqana or Goffs start selling online, people want the same standard, the same guarantees.”
Online sales of breeding rights
“In November we have our established sale of shares and breeding seasons.
“I think before it was an opaque sector and hidden market; stallion masters were just selling shares or breeding rights to people they knew or could be good for the career of the stallion.
“Now a lot of people have followed the market over the last few years, some people didn’t even know they could buy a share!
“Stallion masters love someone who will support a stallion in the third or fourth years, so it is not ideal if someone has rights but will not do that, but it will find its balance.” see our August catalogue.
“The capital they have invested in bloodstock over the last few years means we have first and second foals out of numerous Group winners and 17 siblings of Group 1 winners. Breeders have used international stallions; it is very exciting, very motivating, and has resulted in a great catalogue.
“We are proud of the August catalogue, it has been very well received. The catalogue might be a bit thinner, but when reading it page after page is good.”
Within our crowded international sales calendar, Powell admits it was difficult to find a slot for the September Sale.
“Yes, it was a struggle and we will do everything we can to help those who want to come from the Somerville Sale at Newmarket to get to Deauville as quickly and easily as possible.
“However, people have got used to being able to be active at the sales, without necessarily being there. Previously if you asked any agent or trainer regarding buying without seeing, they would be shocked, that mentality has changed a lot.”
The results of the inaugural September Sale will be monitored closely by the Arqana team, and its continuation into 2023 will depend on its performance in 2022.
Powell says: “If it works we will definitely keep it, but we are not going to be stubborn about it! We are not trying to fix things that are not broken. We are quite confident, the catalogue is good, we will do everything we can do attract people and the horses have been selected as individuals.”
<h3>New exciting race series</h3>
In July, Arqana announced sponsorship of a new race series for the sales company’s unraced graduates and that has several objectives both for Arqana and French racing in general.
“We believe that anything we invest into racing and sponsorship has two goals,” outlines Powell.
“The first is to reward those who are buying at Arqana and who trust the French system, the other objective is to attract new owners and work with France Galop. Like everywhere in the world France is losing owners and it is something we want to address.”
As with sales, Arqana has decided to position the unique benefits afforded to it by the Deauville and ParisLongchamp locations.
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<blockquote>“We have a lot of American owners who say that at the Saratoga and Del Mar meetings they are running horses in $100,000 maidens – so we thought why can’t we do the same here?”</blockquote>
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“Prize-money is a good thing, it is important, but experience is even more important,” he says. “By sponsoring in August around the weekend of the sales and on Arc weekend, we can offer our buyers an experience at those wonderful meetings.
“All those people who have a runner in the Criterium on Arc weekend the last few years, have said it has been quite special.
“We will be selling on Friday next year, and there will be a new evening race meeting the night before for these races. It will definitely create a dynamic and give a proper experience.”
It might seem a little strange to focus on untried horses, but there was a strategy around that thinking, too.
“We wanted to give as many people a chance to run on that day in August so we thought what is the biggest population of horses that we have in the middle of August and we realised that is the unraced horses. So we have two unraced maidens over the straight 7f at Deauville straight.
“We have a lot of American owners who say that at the Saratoga and Del Mar meetings they are running horses in $100,000 maidens – so we thought why can’t we do the same here?”

Changing formats

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<h3>[it-added-button="<a class="post_btn_class_normal txt-color" href="https://issuu.com/international_thoroughbred/docs/itb_august_2022/68" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Read using the pdf</a>"]</h3>
<h3 class="NextStory__AbsoluteContainer-sc-1g3e28b-2 heLwGa">HUBERT GUY is based in Lexington and he chats to Jocelyn de Moubray about his recent high level of success and the international bloodstock markets of France and the US – Zellie and Onesto, two of the best French three-year-olds of this year, were both purchased by Guy.</h3>
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HUBERT GUY has had a long career in the bloodstock business.
He moved to California in the early 1980s for a few months’ work experience and stayed for 35 years.
He started working as a bloodstock agent when advised by a lawyer that doing some international business was a good way to get a valid visa while he was waiting for a green card. Over the years he worked with some of the leading California-based trainers and bought numerous Grade 1 winners from France to the US.
He is now based in Lexington, Kentucky but over the last few months has had an outstanding run in France having bought, and for a time part-owned, two of the best three-year-olds of their generation – the Group 1-winners Zellie and the Frankel colt Onesto, last month’s impressive winner of the Grand Prix de Paris.
“I had bought a horse for Elizabeth Fabre before which had worked out well,” Guy recalls when recounting the story of Zellie. “When I said I was looking to buy a foal by Wootton Bassett at the sales in 2019 she and her daughter Lavinia were keen to be partners.
“We bought Zellie for €140,000 from the Haras de Grandcamp in Deauville. She had the pedigree – her dam is a half-sister to the 1,000 Guineas winner Speciosa and her second dam a half-sister to the top racemare Pride. She was a little small, but what I loved was her walk and her way of moving.
“We took her back to the yearling sale in 2020, which was moved to September because of covid, and there was no interest in her at all, no vets, and when she went through the ring, no bids.
“She was still a little small, still walked beautifully so she went into training with André Fabre. When he first worked her Fabre said he was pleased.
“She made her debut at the end of May and won by a head at Saint-Cloud in the colours of Lavinia Fabre beating a well-regarded filly of Jean-Claude Rouget’s. She won her next start three weeks later after being blocked in the race and coming from an impossible position. It was then that I said to Lavinia that we had perhaps found a top filly. A month later she won a Listed in Deauville by 3l and we sold her after the race.
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<blockquote>"They are fabulous machines but fragile and once you go into the red, more often than not, you never get back to where you were before."</blockquote>
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“I knew Fabre was keen to take her to run in England, but in the end she went to ParisLongchamp for the Group 1 Prix Marcel Boussac on Arc weekend and won comfortably. We had sold her very well indeed, but still it was a thrill. It is incredibly difficult to win these championship races and we don’t always appreciate just how unlikely it is when you buy a horse that it ends up winning one of these top races.”
Guy is no longer involved with Zellie although he has, of course, followed her career carefully.
“She ran a great race to be fourth in the 1,000 Guineas and then ran flat in the Prix de Diane. I don’t know why, but I think these top racehorses are like the most finely tuned Formula 1 racing cars. They are fabulous machines but fragile and once you go into the red, more often than not, you never get back to where you were before.
One of the main constituents of Guy’s business today is buying yearlings in the US to sell at the Ocala two-year-old in training sales.
He was at the 2021 Ocala sale when he saw a colt by Frankel put up one of the best times of the 900 horses in the sale.
“I called Jean Etienne Dubois and told him I had seen a Frankel colt put up a sensational breeze despite the fact that he has the pedigree of a 1m4f horse,” he recalls. “Onesto is out of a Sea The Stars mare from the family of Dansili – his second dam is a full-sister to Hasili, the dam of Dansili and the Group 1 winners Champs Elysees, Cacique, Bank’s Hill and Intercontinental.
“I was not, of course, the only one who had noticed and we had to go to $535,000 to buy him and he went into training for a partnership with Fabrice Chappet.”
ONESTO WON ON HIS DEBUT at Chantilly last September looking like a future top horse. He disappointed on his seasonal reappearance, but then won the Group 2 Prix Greffulhe to set up a run in the Prix du Jockey-Club (G1) in which he finished fifth, beaten only a length behind runner-up El Bodegon.
[caption id="attachment_11201" align="alignleft" width="739"]<img class="wp-image-11201 " src="https://cms.internationalthoroughbred.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/zellie-scaled-e1659610934202.jpeg" alt="" width="739" height="422" /> Guy bought the Prix Marcel Bousaac winner Zellie as a yearling with the Fabre family for €140,000 and sold her as a two-year-old “very well”[/caption]
“It was obviously disappointing to finish fifth when we were so close to being second!” says Guy. “I think he could have been ridden closer to the early pace, but then at the first draw we were thrilled to be in stall nine, and when it was redone we ended up drawn wide in 14!
Onesto proved that he had not shown his true form in the Jockey-Club with a decisive win some six weeks later in the Group 1 Grand Prix de Paris.
“It was a wonderful victory,” smiles Guy. “He won without being touched by the whip and is a very, very good horse. His trainer Fabrice Chappet has done a great job.
“I was not that surprised as we always thought he was a Group 1 horse, but between thinking that and achieving it is a difficult step to take and he has done it now.
“I was surprised by the second horse Simca Mille, who seems to improve 3l or 4l with every start and who pushed Onesto right to the line, while we easily beat the foreign-trained runners whom I had feared.
“Now he will run in either the Prix Niel or the Irish Champion and then on to the Arc. I am really proud, just once in a while I can find a really good one, the Group 1 horse that we are all looking for!”
Guy adds: “Onesto is probably the best horse I have ever bought, and he is the 28th Group or Grade 1 winner I have been involved with.
<blockquote class="Quote-sc-1am45o4-0 cGgFGI">“He has that turn of foot which I saw at Ocala, that day he went fast, and now he has learnt to relax and use his speed at the end of his races.</blockquote>
“His sire Frankel is also something exceptional and probably the best stallion in the world today. Onesto is his seventh Group 1-winning three-year-old and he gets 1m4f horses with that extra kick and natural speed.
“We shall find out how good Onesto is over the coming weeks and months, and the plan is, of course, to maximise his value as a stallion.”
Guy adds that he bought one two-year-old this year in Ocala to race in Europe.
“I bought a Medaglia D’Oro filly out of the top race mare Day At The Spa for $150,000, one bid over the reserve. She is currently in pre-training with Jean Pierre Dubois and for time being he is happy with her.”
<h3 class="SubHead-ik5mtv-0 fhWix">Early starts</h3>
GUY’S FAMILY had nothing whatsoever to do with horses or racing, but an early passion for riding and then racing led him to start riding out in Chantilly and then ride as an amateur jockey mainly in jump races.
“There was a time when I would get up at four in the morning and bicycle to the Gare du Nord to catch the train to Chantilly to ride out,” he remembers. “When you are young and passionate you are able to do things like that.”
Those he got to know at the time included Pascal Bary and Patrick Barbe and it was Barbe who got him a job with Charlie Whittingham in California.
“I left thinking I would stay for a few months but in the end I stayed and have never left the US,” he smiles. “I had thought I wanted to become a trainer, but started off looking for horses in France who could race on in California and that has never really stopped.”
He enjoyed a remarkable partnership with the Peruvian-born trainer Julio Canani, for whom he bought 15 Grade 1 winners, including Silic and Tuzla, first and second in the Breeders’ Cup Mile in 1999, and Val Royal, who won the same race in 2001 despite having missed almost a year with a tendon injury in 2000.
Californian racing is now no longer quite the same thing that it was 20 or 30 years ago.
“There was,” Guy says, “a whole generation of Californian owners who disappeared at around the turn of the century – John Mabee, Allen Paulson and many others – and we never succeeded in replacing them.
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<blockquote>Also my impression is that some of these Californian people who could get involved just don’t like losing – you don’t stay long in racing if you don’t learn how to lose.”</blockquote>
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“There was also a group of outstanding trainers in California, such as Bobby Frankel, Ron McAnally, Julio Canani, Charlie Whittingham, John Gosden, and there were never replaced either.
“These days social media is so important, and people don’t want be involved with something which can be seen in a negatively. Also my impression is that some of these Californian people who could get involved just don’t like losing – you don’t stay long in racing if you don’t learn how to lose.”
He still buys some horses in training to race in the US, but it has become a very strong market.
“At the end of the day there are not that many horses who fit the bill; few of these are on the market and those who are have become very expensive.
“When you see the prices fetched at auction recently by horses such as Speak Of The Devil, Rougir or Txope you can understand if people want to put their horses through a sales ring rather than doing private sales.”
He had always looked at yearlings, even if he didn’t buy many, but from 2005 onwards Guy starting looking seriously at the American sales, as well as those in France and sometimes in England and Ireland, with a view to pinhooking for the Ocala two-yearold sales.
He sees around 3,000 or so yearlings every year.
A breakthrough came in 2011 when he bought a First Samurai filly for $23,000 at Keeneland September.
“I had seen her at the farm, she was bred by Bill Betz who is one of the best in Kentucky, and always loved her, but her sire was not in fashion so I was able to get her for so little.
“She made $650,000 at Ocala, went to Bob Baffert, was named Executiveprivilege she won two Grade 1s and finished second to Beholder in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.
“In today’s market she would have made double that, I had 15 vets and when she went round the walking ring outside she made all of the others look like low quality claimers.”
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<blockquote>“Ocala is a huge and open market. There is demand at every level and if you have the right horse you can make a lot of money.”</blockquote>
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THIS YEAR has been excellent for Guy – he and his partners bought 13 yearlings in 2021 and sold ten as two-year-olds for an excellent profit.
“Ocala is,” he says, “a huge and open market. There is demand at every level and if you have the right horse you can make a lot of money.”
At the same time Guy buys some yearlings in France to go into training.
"Over the years, I have bought some with Fabrice Chappet and we have been lucky together, and if he works with other people too, we still buy a few together.
“I have also bought some for Vivaldi, one of the most successful French partnerships, and they have horses with Rouget and Stefan Wattel in Deauville, and then thanks to Zellie I have also an involvement in some with Fabre as well.”
Guy moved to Lexington in 2015, mainly because he was fed up with taking the flight from Los Angeles to Paris ten times or more every year.
“It is,” he says, “easier from Lexington and then from here I can get to all of the major East Coast tracks in less than two hours in a plane.”
He spends around two to three months a year in France.
“You have to keep looking at the horses,” he says. “If you see them regularly but not every day you notice how they are changing.
“After 40 years I am still trying to make better choices, to apply what I have learnt over the years, and hoping to get lucky. If you want to have success you have to think outside of the box otherwise your chances will be even slimmer.”

Buying Group 1 winners

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<h3 class="ixu-heading StoryCard__StoryTitle-sc-1k5lvnq-2 ewROPo">THIS YEAR breeze-up consignors have enjoyed some fine returns with BBAG September-purchased yearlings. Martin Stevens talks to BBAG’s CEO Klaus Eulenberger</h3>
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For many years if you mentioned BBAG to members of the British and Irish bloodstock industry they’d immediately think of superior slowermaturing and stamina-packed yearlings by blue-chip sires such as Adlerflug and Soldier Hollow.
The Baden-Baden auction company is exceedingly proud of that, but its reputation has gained another dimension in recent years with many traders having found reasonably priced raw material for selling back home in Britain and Ireland.
This year’s round of breeze-ups proved to be a bonanza of BBAG bargains for vendors. At Arqana, Church Farm and Horse Park Stud sold a Cracksman filly out of a threeparts sister to the German Oaks winner Feodora for €420,000 and a well-bred Sea The Moon filly for €110,000, the pair having cost just €49,000 and €30,000.
Powerstown Stud sold a Sea The Moon brother to the Listed winner Enjoy The Moon at Arqana for €350,000 and a Soldier Hollow colt out of a half-sister to Deutsches Derby winner Lucky Speed at Tattersalls for 130,000gns, the pair having been sourced for €92,000 and €28,000.
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<blockquote>"It’s a pinhookers' paradise! It started when Con Marnane started coming over to sell around 20 years ago, and then he came to the yearling sales and found some nice horses to pinhook"</blockquote>
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Another consignor in clover was Brown Island Stables, which bought an Oasis Dream colt closely related to Querari for €58,000 at BadenBaden and resold him at the Tattersalls Craven Breeze-Up Sale for 310,000gns.
Flat traders will no doubt be making a beeline for the yearling sales in Germany this year, then, but so too will the NH fraternity after Chris and Claire Bonner sold an Adlerflug three-yearold gelding to Henrietta Knight for £200,000 at the Goffs UK Spring Store Sale in May.
The longer-term project cost a mere €19,000 as a yearling at the BBAG October Yearling Sale in 2020.
“It’s a pinhookers' paradise!” exclaims the company’s director Klaus Eulenberger. “It started when Con Marnane started coming over to sell around 20 years ago, and then he came to the yearling sales and found some nice horses to pinhook. He struck lucky early with a yearling from one of the early crops of Montjeu, which was sold at the Craven Sale for good money and turned out to be a very classy horse.”
The horse in question was Noble Prince, a colt out of Gran Criterium (G1) winner Noble Pearl, who was bought from his breeder Gestüt Etzean for €90,000 at BBAG’s premier yearling sale of 2005. He was resold by Marnane’s Bansha House Stables for 230,000gns and entered training with André Fabre for Michael Tabor, for whom he won a Listed race and ran second in the Prix de Chaudenay.
Noble Prince found a new lease of life over jumps with Paul Nolan, winning ten races in that sphere including the Jewson Novices’ Chase at the Cheltenham Festival. All in all, he was a fine advert for the soundness and versatility of German thoroughbreds.
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<blockquote>"We have many by the likes of Adlerflug, Areion and Soldier Hollow, and they suit sales like Tattersalls Guineas and Arqana, where the market is different now – they’re not just focused on speed"</blockquote>
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“He was so sound,” emphasises Marnane, recalling that early BBAG purchase. “He just kept going and going. He gave us a good start with our German yearlings. We wouldn’t buy many from there, only one or two a year, but we also had Elegant Supermodel who ran third in the Albany Stakes at Royal Ascot. They’re cheap as well. She was a Lope De Vega and she only cost €13,000.
“We always do a bit of a tour around to buy horses. We bought Amadeus Wolf in Italy and First Selection in Spain. We’d go anywhere to see if we can buy a racehorse for a bit of value.”
THE EXAMPLE of Noble Prince encouraged more pinhookers to head to Baden-Baden in search of a steal, with some notable results along the way. One of the most memorable was the Exceed And Excel filly Likely, who was bought for €49,000 and resold by Grove Stud to David Redvers for £340,000 to top the Goffs UK Breeze-Up Sale of 2014. She slammed the useful Mattmu by 5l on her debut for David Barron.
“In the following years more and more buyers came over and realised there were lots of nice horses here,” says Eulenberger. “In the early days they concentrated on the faster horses, the typical breeze-up types, but we don’t really have that many of those, so they then started taking a closer look at the Solder Hollows, as they’re such nice sales horses. The focus came to be more on quality and value for money.”
Pinhookers’ newfound interest in somewhat more stoutly bred stock is also a function in the evolution of the breeze-up business, with more money being spent on potential Classic performers, at Tattersalls and Arqana fixtures in particular.
<figure class="Photo-sc-114e5q3-0 drpqhO">
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[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="458"]<img class="Photo__Image-sc-114e5q3-1 iiBZZm" src="https://assets.isu.pub/document-structure/220804090239-7770e75812f0e2a95caa157bafee0f6d/v1/2ae874b75466ed35881bbad65a3a4d5b.jpeg" alt="" width="458" height="369" /> Forever Rose (Cracksman-Forever Beauty) was bought at the BBAG September Sale by Church Farm and Horse Park Stud for €49,000 and was sold at the Arqana Breeze Up for €420,000[/caption]
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[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="441"]<img class="Photo__Image-sc-114e5q3-1 iiBZZm" src="https://assets.isu.pub/document-structure/220804090239-7770e75812f0e2a95caa157bafee0f6d/v1/395e3839d816df0544b58330c9f73632.jpeg" alt="" width="441" height="370" /> The Oasis Dream ex Queimada colt was bought at the BBAG September Sale for €58,000 and was resold by Brown Island Stable at the Tattersalls Craven Breeze-Up Sale for 310,000gns[/caption]
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“German breeders breed for stamina, everyone knows that, so we don’t necessarily have the fancy Dark Angels and Kodiacs that vendors would want for Doncaster here,” says Eulenberger. “But we have many by the likes of Adlerflug, Areion and Soldier Hollow, and they suit sales like Tattersalls Guineas and Arqana, where the market is different now – they’re not just focused on speed.”
If you’re reading this and thinking of making an investment in a German pinhook, by all means start planning your trip to Baden Baden for this year’s yearling sale, which takes place on Friday, September 2.
The catalogue features 15 lots by Areion, 11 by Soldier Hollow, ten by Sea The Moon and four by Adlerflug, and others by top sires such as Dubawi, Frankel, Kingman, Lope De Vega, Night Of Thunder, Sea The Stars, Wootton Bassett and Zarak.
But if you really want to be ahead of the game, and unearth some true value for money, Eulenberger has a pro tip.
“The pinhooking results from the main yearling sale have been good for a while and were outstanding this year, but we hold a mixed sale in October to coincide with racing at Baden-Baden and I think it’s incredibly underrated,” he says.
“We’ve sold lots of very good horses out of the sale – not least the Arc winner Torquator Tasso – but there has been an especially high number of good pinhooks, too. It was here that the Bonners found their Adlerflug colt, and many other NH buyers such as Yorton Farm have been coming for some years.
“The only problem with BBAG October is that it usually clashes with Tattersalls October Book 3, so most of the international agents and pinhookers aren’t here, but we’re unable to change the date as we have the race meeting taking place at the same time. Our agent Richard Venn has been very helpful in assisting in facilitating pinhooks, though.”
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<blockquote>All the serious pinhookers started to make their way to the sales here because they could see there was value there, it’s as simple as that."</blockquote>
</aside>
FOR HIS PART, Venn thinks the increase in British and Irish traders shopping at BBAG is down to a lack of horses being bred closer to home to suit the growing breeze-up market for class horses who can be guaranteed to stay 1m2f and up.
“Every year there’s new people coming to Baden-Baden,” he says. “All the serious pinhookers started to make their way to the sales here because they could see there was value there, it’s as simple as that. The likes of Johnny Collins, Brendan Holland, Roger Marley, Tom Whitehead, Norman Williamson, every year they’re here and every year they get a result.
“I think it helps that the German industry has a certain niche in that it’s breeding stoutly bred horses, not just sprinters, and that’s what a section of the market wants.
“Look at Tom Whitehead’s results with his pinhooks through Powerstown Stud – he had great touches with a Sea The Moon and a Soldier Hollow. They certainly don’t fit into the traditional archetype of a breeze-up horse.
“I just feel in a way, rightly or wrongly, that they’re breeding fewer staying types in the UK and Ireland than used to be the case, and the German-breds at BBAG are filling that gap and so the vendors are getting all these good results from trading them.”
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<blockquote>"I can promise anyone they’ll have a good time, especially in September when there’s good racing; we have a big barbecue and there might even be a return of the German Elvis impersonator!"
&nbsp;
Agent Richard Venn</blockquote>
</aside>
Venn is just the right man to be representing BBAG on the global stage as he is a passionate defender of stamina breeding, which has sadly become a dirty word in some of the more commercial corners of the British and Irish bloodstock market.
He says: “We do need in our industry, for the sake of the racing programme and the health of the breed, a selection of sprinting, miling, middle-distance and staying horses, so we’ve got to continue breeding those that can stay.
“That’s where the Germans are. They’re breeding mostly staying types, with the ultimate aim of a mating being the production of a foal who could one day compete in the Deutsches Derby, their blue riband race. That’s why BBAG is so popular with jumps operations, and also Australians looking for horses for their cup races.”
If all that isn’t enough to convince pinhookers, or any connoisseurs of middledistance and staying horses, to head to Baden Baden this year, Venn surely clinches the deal by adding: “I can promise anyone they’ll have a good time, especially in September when there’s good racing; we have a big barbecue and there might even be a return of the German Elvis impersonator!

A pinhookers' paradise

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<h3 class="ixu-heading StoryCard__StoryTitle-sc-1k5lvnq-2 ewROPo">French racing really enjoyed a golden age through the 1970s, frequently some of the best horses in Europe and the world were trained in France.</h3>
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<h4>Jocelyn de Moubray analyses why racing in France, and indeed Europe, is quite different now and what can be done to improve matters</h4>
I don't usually spend a great deal of time thinking about racing in the 1970s, but Lester Piggott’s death led me, via Twitter, to watch some of the decade’s best races again. And it was a great pleasure to witness Lester’s elegance and tactical finesse,
however, his excellence was one of several aspects of the time which struck me as relevant to racing some 30 years later.
Taking a random sample of big races reposted on social media following Piggott’s death it seemed that at the time there was usually a serious French-trained runner in the best races in Britain during the 1970s. It was, of course, in many different ways the golden age of racing in France.
At the beginning of that decade the Tiercé was at its absolute peak as the country’s popular betting medium and French racing had the prize-money; the new, modern racecourses filled every Sunday, and had the technology to attract the best horses and horsemen from all over the world.
The first Tiercé to be televised was in 1956 and between then and 1980 turnover on what was initially only a weekly event held every Sunday, rose by 5000 per cent in 25 years and accounted for nearly 70 per cent of betting turnover in France.
During the 1970s the major French-trained winners in England included Dahlia, Empery, Pawneese, Flying Water, Sagaro, Northern Baby, Nonoalco, Ace Of Aces and Lassalle, while others such as Gyr, Gay Mecene, Dancing Maid, Nobiliary, Caro, Allez France and Blushing Groom made a name for themselves in England’s best races without winning one.
Sometimes, as Maurice Zilber enjoyed pointing out after winning the Derby with Empery in 1976, the top French trainers kept their best horses for the races at home in France as they knew they could win in England with those just below in quality.
Many of the best of these French-trained horses were American-breds and at the time it was French-based owners and trainers, as well, of course, Vincent O’Brien, who were most actively looking for the best young thoroughbreds in North America.
The Texan Nelson Bunker Hunt owned stables and a huge string of horses in France, who were often sent to race in Britain, headed by the incomparable Dahlia. France’s leading trainers, including François Boutin and Alec Head, were among the first to realise that then the best racehorses were being bred in North America.
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<blockquote>If a proportion of the world’s best racehorses were attracted to France in the 1970s, aside from the prize-money and the facilities, there was also the appeal of a strong group of trainers in the prime of their lives with international experience and ambitions.</blockquote>
</aside>
Boutin had first come to prominence when winning the Oaks at Epsom with La Lagune in 1968 when he was only 31. Alec Head was more or less the same age when he won the Derby with Lavandin in 1956, and these two were joined at Chantilly by the expatriates Maurice Zilber, who had come from Egypt, and the Argentine Angel Penna.
François Mathet may have been the perennial leading trainer in France, but in England, Ireland and the US, the Frenchbased trainers who made their mark were Zilber, Penna, Head and, above all, Boutin. Nobody at the time would have been aware, but by the end of the 1970s the tide had already turned against the French racing world. There were internal mistakes.
The disastrous decision to limit severely the exposure of racing on television, as otherwise, the argument went, nobody will bother going to the racecourse itself, was taken in the early 1970s.
<h3>Lagardere in charge</h3>
By the time Jean Luc Lagardère took over as president of France Galop in 1995, and launched France Course the following year to show racing on a dedicated television channel, generations of French people had grown up without any exposure to racing on the television, and the country’s racecourses were already deserted for all, but the special occasions.
At the same time the Tiercé had been so successful as a popular mass betting medium that no provision was made for the future when the betting market would be transformed by technological and political changes. The Tiercé went from once a week, to four times a week, to every day, but it was only after a decade or two of growth had been lost that the PMU finally started to adapt to the modern world.
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[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="458"]<img class="Photo__Image-sc-114e5q3-1 iiBZZm" src="https://stories.isu.pub/99630001/images/56_original_file_I0.jpg" alt="" width="458" height="477" /> Lyphard with his trainer, the late Alec Head (left), and jockey Freddy Head. The colt retired to stand at Haras d’Etreham in 1973, but, in 1978 amid the growing power of the French socialist party under its leader François Mitterand, it meant that Lyphard, along with Nureyev and Riverman, was transferred to stand in Kentucky in the US[/caption]
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IT WAS ONLY UNDER Lagardère that French racing began to relax its centralised model.
Half of Europe’s racecourses are in France, but it was only at the end of the 1990s that France Galop agreed to run the first Tiercé outside Paris – it took place at Lyon and attracted 40,000 to a racecourse where today a good crowd would be one which reaches four figures.
Until this century French racing was rigidly centralised and all of the good races and money were at the Paris tracks, with the rest of country competing at a lower level in every respect.
If those responsible for French racing made some terrible decisions, ultimately the important factors were far beyond their control.
In 1981, François Mitterand was elected France’s first socialist president and, hard though it may be to understand today, at the time for many this heralded a coming revolution. A significant amount of wealth left France quickly and the assets rushed onto a plane, included the great stallions Riverman, Lyphard and Nureyev.
Many of those who had been investing in bloodstock and racehorses in France switched their focus to Kentucky where the greatest of all bloodstock bubbles was taking off in the early 1980s.
The Kentucky bloodstock boom was fuelled by the arrival of new buyers of racehorses from Dubai and Saudi Arabia and for reasons of culture and language none of these new stables were to be based in France – their management teams have always been a mixture of English speakers from England, Ireland and the US.
The Maktoum family and Juddmonte, founded by Prince Khalid Abdullah, raced horses in France for decades but they never purchased farms or based their stallions and broodmares there. OVER THE first two decades of the 21st century French racing and above all Frenchbased breeding has made significant progress.
The quality of stallions available to breeders in France is higher today than it has been at any moment during the last 40 years.
There may no longer be homebreds representing Lagardère, the Wildenstein family, the Niarchos family, the Moussac family and others in many of the major races, but the quality of commercial breeding in France has never been higher.
French racing is now a nationwide sport and of the leading Group race trainers in France, only Fabre and Francis-Henri Graffard are based in Chantilly; Jean-Claude Rouget, Jerome Reynier and Henri Alex Pantall are in Deauville, Pau, Marseilles and the west of France.
One thing French racing does a great deal less well than either Britain or Ireland is encourage young professionals. Many of the best young French jockeys are currently riding in either the US or Hong Kong having failed to establish a position at home.
Fabre, Rouget and Pantall have been France’s leading Group race trainers throughout the century, and it has proved very difficult indeed for the younger generations to break through
The relatively high prize-money in France, together with the generous premiums for French-bred horses who race in France, has not encouraged France’s trainers to race abroad, except when absolutely necessary. France’s prize-money structure has attracted much of the Italian racing and breeding world to move there and it keeps many of Germany’s trainers afloat, while for all but a handful of the very best French horses earn more money by racing in France than travelling to England, Ireland or further afield.
<h3>Decline in standards Europe-wide problem</h3>
There are regular articles in the French professional press posing questions as to whether or not French-trained horses can still compete with their rivals trained in Britain and Ireland and the apparent or perceived decline in standards is still something racing professionals and fans are concerned with.
However, there seems to be something more complex going on as the lack of top-class horses is not a French problem, but rather one which is affecting Britain and Ireland at the same time.
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<blockquote>In Britain, the number of horses rated 111 or higher fell by some 40 per cent between 2010 and 2021 to 100.</blockquote>
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In Britain, the number of horses rated 111 or higher fell by some 40 per cent between 2010 and 2021 to 100.
In France, there were 46 horses rated the equivalent of 111 or higher in 2019, the last pre-covid season. The number of French-based horses rated at this level has been stable for some time as in 2001 there were 47, however, if you look three-year-olds there has been a sharp decline. In 2001 there were three French three-year-olds rated 120+ and 24 rated 111+, in 2019 these figures had fallen to just one and 12.
Go back to 1993, which is as far as France Galop’s website goes, and there were nine three-year-olds rated 120+ and 40 rated 111+.
This may seem a long tangent in an article which began by looking at French runners in Britain in the 1970s, but in the end the two are at least in my mind clearly linked.
Although it is not something which has been discussed in the various articles and letters to Racing Post, TDN and other trade publications which have addressed the problem with competition in better races, the decline in the number of high-rated horses could very well be a function of the expansion in the number of races in the European Pattern race programme.
The European Pattern started in 1971, but during its first decade it was relatively small and didn’t aspire to do anything more than codify the races which had always been considered to be the most important.
IF FRENCH-TRAINED horses went to race in England it was in the great races, the Classics, the Eclipse, the Champion Stakes and the King George VI &amp; Queen Elizabeth, races which did not need labels in order to be attractive.
The dramatic expansion in Pattern races came later, fuelled by the desire of every sales company to have as many black-type races as was possible.
The only country which has done things differently is Japan. In Japan there are still very few Group and Listed races, a total of 129 Group races and 232 black-type races out of 16,000 races in the country.
In Europe, there are about 14,000 races in Britain, Ireland, France and Germany together and a total of 392 Group races and 750 black-type races (five per cent).
In Japan, 0.8 per cent of all races are Group races and 1.4 per cent are black-type.
If Europe wished to return to similar ratios it would have to downgrade 280 Group races and some 500 Listed races.
The results of the Japanese policy are looking very positive indeed for Japanese racing and breeding at the moment. There is no problem with competition in Japan where every Group 1 attracts a full field, nor is there a lack of highly-rated horses.
[caption id="attachment_11228" align="alignleft" width="314"]<img class=" wp-image-11228" src="https://cms.internationalthoroughbred.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2JFEAK6-scaled-e1659613594873.jpeg" alt="Vadeni (second right) ridden by Christophe Soumillon wins The Coral-Eclipse during The Coral Summer Festival at Sandown Park, Esher. Picture date: Saturday July 2, 2022." width="314" height="201" /> Vadeni winning the Eclipse Stakes, the first French-trained winner of the Group 1 since 1960.[/caption]
Horses are only likely to achieve high ratings if the best are encouraged to race against each other. This has long since ceased to be the case in Europe and what has been a relatively unexposed problem in England, Ireland and France is becoming ever clearer now that the overall number of horses in training is falling and the best of them tend to be owned by a small selection of the same owners.
A dramatic change from the current situation would be almost impossible to enact.
Too much has been unthinkingly invested in a failing system for too long.
The European Pattern is not only absurdly inflated, but it is based upon the dubious parameter of an average rating of the first four in each race (it would make sense to give more weight to the winner’s rating to promote those races which produce top class winners).
The Pattern has become a self-fulfilling loop as every national organisation only gives high ratings to horses running in Pattern races as understandably each country wishes to protect its own races.
After decades in which Japan’s racing professionals were keen to learn from their counterparts in Europe, North America and Australia it is time for Europeans to understand the features of the Japanese system which are working so well today.
However, looking back to the 1970s does at least demonstrate how an attractive European racing system used to be – one in which the best horses from all over Europe regularly competed against each other in the few races widely acknowledged to be the ones which count.

What has happened to the golden era of French racing?

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<h3 class="ixu-heading StoryCard__StoryTitle-sc-1k5lvnq-2 ewROPo">Gestüt Ammerland is taking a draft of eight yearlings to the Arqana August Sale, and while it might be the first time that the stud is selling at the Deauville complex, the farm has a rich history of buying in France</h3>
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Dietrich and Annabel von Boetticher’s Gestüt Ammerland is offering a daft of eight yearlings at the Arqana August sale. The eight – five colts and three fillies – represent the families which have made Ammerland famous throughout the racing and breeding world.
This is in itself an event as throughout all the years Ammerland’s red and green colours have become famous, being carried to victory in all of the French Classic races, in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe twice, several Deutsches Derbies, the Irish Derby, the Coronation Cup, the Hong Kong Vase and many other top races, Ammerland has always been an owner-breeder that has retained the horses it bred on the stud found on the banks of the Starnberger, south of Munich in southern Germany.
‘This year there are a total of 17 yearlings on the farm,” says Crispin de Moubray the family’s long-term advisor. “There will be 16, all those with good enough x-rays, to be offered for sale as yearlings.
“As well as the eight going to Deauville in August, Ammerland will be selling the two final colts it owns in partnership with Newsells Park Stud at Tattersalls in October, a full-brother to the Arc winner Waldgeist and a Siyouni out of Waldgeist’s Group 2-winning half sister Waldlied.”
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<blockquote>Von Boetticher and Ammerland are now in their fifth decade as an owner and breeder at the highest level as the first Group 1 win came in 1988 when Luigi won the Deutsches Derby</blockquote>
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The champion filly Borgia was the first filly to win the Deutsches Derby for more than 40 years in 1997. She was the first Ammerland homebred to prove herself on the international stage finishing third in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and then second in the Breeders’ Cup Turf as a three-year-old, before winning the Hong Kong Vase at five when trained by André Fabre.
Von Boetticher and Ammerland are now in their fifth decade as an owner and breeder at the highest level as the first Group 1 win came in 1988 when Luigi won the Deutsches Derby in the red and green colours of what was then called Stall Marcassargues.
If Borgia and Hurricane Run, the Irish Derby and Arc de Triomphe winner of 2005, both came from families von Boetticher developed in Germany, the sales in Deauville have played a large part in the stud’s wider success in the 21st century.
Three key purchases in Deauville led to wins in the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches, the Poulains, the Prix du Jockey-Club, Prix de Diane and the Arc de Triomphe.
In 2002, the Deauville August Sale got off to a terrible start – it was the first sale to be held in euros and its first after 9/11.
By the end of the first evening session the average was running at around 50 per cent down on what had been a boom year in 2001.
“The filly I had picked out was a grey Danehill presented by the Haras du Mezeray,” remembers de Moubray. “I was on the phone to von Boetticher when she was in the ring but it was obvious she was not going to be sold so we decided to wait and see. Dietrich asked Fabre to have a look at her and, once his trainer had given the go ahead, he told me to go and negotiate with Mezeray and we agreed to buy her for €150,000.”
Named Grey Lilas, she made her debut in Deauville for Fabre the following August and succeeded in finishing last of five in a 6f maiden.
As a three-year-old she was a different proposition and won the Group 1 Prix du Moulin under Eric Legrix, the Prix de la Grotte and the Prix de la Nonette and was placed in the Poule d’Essai des Pouiches, the Prix de Diane and the Prix de l’Opera.
At stud, Grey Lilas was even better and her second foal, the Galileo filly Golden Lilac, won her first five career starts, including the Pouliches and the Prix de Diane and added the Prix d’Ispahan to her haul as a four-yearold.
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[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="409"]<img class="Photo__Image-sc-114e5q3-1 iiBZZm" src="https://assets.isu.pub/document-structure/220804090239-7770e75812f0e2a95caa157bafee0f6d/v1/db6ff236c16ac5302571e43f3c10c53a.jpeg" alt="" width="409" height="287" /> Prix de Diane winner Golden Lilac: she is a daughter of the Deauville-bought Grey Lilas[/caption]
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Grey Lilas has produced seven winners so far. Her three-year-old Churchill gelding Gaidar has won his only start to date and her last foal Grey Lux is an unraced two-year-old Lope De Vega colt in training with Fabre for Ammerland.
The Deauville draft includes a daughter of Golden Lilac by Blue Point (Lot 290), and a Lope De Vega filly out of Golden Gazelle, a full-sister to Golden Lilac (Lot 289).
The year 2005 was a good one for Ammerland as the stud’s homebred Montjeu colt Hurricane Run finished the season with five wins in six starts to his name, including the Irish Derby in the stud’s colours.
He finished second to Shamardal, beaten only a neck in the first Jockey-Club run over 2100m.
After being sold to the Coolmore partnership, he won the Arc de Triomphe in the colours of Michael Tabor. Hurricane Run was clearly the best middle-distance colt in Europe.
At the Arqana December Sale 2005, von Boetticher was interested in Lady Vettori, then an eight-year-old mare offered in-foal for the fourth time to Montjeu.
LADY VETTORI had been an excellent two-year-old, winning her first five starts, including the Prix du Calvados in Deauville before finishing third in the Prix Marcel Boussac at the Arc weekend.
Nobody else showed any sustained interest in the mare, but still von Boetticher and de Moubray had to go to €500,000 to buy her on one bid more than reserve.
The Montjeu colt she was carrying turned out to be an ordinary individual and managed to win only one small conditions race for Ammerland, however, the second foal after her purchase was the Shamardal colt Lope De Vega. He was not only the winner of the Poule d’Essai des Poulains and Prix du Jockey-Club, but today is one of the world’s leading stallions standing at Ballylinch Stud in Ireland for €125,000.
After Lope De Vega, Lady Vettori continued to produce high-class horses for Ammerland and her last two foals were the Frankel fillies – Lady Frankel, a Group winner who was only narrowly beaten into third in the Prix de l’Opera, and her unraced full-sister Lady Livonia.
At the Arqana December Sale 2005, von Boetticher was interested in Lady Vettori, then an eight-year-old mare offered in-foal for the fourth time to Montjeu
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<blockquote>Lady Frankel’s first foal, a Kingman filly called Lightning Lady, is in training with Fabre for Ammerland, her second foal a Shamardal colt (Lot 21), goes to the August Sale</blockquote>
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Lady Frankel’s first foal, a Kingman filly called Lightning Lady, is in training with Fabre for Ammerland, her second foal a Shamardal colt (Lot 21), goes to the August Sale.
Lady Livonia’s first foal, the Saxon Warrior colt Ser Sed, was sold in Deauville in October last year for only €15,000, but has now won two of his three starts to date for trainer Joel Boisnard. Lady Livonia’s second foal, a colt by Sea The Stars, is Lot 22.
The third significant Ammerland purchase in Deauville came at the 2010 August Sale.
The Newsells Park Stud’s Deauville draft that year included two Monsun fillies, the first out of Green Swallow, who was bought by Nicolas Clement for €160,000. Named Yellow And Green, she developed into a Group 2 winner.
The other one, a daughter of Waldmark, was bought back at only €100,000. Von Boetticher was very interested – she was a daughter of Monsun from a fine German family, but he was not really looking to buy that year.
After speaking to Andreas Jacobs at length the pair, who had been friends for some years, agreed to go into partnership and race her together on a valuation of €100,000.
Waldlerche was, of course, trained by Fabre and won her first two starts, including the Group 3 Prix Penelope, a prep race for the Prix de Diane.
Her racing career didn’t then work out as planned, but Waldlerche had shown more than enough to secure a mating with Galileo for her first cover. The colt was named Waldgeist, who also went into training with Fabre initially for a partnership which included Coolmore, and then later for Ammerland and Newsells Park.
[caption id="attachment_11247" align="alignleft" width="551"]<img class=" wp-image-11247" src="https://cms.internationalthoroughbred.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/waldgeist3-scaled-e1659614729807.jpeg" alt="Waldgeist at Ballylinch Stud" width="551" height="369" /> Waldgeist at Ballylinch Stud[/caption]
Waldgeist went on to win four Group 1 races – the Criterium de Saint Cloud, the Prix du Ganay, the Grand Prix de Saint Cloud and then, on his final start, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in which he beat Enable. He now stands at Ballylinch.
His first foals are yearlings of 2022 and the Ammerland draft includes two sons, one out of the Listed winner Sassella (Lot 124) and the other out of Annabel’s Choice (Lot 207).
The last two members of the draft are a Kingman filly out of Baltic Duchess (Lot 219), and a Camelot colt out of Sevenna (Lot 132).
Baltic Duchess is a half-sister to the Group 1 Prix Vermeille winner Baltic Baroness out of a Sadler’s Wells daughter of Borgia.
Baltic Duchess’s first foal a two-year-old Frankel colt called Baltic Voyage is in training with Ralph Beckett.
Sevenna is another Galileo filly – she was bought as a yearling in Baden Baden and won a Group race at Goodwood for trainer Sir Henry Cecil in the colours of Ammerland. She has produced four black-type winners.
When Newsells Park Stud was sold by the Jacobs family the partnership with Ammerland was dissolved with Newsells buying Waldlied, a Group 2-winning New Approach half-sister to Waldgeist, while Ammerland bought his full-sister Wildfeder for €2,050,000 at last year’s Deauville December Sale.
“Wildfeder is safely in-foal to Lope De Vega and together with the other 15 Ammerland mares covered this year back home at the stud,” de Moubray adds.
The stud has eight horses in training with Fabre, including four two-year-olds, and others with Peter Schiergen in Germany and John and Thady Gosden in England.
It may be the first time Ammerland is selling so many yearlings in Deauville, but it is fair to say that few if any anybody has done better than Ammerland when it comes to buying in Deauville.
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On a debut mission to Deauville

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<h3 class="ixu-heading StoryCard__StoryTitle-sc-1k5lvnq-2 ewROPo">Lester Piggott won the first four races that I ever saw</h3>
When I was still very small my father decided one day in early August that we as a family were going to go racing at Goodwood for no other reason other than it was taking place and was only a half an hour or so drive from where we lived. We knew nothing whatsoever about racing, my father announced that we had to be there at least three hours before the first race, and none of us were in a position to question his judgment.
So my first hours on a racecourse were spent with the rest of my family, on our own, high in the stands looking out over the course, the Downs and over to the Trundle Hill which was only just beginning to look populated, (even those in the Grandstand had access to the top tier from which you could see every part of the track and the countryside for miles).
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I am exaggerating as we knew one thing about horseracing, in common more or less with the rest of the population of the country; we knew that the best jockey was Lester Piggott.
From the word go the family’s modest bets and my young eyes followed only this man, in the prime of his life but already a slightly strange figure, taller than the other jockeys with a stooped posture whose face was already beginning to be lined within the frame of his helmet.
I have tried since, without success, to find the names of the horses Lester won on that day. One was Some Hand and I think another Green God, but that may have been the following year.
In any event to me this winning sequence seemed to be a coincidence, both thrilling and somehow miraculous.
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<blockquote>Lester’s winning sequence may have seemed extraordinary to me at the time, but those old enough to have followed British racing in the 1970s will know that in many ways these things were the normal state of affairs.</blockquote>
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Racing was an entirely new and in many ways a chaotic experience, with previously unknown sounds, sights and smells together with the reassuring certainty that Lester was the best, and more often than not he would be riding the horse who passed the winning post in front.
Lester’s winning sequence may have seemed extraordinary to me at the time, but those old enough to have followed British racing in the 1970s will know that in many ways these things were the normal state of affairs.
Only a few years later in 1975, Lester won eight of the 24 races run at Royal Ascot and more often than not his mounts would dominate the major meetings. Those of us who followed this with excitement will all have our favourite winners.
I was very keen on Sagaro, so much so that I went on my own, by bicycle, to watch the François Boutin-trained colt win his third Ascot Gold Cup. I stood in the middle of the course at about the furlong pole to watch as he and Lester flashed past, the race already comfortably won.
[caption id="attachment_9299" align="alignleft" width="482"]<img class=" wp-image-9299" src="https://cms.internationalthoroughbred.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/2CHB2P9_small.jpg" alt="Be My Guest (USA) with Lester Piggott " width="482" height="418" /> Be My Guest (USA) with Lester Piggott[/caption]
I watched on my own, on a tiny television, Lester and Sea Chimes quicken down the hill into Tattenham Corner and a winning lead in the Coronation Cup. I had forgotten why this race had meant so much until many years later when clearing out my father’s house I came across a betting account statement revealing that I had had, considering both inflation and my age at the time, a ridiculously large winning bet.
Teenoso was another who left strong memories – his easy Derby win the year it rained more or less every day for two months leading up to the race, but above all it was his victory the following year in the King George VI &amp; Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot on a blazing hot day and firm ground.
Lester made the running at a furious pace and the Geoff Wragg-trained colt stayed on to defeat Sadler’s Wells, Tolomeo, Time Charter and Darshaan, some of the other champions in the race.
In the days following Lester’s death I spent time happily reliving these memories, and Lester’s triumphs through the many articles, interviews, as well as the replays posted on Twitter; most of which took place long before I followed racing, .
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<blockquote>I was struck yet again as to just how good Lester was. His best wins are a long time ago now, but watching them again is to be reminded of his poise, balance and extraordinary tactical sense.</blockquote>
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I was struck yet again as to just how good Lester was. His best wins are a long time ago now, but watching them again is to be reminded of his poise, balance and extraordinary tactical sense.
Nijinksy’s Derby win is a thing of great beauty and minimum apparent effort from his jockey, and then Teenoso’s win at Ascot is extraordinary as, in the straight, three or four of the champions coming from behind look sure to win, yet in the final 50yds the only one with any resources left was Teenoso, his rider having timed his run precisely to exhaust those trying to make up ground from behind.
It is also revealing that of his contemporaries who are still alive, Yves Saint-Martin and Willie Carson in particular, appear to have held the man, who was such a ruthless rival, in genuine affection.
The Minstrel never looks like winning the 1977 Derby, Carson and Hot Grove are travelling like the winners throughout the race until the final 50 yards when Piggott succeeds in forcing The Minstrel ahead. The film continues to show Piggott and Carson rather awkwardly shaking hands after the post until Carson leans back and gives Lester a friendly looking cuff on the helmet.
By the end of the 1980s I had become the editor of a weekly racing and bloodstock magazine, which went through many different names and formats.
Then there were around 15 young reporters who, under the supervision of the news editor Alan Byrne, went all over the country to report from race meetings, news conferences and, when necessary, law courts.
On the whole they received help and encouragement from racing’s professionals, occasionally they were insulted, or told to get their hair cut, but only twice do I remember being rung from a phone box by one of them in an emotional state.
The first of these calls came from close to Ipswich Crown Court in 1987 when the reporter could only just manage to tell me “They have sent Lester to jail.”
(The other call came from Goodwood the following year when the reporter, as well as many of those present, thought Steve Cauthen had been fatally injured by his terrible fall from Preziosa.)
Looking back from a time of non-doms and fiscal paradises, the decision to jail Lester Piggott for tax evasion seems unnecessarily harsh and it was surely even more unfair to rescind the honours he had so deservedly received.
Piggott was incontestably at the peak of an extremely tough and competitive profession for decades. He possessed a remarkable will to win, gave joy and winners to millions of followers, and, almost uniquely, he wanted not only to win, but whenever possible to do so with style and grace.
QUITE RECENTLY I happened to be taking a plane from Geneva to London the day before the start of Newmarket’s July Meeting. Arriving to wait at the gate I noticed that Lester was among those already there.
To my amazement he saw me too and came across to ask, “Going to Newmarket are you?”
It turned out he wanted to know what I thought of the chances of the Haggas’ stables runners the following day!
My final encounter came at the BBAG sales in Baden Baden. On a very hot day Lester was following around while his son Jamie dashed from box to box looking at yearlings. Lester clearly needed a break and so I suggested he came and sat down in Gestüt Roettgen’s hospitality box and had a cool drink.
He sat and rested and I thought he was probably on the verge of falling asleep so I waited without moving, watching the yearlings going up and down outside.
I was wrong, of course, I wasn’t the only one observing; Piggott suddenly put his head on one side to ask: “Who is that one by? He’s not bad looking is he?”
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Jocelyn de Moubray remembers the late, great Lester Piggott

Baaeed and Inspiral both remain undefeated

Work or family?

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<h3 class="ixu-heading StoryCard__StoryTitle-sc-1k5lvnq-2 ewROPo">David ‘Mouse’ Cooper was an apprentice jockey at 16, rode and worked in racing until he was 40. He then made the life-decision to change his career path, head to art college and become a professional, equine artist.</h3>
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AN ARTIST’S STUDIO should be located somewhere conducive to the development of creative energies, after all the right working environment helps produce the work of a master. A more perfect location for work and life could not be imagined for equine artist David ‘Mouse’ Cooper, his studio found alongside Fakenham’s old Dewing and Kersley Mill with its tumbling brook that once powered the engines of East Anglian commerce.
On a quiet Sunday morning it is a scene reminiscent of Wind In The Willows; visitors wouldn’t be surprised to come across Rat, Mole and Badger arriving in their boat to pop around for a cup of tea, a slice of cake and for a private view of Mouse’s latest work.
The captivating location, the peace only interrupted by the bubbles from the River Wensum, merges Mouse Cooper’s life with his art, his house doubling up as his studio, the work from home mantra no need to be hoisted upon him by the onset of covid.
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<blockquote>"I don’t want to stop learning. I am always trying to learn still.”</blockquote>
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And although a proud equine artist, Mouse’s on-canvas ability stretches further than just painting and sketching the horse.
“Moving up here was a great thing it’s given me a lot bit more opportunity to paint. You know, learn about painting the coast,” he says, before adding realistically: “I think I’ve done financially well enough now to sit up and enjoy myself, but I don’t want to stop learning. I am always trying to learn still.”
In some ways Mouse’s route to life of a full-time professional artist is a long way from where he began as a fresh-eyed 16-year-old racing apprentice for Bill Marshall and Tim Thompson Jones, yet the horse is still at the heart of what he does.
And drawing and painting has always, or nearly always, been a driving force of his life, a talent that has always been available but something that has flowed and ebbed and flowed as life has progressed.
“When I was a kid, I was great at drawing,” he recalls, admitting that he was the “arty one” at school. “I used to draw pretty much from the early days. I used to draw on a wall, my mother used to tell me off, I was one of ‘those kids’. At school I did a picture of Foinavon winning the Grand National, it was one of the first portraits I drew, and my teacher put it up in the in a room and she loved it. It spurred me on. My father had a lot of racing books and things, so I used to copy works by John Skeaping.
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"By the time I got to 12 or 13, they said you can do the ‘O’ level, which I did, and then ‘you can do an ‘A’ level’ and I had to go to Goldsmiths College for that. I went down once or twice a week and I was mixing with professional artists and I think that is a massive thing; if in those early years to get to something sooner rather than later, it is a big advantage, it gives such a head start.”
At school leaving age in the 1970s Mouse had two options – follow an artistic path through art school or work in racing. With college courses not so available as now, expensive to complete (as now) and racing offering a chance for the teenager to get away from home and London, Mouse, who had learnt to ride at riding schools in the capital, took the route into an “old-fashioned” apprenticeship.
He served his time at Tim Thompson- Jones before a bullying incident, sadly not an infrequent occurrence in those lawless days in racing yards, led him to move to work for David Elsworth, a man whom Mouse still describes as “the best trainer and the best man I worked for”.
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<blockquote>"And I went to all the capitals, went to all the museums, and that’s when I really started to look at paintings and started to think you know, this is what I want to do"</blockquote>
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Mouse was with the recently retired Elsworth at Whitsbury through the golden years of the trainer’s career, working alongside horses such as Desert Orchid, Robin Wonder, Indian Ridge and Lesley Ann.
But, despite the good time had in Hampshire, and able to paint outside of working hours, for someone with his creative talent, the job, unsurprisingly, was not quite fulfilling Mouse’s needs.
“I decided to have six months around Europe with a rucksack on my back – I bought a rail ticket for £10, and then you could go in any train and anywhere that you wanted. It was fantastic.
“And I went to all the capitals, went to all the museums, and that’s when I really started to look at paintings and started to think you know, this is what I want to do.”
But the realities of following a route to life as an artist, coupled with the necessity of earning a living, meant Mouse did not immediately heed that calling; while painting in his time off, he was not ready make it a full-time career.
He returned to Newmarket and fell into the world of the jobbing jockey and stable lad, riding bad horses, doing the rounds around the different yards, failing to settle, finding little to motivate him, enjoying his working life in a racing yard less and less as the months and then years wore on.
<h3>Personal life led to change</h3>
IN THE END it was a personal event that inspired change. “I had relationship issues, she went her way and I went mine,” he explains. “I sold my house and used the money to go to art college. At 40! I went to Anglia Ruskin University started there and did a three-year degree.
“I thought ‘let’s throw everything in’; I realised that if I didn’t, you know, well, I was gonna to regret it. I wanted to reinvent my life.”
The degree led to a dissertation on the movement of the equine, with time spent at vets looking at tendons and bones and sitting up with foals, and realising that, although he had spent all that time working with horses, there were gaps in his educational knowledge and understanding of the horse.
Mouse has his own life mantra and this has been an important thread to finding his future.
“I’m not I’m not, you know, ‘a laughy sort of guy’, but I am an optimist and I will have a go. I will give everything a try and then I can decide whether it works or if it doesn’t work.
<div class="Photo__ImageWrapper-sc-114e5q3-2 bCIISs">
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="361"]<img class="Photo__Image-sc-114e5q3-1 yYmsI" src="https://stories.isu.pub/98314380/images/64_original_file_I0.jpg" alt="" width="361" height="336" /> "Lemon on a Box” Mouse relishes the challenge of creating the illusion of a 3D image on a flat piece of paper[/caption]
</div>
"The art had sort of bumbled along until then, and I think that’s what I am trying to explain is you can go through all of your life and think ‘I can’t do this now’.
“If you get an opportunity you have to take it. You might get one chance, you might get two, give it a go, because you don’t know where it is going to take you.”
He admits that the lightbulb moment came from a conversation with a ballerina in Paris [Edit: yes, you read that correctly].
“I was in a hotel I could hear this noise down the corridor so I went to investigate.
“There was this funny little blond girl stretching out and doing her exercises. She told me that she was a roller skater, but she was training to be a ballet dancer and was going to college.
“When we started talking I looked at her feet and her toes were all broken, and I could see she was quite physically scarred.
<blockquote class="Quote-sc-1am45o4-0 cGgFGI">“It was a little bit like somebody who has been in racing; she was still fit but injured, too. She was strong and she was persevering, still pushing, and she was using all of her day’s 24 hours to achieve.</blockquote>
And he believes that someone like the ballerina could be an example to those working in racing now.
“You get up and you’ve got a whole day in which you could do something, do an awful lot more than sleep in the afternoon. Those working in racing could go and do an evening class, learn to become an electrician, a plumber.
“And it really knocks me out that so many just won’t go and do something, try and figure it out. You know just do something, learn and be prepared to go and do something.
“When you think about it there is a wonderful opportunity for people in racing, for some of them they ride out in the morning and they are done for the day.”
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<blockquote>"But for many people a lot of confidence goes and self-esteem goes. I have had all of that"</blockquote>
</aside>
The artist is quite critical of the motivation that is generated within racing for people to want to do more both within and outside of the sport and job.
“I don’t think we’re getting through to a lot of people in life, especially in racing. I don’t blame anyone who wants to do their horses, great, as long as they’re happy. If their relationship is ok and they’ve got somewhere to live, and then they’re in as good a good position as anybody else in the country.
“But if you’re not happy, and you’re dissatisfied, and it’s getting you down, don’t go down the pub, don’t go take a load of drugs, have a go and try and do something and see how it comes out. And, you know, it might ignite something.
“But for many people a lot of confidence goes and self-esteem goes. I have had all of that. I think everyone goes through it, but I think it can kinda magnifies in racing.”
<h3>College led to a career change</h3>
For Mouse it was while he was at college that the dots really started to join up.
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<blockquote>"I saw things and I went ‘Oh yeah!’, and ‘That’s what I thought!’. It just opened up my brain"</blockquote>
</aside>
“I found that my talent was still there,” he says with candour. “I saw things and I went ‘Oh yeah!’, and ‘That’s what I thought!’. It just opened up my brain. And that was when I sort of started to think, ‘Right, you know what? You could make a living out of this.’.”
Turning that reborn talent into a commercial enterprise and one capable of keeping a roof over his head and food on his table was not immediate either, and Mouse dedicates that achievement to a long-standing friend.
“The vet Rob Pilsworth came up to me one day in Newmarket High Street and he said, ‘For God’s sake Mouse you’re not selling your pictures for enough money, you don’t realise how good you are!’
“He offered to take over all the management and now he looks after all correspondence, all phone calls and he basically manages 90 per cent of this.
“A lot of credit for this goes to Rob; we have known each other for a long time, but worked together for the last six years. He gets the commissions and enquiries and works it all out.
“David Fish of Ascot Gallery Conversation Pieces has helped me out, too, and it means I can get my paintings to Cheltenham and such places, I don’t have to spend the money on a pitch or anything like that.
“And generally people in racing have just been really nice – Amy Mania, Ryan Mania’s partner, she gets me things up north, and there are just so many people to thank. Hopefully, I do a good enough job for them all.”
<h4>At one with his work... nearly</h4>
AND WHILE the man is seemingly content with his life, perhaps it has taken this time for him to truly be at peace with himself, there is still much more that he wants to achieve with his work.
“I still don’t think I’ll ever quite pulled off the best thing!” he smiles. “I think the Tattersalls sale picture nearly is [see December 2021’s issue], but I am still not there yet.
“I guess it is the ‘Ronnie O’Sullivan syndrome’ – he is best player in the world but he doesn’t think he’s good enough. If you did it would probably be the wrong thing to do. I think that’s another thing I learned from racing – don’t get carried away with yourself.”
[caption id="attachment_9403" align="aligncenter" width="452"]<img class="wp-image-9403" src="https://cms.internationalthoroughbred.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Six-Pack--scaled-e1656663278896.jpg" alt="" width="452" height="337" /> 'Six-Pack'[/caption]
Since turning "pro", he has also picked up some tricks of the trade of the professional artist.
“The whole thing is a cauldron of information, I’m interested in the mechanics, the parts of it that perhaps people don’t see, but you need little tricks, it is those little things I’ve learned.
“For instance, when you watch racing, and the horses come straight to you, you don’t really see much. The brain is trying to disseminate what’s happening and it can’t cope, there is too much information.
“The better point to see them and paint them is that three-quarters shot when they’re going away, that’s when you spend time looking at them.
“And if you look Munnings’ painting he gets exactly that point, it takes away a lot of detail, such as faces, but it still captures the movement. The brain retains that information longer.”
<aside class="quotebox-without-image" style="background: #990000; color: #f7f6f2; float: left; margin: 0 12px 12px 0;">
<blockquote>"Every now and again, if I have an exhibition, I always put one or two pictures that I think will just get people talking and that I have no intention of selling"</blockquote>
</aside>
While commissions fill a lot of what Mouse paints on a commercial basis, there are works that he produces as just art for art’s sake.
“Every now and again, if I have an exhibition, I always put one or two pictures that I think will just get people talking and that I have no intention of selling. And I don’t I don’t care if they do or they don’t.
“I’ll hang a picture on Tuesday at my stall at Fakenham racecourse and people will say ‘Oh, that’s interesting’, but would they want to hang it on their walls? Probably not. Somebody might get ‘it’, but it won’t necessarily be a selling thing.”
The 61-year-old Mouse, understandably, has some regret that he came late to the world of the commercial artist, but there is a realisation that the previous “life” skills he learnt working in racing are standing him in good stead.
“Maybe I missed out 30 or 40 years of this, where would I be if I’d done this since I was 15?
“But I can set up my stall at the races, put up my pictures and I’ll have every sort of person come round. Somebody will say ‘I don’t like that! That don’t look like an ‘orse!’ , but I can deal with that, I don’t mind,” he assesses realistically. “I can deal with the rich, the famous, the poor, everybody; I think a lot of that has come out of racing.
“I just hope that I’ve gone another 10 or 15 years and I can keep going and I can keep finding and producing and doing something, looking for the next winner.”
So, on that peaceful Sunday morning, we leave the man by the riverside, surrounded by his paints and his brushes and with his aged dog; his equine masterpiece at the very tips of his fingers and just waiting to be discovered

Mouse climbing high

<h3>James Thomas talks to Gary Robinson, breeder of the Derby winner Desert Crown</h3>
“I try to pretend that I don’t know what I’m on about most of the time!” says Gary Robinson as he discusses his breeding operation at Strawberry Fields Stud.
That pretence has presumably become a lot harder to maintain since the farm, which is situated in the village of Teversham on the edge of Cambridge, produced this year’s impressive Derby winner Desert Crown.
Robinson jokes: “I’m not sure where I will go with my breeding now, I might pack it in, I don’t think there are any races bigger than the Derby left to win!”
[caption id="attachment_9456" align="alignleft" width="478"]<img class="wp-image-9456" src="https://cms.internationalthoroughbred.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/IMG-20220530-WA00011-e1656665404273.jpg" alt="" width="478" height="359" /> Gary Robinson with Desert Berry[/caption]
Robinson wasn’t born into a racing family, much less stud ownership, so says that Desert Crown’s emergence feels like “vindication” for all the time, money, effort and emotion he has invested into Strawberry Fields and its equine residents.
He began learning his trade at the age of 12 when, during a spell working for a veterinarian, he tended to a group of horses close to his family’s council house in the Fenland town of Whittlesey.
“I used to look after them and I didn’t know they could be dangerous so I just fell in love with them,” he recalls. “And so everywhere I went after that, I used to draw a picture of a horse.”
His time working with the vet was confined to his youth and instead Robinson pursued employment in the design and technical engineering sector, and with considerable success. As his career progressed he indulged his love of the thoroughbred by collecting Schweppes calendars and other equine keepsakes, but says it was “always in the back of my head to have a horse of my own.”
Robinson's first taste of ownership came in 2003 when he and a few like-minded friends from Whittlesey set up the The Four April Fools syndicate, who owned Absolutely Soaked, a modest daughter of Alhaarth trained by Dr Jon Scargill.
His string has grown exponentially since, and in the last five years a double-figure number of trainers – including the likes of Brian Ellison, Chris Dwyer, Chris Wall, Jessica Macey and Sir Mark Prescott – have saddled runners who have carried Robinson’s distinctive white silks with a red hollow box.
However, perhaps only half jokingly he says: “I wasn’t ever really interested in horseracing, in fact I’m still not really that interested in horseracing! I’m more interested in the animal itself, so my real passion is breeding.”
<h3>The origins of Strawberry Fields</h3>
Of course, breeding requires land, and so in 2011 Robinson took his first small step towards producing Desert Crown by purchasing Brickfield Stud in Exning.
He says: “Originally I couldn’t afford anything, but I had a good bank manager and he helped me buy Brickfields and then we spent nearly all the money we had trying to make that work.”
The late Basil White, who passed away in June 2016 at the age of 92, was a pivotal figure as Robinson developed his breeding interests, and it was from him that the mantle was taken up at Strawberry Fields and Fernleigh Farm.
“I had an old partner called Basil White,” explains Robinson. “He was a proper horseman, he was a bit old school but he always had a good eye for a horse and we became good friends.
“When he passed away he left me his farm and said ‘you look after it’, so I’ve been doing that for the last few years. I think we had about 40 horses around at the time [of taking the farm on] but we’ve slowly rehomed those and updated the farm and kept everything going from there.”
Despite his relatively extensive thoroughbred property portfolio, Robinson remains unafraid to roll his sleeves up, saying: “I’m not the Aga Khan or Oppenheimer or the Rothschilds or anything like that. I’m still the man who digs the holes!”
Robinson’s day job is as the managing director of RWS, a company specialising in ballistic and bomb protective products. He notes there are clear parallels between the skills he requires professionally and for his passion for breeding, although he adds that sometimes the heart rules over the head.
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<blockquote>"So a big thing is to get enough funds together so they can be looked after until they leave this world"</blockquote>
</aside>
“There’s the technical side of the horse with aspects like biomechanics,” he says. “And I also wrote a strategic plan when I bought the stud, which very rarely anybody does in this industry. That was about ten years ago and I filled in all the boxes with what you needed and how long it would take, and then you build into the plan all the things that can go wrong. And after that the passion takes over and all the planning goes out the window!”
There is a commercial aspect to the Strawberry Fields operation, with Robinson due to retain the fillies he breeds while the colts will head to public auction. But he stresses that a big part of his strategic plan accounts for the aftercare of his horses once they go beyond the racing or breeding stages of their lives.
“When I pack it in, the idea is that they’re all looked after,” he says. “That side of it is massive and people don’t realise you’ve got these horses for the rest of your life. So a big thing is to get enough funds together so they can be looked after until they leave this world. That requires a bit of planning ahead, but that’s where my engineering brain kicks in as that’s all about planning.”
Despite the strategic plan occasionally going out of the window, Desert Crown stands as a shining example of just how well Robinson’s ideas are coming together.
He says at one point he owned around 700 books on horses, has sat two Thoroughbred Breeders’ Association breeding courses, and has tried to learn from each and every one of the great and good he has bumped into during his time in racing.
He now has theories on everything from mating plans to bone density and, with the help of pedigree consultant Alastair Nicolson, has set about using the knowledge he has amassed to produce high-class equine athletes.
“We put so much effort into it,” says Robinson. “We sit and discuss mating plans for probably three months before we get to the coverings. We have a ratings system that we go through and that assesses things such as the female line, masculinity, femininity. We also work on seven generation pedigrees, not just on what the catalogue page says.
“We’re trying to bring that female line back through and hopefully get the balance correct.”
[caption id="attachment_9457" align="aligncenter" width="626"]<img class="wp-image-9457 " src="https://cms.internationalthoroughbred.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/BigBoy2_small-e1656665396766.jpg" alt="" width="626" height="415" /> Desert Berry as a yearling ahead of his date at Tattersalls October[/caption]
Robins certainly struck the right balance with Desert Crown, who was the result of a mating between Strawberry Fields’ budding blue hen Desert Berry and Newsells Park Stud resident stallion Nathaniel.
Robinson’s first involvement with Desert Crown’s family actually came with the colt’s second dam Foreign Language from whom he bred a couple of offspring before selling the mare when she was in-foal to Poet’s Voice in 2013.
It is easy to see why he purchased Foreign Language, a Juddmonte-bred daughter of Distant View, as she is out of the Listed-winning Binary and is a sibling to Binche, dam of the four-time Grade 1 winner Proviso and Prince of Wales’s Stakes hero Byword.
<h3>Getting into the family</h3>
Robinson didn’t breed Desert Crown’s dam Desert Berry, a daughter of Foreign Language, but instead acquired her privately. The purchase proved a shrewd bit of business as not only has she produced this year’s Derby winner but Archie McKellar too, who won a Kempton novice for Ralph Beckett before he transferred to Hong Kong, where he was renamed Flying Thunder and won the Group 3 Premier Cup.
Desert Berry, who carried the colours of Basil White’s wife Alexandra, also won one of her three starts during her time in training in Newmarket with Chris Wall, but Robinson explains she had a far more dramatic claim to fame prior to producing her talented offspring.
“When Chris had her she got free, went through the town and went through the front window of a Turkish restaurant!” he says. “So we’ve been on television because of her before, but for something completely different. That was probably ten years ago now. Perhaps that was an omen!”
Having survived that ordeal Desert Berry retired to the Strawberry Fields paddocks and set about transferring her toughness to her offspring. Robinson says that the quality possessed by Desert Crown, who carries the familiar colours of Saeed Suhail having been sold to Blandford Bloodstock for 280,000gns at the Tattersalls October Book 2 Yearling Sale , were evident from an early stage.
“Desert Crown was an outstanding looking individual and when he progressed to about 12 months old he really started to look like a Classic horse,” says the breeder.
<aside class="quotebox-without-image" style="background: #990000; color: #f2f1ed; float: left; margin: 0 12px 12px 0;">
<blockquote>"I’m not interested in speed, I’m interested in producing Classic horses"</blockquote>
</aside>
“You can tell once they get to about three months whether they’re going to be alright or not. The others are starting to look like that as well, they’re all Classic looking. I’m not interested in speed, I’m interested in producing Classic horses. It’s an expensive way of doing it but that’s the ‘real way’.”
Desert Berry also has a two-year-old Al Kazeem filly, a yearling colt by Study Of Man and a Nathaniel foal.
“She’s a monster,” Robinson says of the Al Kazeem. “She should run as a two-year-old and she’s lovely, she’s a beautiful horse.
“The mating to Study Of Man was an ‘A rating’ so that should produce something as good, if not better, than what we’ve already got and the colt already looks like a powerful horse.”
Having followed his strategic plan this far, Robinson is hopeful that Desert Berry’s brood is just the start of a new era of success for the Strawberry Fields team, which includes stud manager Stuart Millar, estate manager Gabor Nadas and the yearling manager Jodie Allen.
[caption id="attachment_9455" align="alignleft" width="386"]<img class="wp-image-9455 " src="https://cms.internationalthoroughbred.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/DSC03335-scaled-e1656665384923.jpg" alt="" width="386" height="256" /> The Strawberry Fields team[/caption]
“Stuart, Jodi and Gabor do the hard work behind the scenes, and our expert advisors also contribute to making a good horse."
“And it’s not just Desert Berry; I think we’ve probably got three or four mares who could do something special.”
Among those are the likes of Yaqeen, a Listed winner whose five black-type siblings include three-time Grade 1 scorer Grand Couturier. The daughter of Green Desert is in-foal to Study Of Man. The three-time winner Capla Berry and the well-related Thraya Star are in-foal to Territories, while Desert Berry and her daughter Rose Berry are both in-foal to Nathaniel.
There are other exciting plans afoot too, as Robinson has just upgraded the facilities across the road from Strawberry Fields to allow a string of racehorses to be trained from the 20-plus box yard.
“I don’t know if I want the hassle factor of training myself because I still have to do other things,” he says. “I’ve still got a farm that I run and I don’t want to finish up shattered and not enjoying it. So I’d probably hire a private trainer, but run it as more of a hobby. If you’re running your own fillies or horses for a few friends it wants to be fun rather than intense.”
Robinson has plainly put in plenty of hard yards to reach this point, but with young blood and new life coming to the fore, as well as a Derby winner in the stud book, Strawberry Fields empire set for the next phase of its evolution, he has an awful lot to look forward to.
“It’s a proper race,” he says of the Derby. “It’ll be good for everybody from where I used to live in Whittlesey.”

Strawberry Fields forever

<h3>Debbie Burt meets up with equine and life-size sculptor William Newton</h3>
THE SOMERSET-BASED SCULPTOR William Newton has produced trophies for the UK’s most famous races, the Grand National and the Derby and more recently, life-sized bronzes of the two men often associated with them, Dick Francis and the late Lester Piggott.
For Newton, briefly a jockey himself, notably riding a winner at the first attempt at his local course at Wincanton, it was always sculpture that fired his imagination.
He enlisted for pottery class at school, but soon realised that he had little interest in producing pots, preferring modelling with clay and making animals.
When the father of one of the pupils, the renowned sculptor John Robinson, visited the class, it was a life-changing moment.
“I instantly connected with him,” recalls Newton. “We were making figures, mine didn’t have any hair and he just slapped a bit of clay on the side of the head and sort of used his thumb to make some ringlets.
“At that moment I was absolutely mesmerised. I went from watching and running my own thumb through what he had done, to trying to replicate it on the other side of the head. He came over and said that’s fantastic, he really gave me a boost.”
<aside class="quotebox-without-image" style="background: #990000; color: #f7f6f2; float: left; margin: 0 12px 12px 0;">
<blockquote>"You couldn’t keep me out of the art room at school. As long as I was creating something, whether it was drawing, painting or sculpting, I was happy."</blockquote>
</aside>
Robinson lived within cycling distance and soon Newton was a regular visitor to his studio, using his mentor’s smaller studies as the inspiration for his own work.
As his skills progressed Newton says: “You couldn’t keep me out of the art room at school. As long as I was creating something, whether it was drawing, painting or sculpting, I was happy.
"I didn’t excel academically I just did the bare minimum in my other subjects, enough to keep me out of trouble. I left school at 16 as soon as I had the opportunity to do an art foundation course.”
Through “a fantastic two years” at art college, racehorses were his hobby. In the mornings he would ride out for Cheltenham Festival-winning trainer Peter Dufosee and “just about” be finished in time to get to college. Toby Balding suggested Newton go to Ireland to gain more experience as an amateur, which he did, influenced by the success of Jonjo O’Neill and his contemporaries.
“All the Irish jockeys that came to Britain, I thought they had a lovely fluidity about them in the way that they rode.”
Even then he realises, “I was really thinking like a sculptor.”
<h3>Becoming a full-time sculptor</h3>
After breaking his arm, Newton returned to the UK and, though he was still riding a few winners, sculpting was taking up more and more of his time and he soon retired from race riding. By this stage he’d moved to live in Hungerford and been introduced to Philip Blacker, another jockey-turned-sculptor with whom he formed an instant rapport.
“Philip said come over anytime, so I would work in his studio instead of my kitchen. Sometimes under his supervision I’d assist him with some of his bigger sculptures such as Red Rum. It’s amazing how much work is involved in making a life-size sculpture, whether it be human or equine.
“When you finish, you look at it and ask yourself, ‘Why did it take so long?’ It looks so easy once it’s done, but it’s quite a battle, really. It doesn’t stop in the studio, of course, I’m very involved at the foundry, more now than ever.
“The first time I had a sculpture cast, my initial reaction was, ‘It’s in bronze!’ and it was incredibly exciting. The next was ‘My god what have they done to it!’ The more I looked, the worse it got, so that was a good lesson; there were an awful lot of things that can go wrong between making the sculpture and getting it back from the foundry.
“I realised that to get the results I wanted, it was up to me to play a bigger part in the casting and finishing process.
[caption id="attachment_9470" align="aligncenter" width="500"]<img class="wp-image-9470" src="https://cms.internationalthoroughbred.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/080402022_Aintree_Dick-Francis-statue_4-e1656666289405.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="500" /> Dick Francis statue at Aintree[/caption]
For many years now, I’ve pretty much done everything myself. I’ve always used a professional mould maker for the mould though. I’ve tried doing it, but that’s a real craft in itself and it’s also actually very dull, for me anyway!” he says laughing.
After the mould has been made, Newton takes a wax positive from it and then works on the wax so that it is, essentially, an identical copy of the original clay model.
He then hands it over to the foundry staff for casting by the “lost wax” process in which the wax is covered in ceramic glaze, placed in a furnace to fire the ceramic and burn off the wax, then the newly formed ceramic mould is filled with molten bronze.
Once cool, Newton is back in action, quite literally breaking the mould to reveal the bronze sculpture, which then has to have the “runners and risers” (additional wax rods attached to the sculpture to aid the flow of the bronze) removed.
This all leaves its mark on the previously perfect surface, returning it to that state is a great skill, known as “chasing and finishing”.
<aside class="quotebox-without-image" style="background: #990000; color: #f5f3eb; float: left; margin: 0 12px 12px 0;">
<blockquote>"When you buy a William Newton bronze, it really is my work, there’s been very little input from anyone else, apart from the casting process"</blockquote>
</aside>
Newton firmly asserts that sculptures produced in this way are one-offs, as every wax is slightly different, with minor variations in how they are worked up and finished. 
This most obviously extends to the “patination” or colouring process, which he also does himself.
“I know roughly how I’m going to do it, but editions are not going to be exactly identical, one may be lighter or darker or a bit greener or more orange depending on what I’m trying to achieve, and I just go with it. A good patination can really enhance a bronze,” he asserts.
“When you buy a William Newton bronze, it really is my work, there’s been very little input from anyone else, apart from the casting process. It hasn’t always been like that though, Eddie McDougall used to do all my chasing. We worked so closely together, he knew exactly how I wanted it and for me he was absolutely brilliant as a chaser and finisher of bronzes. He was also a great patinator; he taught me an immense amount.”
When approaching a commission his ideal is to work from life. Recalling his study of Gold Cup winner Native River he says: “Because he was turned out for the summer, I did virtually all of the sculpture working alongside the horse in the field.
“I knew that he was going to change shape somewhat because he was eating a lot of grass! However, Colin and Joe [Tizzard] were so helpful, their input was always welcome.”
Another trainer local to Newton is Paul Nicholls for whom he rides out in the winter. Newton was commissioned to produce a half life-sized sculpture of Kauto Star to commemorate his four victories in Haydock’s BetFair Chase and was able to have regular access to Nicholl’s celebrated charge.
[caption id="attachment_9473" align="aligncenter" width="300"]<img class="wp-image-9473 size-medium" src="https://cms.internationalthoroughbred.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Kauto-Star_Will-Newton-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" /> With Kauto Star[/caption]
“When I think back to doing Kauto Star, I used to go in every day for evening stables and brush him over,” smiles the sculptor. “That was great, to get so close, to get my hands on him, getting right up underneath his tummy, working right the way through the entire horse.
“I always used to enjoy looking after my horses as a stable lad and it took me right back to those years. When you run your hand down a horse’s tendon you know the way it feels in your hand, so it can only help when you’re doing a sculpture.
“I’ve done three or four of Paul’s horses now and the lovely thing is that they’re just down the road.
“Because I have a relationship with the yard, Paul is very accommodating, he knows I’m a safe pair of hands, I’m not going to put a horse in jeopardy in any way.
Whilst working from directly from the subject is Newton’s ideal, the nature of celebrating a life often means the study must be made posthumously. This was the case with some of his Vodafone Derby trophies, such as Sir Gordon Richards with Pinza and also with his most recent public work, that of Dick Francis at Aintree.
The sculpture was to honour not just Francis’s eight National rides, but also the huge part he played in saving the course and its most famous race. It was instigated by Peter Johnson, the former amateur jockey, a Dick Francis fan and founder of the British Sporting Art Trust. In an additional nod to his later career as an author, Francis is sculpted stood on a large pile of books.
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<blockquote>"With Dick Francis I read his autobiography, it’s written with his own hand, so he’s talking directly to me."</blockquote>
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“You really have to source as much information as you can and talk to the people who knew them,” Newton explains. “With Dick Francis I read his autobiography, it’s written with his own hand, so he’s talking directly to me.
“Because he comes from a racing background I can sense exactly what he’s talking about, so when it’s his involvement with particular horses and how they react, I can really understand and have an empathy with that. That doesn’t make a sculpture, but what it does do is give you a feeling, a sense of involvement, so I put that together with what I see in photographs.
“His sons, Merrick and Felix Francis were very much involved, too. I made the maquette and took it to show Felix and Peter Johnson – when they saw it, they got it straight away.
<h3>Facial details "least of my worries"</h3>
“It may sound weird, but when you’re making a life-size piece, the actual cosmetics of what’s going on in the face is really the least of my worries, it’s the vehicle that carries that and makes it believable that’s important. If you see someone walking down the street you don’t have to see their face to recognise them; you don’t analyse why you know who it is, you just know.”
Maquette is a small study made ahead of producing a larger piece, which Newton feels it would be impossible for him to operate without.
“I do everything literally to scale, so if the person was six-foot tall, I’d make the maquette a foot high, so I’d be multiplying by six.
“Felix came to see the life-size in the studio first. He got quite emotional I think, standing there, looking into his father’s eyes, he was mesmerised by it and absolutely loved it. Fortunately, Merrick had the same experience. That meant an awful lot to me, to know that I’d really connected. You can’t fool two sons.”
Speaking of fathers and sons, Newton’s son Toby produced the stone plinth on which the sculpture stands.
“Toby is an excellent stone carver and when they saw examples of his work, they didn’t hesitate to use him. I’d love to do more collaborations with him in the future, but stone carving is quite expensive and so is bronze, so I can understand why people might be reluctant, however presentation is everything.”
Dick Francis is one of a number of life-size public statues Newton has crafted.
The Injured Jockeys Fund’s Oaksey and Jack Berry Houses are graced by Newton’s sculptures of their namesakes, which led in part to one of his most well-known pieces, that of Lester Piggott.
[caption id="attachment_9475" align="aligncenter" width="500"]<img class="wp-image-9475" src="https://cms.internationalthoroughbred.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Lester-4-scaled-e1656666585960.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="364" /> Lester Piggott at Epsom[/caption]
Commissioned to celebrate his nine Derby wins, there will be nine editions in total. Already located in Wantage where Piggott was born, as well as Ascot, Epsom, Newmarket, York and the National Horseracing Museum in Newmarket, the most recent edition was unveiled at The Curragh this May.
“I first met Lester and his wife Susan when he was the subject of one of the Derby trophies [riding Sir Ivor]. That was a lovely thing to do, to meet this legend. I got on very well with him, I was very lucky. Lester was different to any other jockey, he walked more like a dancer, he moved beautifully. He was just a natural athlete.
“Later Susan asked me to do a sculpture for Lester’s 70th birthday and ‘From Start to Finish’ features his first winner The Chase and his last Palacegate Jack.
“I did other things for them as well, such as a study of Never Say Die from photos. I always call in to see Susan when I go to Newmarket, her knowledge of racing is incredible. She put work my way, so I’ll always be in her debt.”
<h3>Telling the story</h3>
Recalling the study of the artist Klaus Philipp that was completed earlier this year he says: “I’d met him a few times, so I knew him a little bit. I had the utmost respect for him, as he’s a true artist in every sense of the word, his downfall is that he paints horses and horse painters don’t get taken as seriously!
“It’s strange that animal form is given less credit than human form, it isn’t to me, or fortunately to a lot of other people.”
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<blockquote>"My burning ambition is to celebrate life and the living form in the best way I can"</blockquote>
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His current commission is also a portrait bust, these of course are quicker to produce but he says the same things apply, knowing the subject and being able to relate to them. He tackles each assignment with the same level of responsibility, whether they are famous or a family pet.
“It’s very important to the person who has commissioned it, and so it becomes important to me.
“For it to be a success it has to be completely believable, though in a sense it’s a caricature. It’s also a statement of me and my personality in that sculpture, how I interpret what I’m looking at. My burning ambition is to celebrate life and the living form in the best way I can, I like rhythm, fluidity; I like animals full stop. I do like putting two forms together, like a figure and a horse, or two horses or a horse and another animal.”
Alongside his commissioned work, Newton is working towards a future show.
“I’m exhibiting with world-class jeweller Catherine Best. She has show rooms in Mayfair and in Guernsey and Jersey. We’re just planning at the moment, but the idea is a week in each location in Spring 2024. I’d like to think they’ll be plenty of figurative sculpture in there and plenty of animals, not just equestrian pieces.”
Newton concludes: “I’ve done bulls, sheep, kudu, I don’t mind the subject matter - as long as you approach it in the right way, it has to tell a story.”

Newton's Law

Crowning glory

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<h3 class="ixu-paragraph NextStory__NextStoryWrapper-sc-1g3e28b-3 bSMPeM ixu-paragraph--small ixu-paragraph--bold">Melissa Bauer-Herzog reviews a US Triple Crown series that saw a number of the younger stallions dominate</h3>
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IF THERE WAS EVER any doubt of the ability of the younger stallions in North American stallion ranks, that doubt was quickly put to rest during this season’s American Triple Crown series – two legs of the Triple Crown were won by progeny of first-crop sires. Rich Strike was the longest shot of the race going into May’s Kentucky Derby (G1) after taking his place in the field at the 11th-hour as a reserve.
One of just 53 foals from Grade 1 winner Keen Ice’s first crop, Rich Strike was over 17l behind the pacesetter at one point before closing strongly to win by three-quarters of a length at odds of 80-1.
He was the second-longest priced winner in Kentucky Derby history behind 1913 winner Donerail Court. The colt was followed home by runners from the second crops of Not This Time and Upstart.
In an era where close inbreeding hasn’t been taboo amongst big race winners, the Calumet Farm-bred Rich Strike joined the crowd with a 3x2 cross to the late Smart Strike.
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<blockquote>Interestingly, with the increasingly larger books for American stallions, the horses to cross the finish line first in the last two Kentucky Derbys have come from foal crops of just 53 and 35</blockquote>
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The colt is by a grandson of that stallion and out of Smart Strike’s Canadian champion Gold Strike. She was already a Grade 2 producer before her Derby winner courtesy of Llanarmon, but that didn’t keep her from selling at the 2019 Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale for just $1,700 in 2019.
Her appearance in the ring came one year after Calumet sold the subsequent 2,000 Guineas (G1) winner Kameko’s dam Sweeter Still for only $1,500 at the same sale. In addition to being the breeder of Rich Strike, the farm also raced him in his early starts.
Calumet dropped Rich Strike into a claiming race for his second start where his current connections claimed him for $30,000 on the same day he broke his maiden by over 17l at Churchill Downs.
Interestingly, with the increasingly larger books for American stallions, the horses to cross the finish line first in the last two Kentucky Derbys have come from foal crops of just 53 and 35.
That followed up 2019 when the “first” to cross the line came from a crop of 56 with the “official” winner from a crop of 86.
Rich Strike’s Kentucky Derby victory comes only months after a proposed stallion cap that would see stallions born in 2020 or later restricted to book sizes of 140 mares, rescinded by The Jockey Club.
<h3>Gun Runner shoots high in the Preakness</h3>
It’s not a Triple Crown season without a little drama and that drama came less than a week after the Kentucky Derby when Rich Strike’s connections decided not to target the Preakness Stakes (G1) due to distance limitations. But other young sires were there to fly the flag for their generation.
Of the nine runners in the second Classic, five were by stallions who have just first or second crop three-year-olds.
The record-breaking first-crop sire Gun Runner had had two in the Kentucky Derby and neither hit the board, but it was set to be different in the Preakness.
Early Voting had qualified for the main field of the Derby on the Road to the Kentucky Derby series, but connections had decided to skip the race with the lightly-raced colt in favour of a smaller field in the Preakness. That move paid off in spades when the Gun Runner colt skipped to a length and a quarter victory over Kentucky Derby runner-up Epicenter.
Already an enticing stallion prospect as a grandson of Canadian champion Silken Cat, who also produced the US champion Speightstown and the multiple graded stakes winner Irap, Early Voting has the added benefit of being a son of one of the top stallions in the country.
Last year’s champion two-year-old sire by earnings, stakes winners, graded stakes winners, Grade 1 stakes winners, and Grade 1 performers from his first crop, Gun Runner also broke the earnings record by a freshman sire.
Arguably one of the most in-demand sires in North America, Gun Runner registered his fifth Grade 1 winner from eight Grade 1 runners with Early Voting’s Preakness victory.
While Early Voting was immediately ruled out of the Belmont Stakes (G1), Rich Strike was back for the race that his connections had been targeting for months. He was one of three horses to come into the race out of the Kentucky Derby, while Nest had finished second in the Kentucky Oaks (G1) and Creative Minister and Skippylongstocking had finished third and fifth in the Preakness.
<h3>Uncle Mo shines in the Belmont</h3>
But it wasn’t the Kentucky Derby winner who walked into the winner’s circle at Belmont. That honour went to Uncle Mo’s Mo Donegal, who had finished fifth in the Derby.
His victory was a big one for Uncle Mo, who now has a Grade 1 winner in each of his seven crops aged three or older and who has also sired a Kentucky Derby winner in Nyquist.
A grandson of the Grade 1 winner Island Sound, Mo Donegal is bred on the potent Uncle Mo x A.P. Indy granddaughter cross that has also produced the Grade 1 winner Mo Town among five graded stakes winners and 11 stakes performers from 72 runners as of June 11.
It is a rare occurrence for the Kentucky Oaks to be represented in the Triple Crown series, but this year was an exception.
Nest (Curlin) was closest to the Belmont Stakes winner and over 3l clear of the third-place finisher to give Todd Pletcher and Repole Stable a one-two finish with Mo Donegal’s co-owner also a co-owner of the filly.
Fillies from the Oaks have been more than holding their own this spring – in the Preakness, the Oaks winner Secret Oath (Arrogate) finished fourth. She has faced males twice in her last three starts with a third in the Arkansas Derby (G1) to her name as well.
<h3 class="SubHead-ik5mtv-0 fhWix">Flightline silences doubters</h3>
On a card full of quality racing the Belmont Stakes day also became a coming-out party for multiple future stallions.
The Metropolitan Handicap (G1) winner Flightline (Tapit) had already proven he was Grade 1 quality with a dominant victory in the Malibu Stakes (G1) last December, but there were plenty of questions surrounding him going to Belmont.
The race was set to be the first time he’d run outside of California and the first time he’d faced older stakes horses, but the $1 million yearling made it clear that it is exactly where he belongs with a 6l win over a field in which only one horse wasn’t a previous Grade 1 winner.
[caption id="attachment_9499" align="aligncenter" width="500"]<img class="wp-image-9499" src="https://cms.internationalthoroughbred.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/flightlinethe-metropolitan-credit-ryan-thompson3-scaled-e1656669514381.jpeg" alt="" width="500" height="400" /> Flightline[/caption]
Co-owned by a group that includes Lane’s End Farm’s racing arm Woodford Racing, it is all but certain that the four-year-old will head to that Kentucky farm for his breeding career.
Jack Christopher (Munnings) was sidelined for the Triple Crown prep season and stayed out of the Triple Crown races, but has quickly proven to be one of the top three-year-olds in the nation.
He made his 2022 debut in the Pat Day Mile (G2) when he won by an easy three and three-quarter lengths, the Woody Stephens (G1) proved he was back to the form that saw him win last year’s Champagne Stakes (G1) in impressive style when he bolted up by 10l on Belmont Stakes.
Jack Christopher is by rising superstar stallion Munnings, who led all North American sires by number of stakes winners after Belmont stakes weekend.
Like Flightline, Jack Christopher’s future home as a stallion has all but been secured with Coolmore Stud buying into him before last year’s Champagne Stakes. Coolmore also stands the colt’s sire Munnings.

First-season yearling sires 2022

July-August: European Yearling sales

May-June: the Summer Classic

NH SPECIAL 2022

February-March 2022