Frankel

If Banstead Manor was the last word in understated stud luxury, then Coolmore Stud is something very different. That is not to say it is not smart; witness the mile-and-a-half ‘avenue’ approach which has brought me to their door, the entrance more akin to a small European palace than a working stud farm. But it is unashamedly commercial. In the world of breeding, it is rivalled only, at least in numerical terms, by Godolphin, the name that covers the racing and breeding interests of Sheikh Mohammed and the famous all-blue Godolphin racing colours.

The scale and spread of Coolmore is, in every sense of the word, awesome. As I was driven around (covering 7,000 acres, you don’t walk) I have to confess to frequently suffering from information overload. It really is quite something to take in, but here are the salient facts of how it has become what it is today. Coolmore is owned by the Magnier family, but its origins lie with Battle of Britain fighter pilot Tim Vigors who, having been demobbed from the Royal Air Force, came to Ireland to work as a bloodstock auctioneer then agent, and inherited Coolmore, which was at the time just 350 acres. It was here he set about establishing the stud in 1968.

At that time, seven miles away across the fields at Ballydoyle, Vincent O’Brien was hitting the prime of his flat training career, along with jockey Lester Piggott, with a string of great horses. Sir Ivor, Nijinsky, Roberto, and The Minstrel come immediately to mind. If those names don’t mean much to you, don’t worry. It is possibly just enough to know that they were Derby winners all, the most prestigious race on the planet, in a ten-year purple patch that ran from the same year Vigors set up shop. And this success initially came within the partnership of Vigors, O’Brien and football pools magnate (a huge UK national gambling pastime until it was first decimated by the National Lottery and then put out of its misery by the internet), Robert Sangster.

But Coolmore wasn’t just a breeder, it was a buyer of bloodstock, in the early years supplementing European bloodlines with North American horses, especially the offspring of Canadian sire Northern Dancer who just happens to be Frankel’s great-grandfather. You might now have a clue where this is all going. At the time, Coolmore was not the only one to recognise the value of this particular sire, leading to epic showdowns in the sales ring as it went head-to-head with the Arab buyers in the bloodstock boom of the 1980s. This resulted in the first eight-figure sum ever paid for a horse when a yearling, who was subsequently named Snaafi Dancer, sold in 1983 for $10.2 million ($25.1 million in today’s money), bought by Sheikh Mohammed. If you are assuming he went on to do great things, you’ll be disappointed. Sent into training in England, this colt was considered too slow to even race, and attempts to harvest the genes of his father failed; in two years at stud, with all sorts of fertility problems, he sired just four offspring, three of which won minor races. It is said that he ended his days eating grass in a Florida paddock.

Not to be outdone, the Coolmore syndicate went higher still two years later, paying $13.1 million ($29.8 million adjusted in real terms) for the son of Nijinsky (who himself was the son of Northern Dancer), making him the most expensive yearling ever sold at public auction. This story had a slightly happier ending as Seattle Dancer, as he was named, without ever being considered a world beater, won some good races for Vincent O’Brien and competed against some of the best. He retired to become a Coolmore stallion standing in the USA, Ireland, Japan and finally Germany until his death in 2007 at twenty-three years of age.

So evolved this powerful triumvirate: Sangster provided the cash, Coolmore the raw material and O’Brien the training expertise. It is a model that many have copied since, admittedly rarely with this scale of success. Three decades on, the essential template persists, though with some subtle changes. John Magnier is now the sole owner of Coolmore. As the son-in-law of Vincent O’Brien, and previously a successful fourth-generation National Hunt breeder at the nearby Castlehyde Stud, Magnier has over time bought the interests of Vigors, O’Brien and Sangster. However, the connection with Ballydoyle remains, where Aidan O’Brien took over in 1996 following the retirement of Vincent in 1994 (the two are not related), training the Coolmore homebreds and purchases.

During the writing of this book, you may not be surprised to learn that I visited all manner of horse farms, studs, stables and training yards across countries and continents. And the one thing I will always take away from them all is an immense feeling of calm. Away from the hustle and bustle of the racecourse, horses lead the most perfectly ordered lives. Everything, wherever possible, is refined down to routine and peacefulness. When you pass through the gates of any horse establishment, the world as most people know it is left behind. Time exists at the pace that suits the horses. The animals come first. People come second. Once the daily chores are over, the horses settled and the stable hands departed for breakfast or a well-deserved afternoon nap, human activity is supplanted by stillness. Horse heads hang over the stable doors quietly, watching very little. If you happen to pass through the yard, you might hear the grating grind from somewhere deep inside a dim-lit stall as a mouthful of hay is chewed as much for its properties as a calming balm as for its food value. Or the slurping sucking of water through tightened lips. Occasionally, a steel-shod hoof scrapes against a concrete floor or bangs against the wooden door, drawing disapproving glances from the neighbours. But that is about it. The biggest excitement might be a flock of doves whistling by or the stable cat on patrol.

Somehow, I think that is what draws people into the horse business and captures their hearts forever. There is a wonderful other-worldliness about caring for these highly-bred thoroughbreds who are, once you strip away the speed and contest of the racing, calm, benign and content.

I say all this because you might expect Coolmore, with its giant scale and financial heft, to be anything other than this. At the height of the breeding season, in addition to the fifteen resident stallions, there will be in the region of 900 resident mares. Just under half will be there with a foal, while the others will be in foal, at some stage from conception to pre-birth, or there being readied for one of the stallions. They are attended by a huge team: nine vets, three farriers – you can imagine how this list goes on. It even includes an acupuncturist. In all, 380 staff work at Coolmore, and that takes no account of the US operation in Kentucky and the Australian stud in the Hunter Valley.

But big really does, in this case at least, mean beautiful. As far as the eye can see, life is dedicated to the horses; railed paddocks and green pastures. In the far distance, the ridged peaks of the Galtees, Ireland’s highest inland mountain range, provide shelter from the worst of the weather, ensuring a temperate climate. For Coolmore, along with the myriad of horse studs and farms, from the one-man bands to the truly huge, are all clustered around the Rock of Cashel in Tipperary because of nature not man. We might have named this the Golden Vale, but it was the Ice Age that gave us the right to call it that, leaving behind as it did a land of limestone from which grows the most perfect turf.

You don’t need to see it to know it – just walk on it. It might not feel like the soft lawns of Banstead Manor. In fact, it slightly scrunches underfoot as the aroma of wild thyme, basil and marjoram is released by your footfalls. It is said that a square metre of this calcareous grassland contains forty species of native flowering plants, which along with the butterflies, insects, curlews and skylarks, thrive with the chalky soil. And for growing foals and broody mares, what could be better than picking at calcium-rich grass?

Coolmore is not ordered in the sense that the paddocks are in regimented lines. Nor are the connecting roads Roman straight. Each stable yard is not a cookie-cutter creation of the next. I assume this is because Coolmore has evolved over four decades. And for that, it has a certain charm. Humpbacked stone bridges cross little limestone streams. Wiggly lines of mature horse chestnut trees and hawthorn bushes decorate the landscape. Ponds have gathered in low-lying ground. The buildings range from spartan utility to perfectly formed yards in quiet, out-of-the-way corners. As you travel around, I’d be tempted to say everywhere you look there are horses. But that is not altogether true.

For of all the things I didn’t expect to see at Coolmore were cattle; there are more white, large-muscled Charolais, black Aberdeen Angus and the white and brown Simmental beef animals than you might imagine, all mixed in with the mares and foals, sharing the same paddocks and grass. That said, there does seem to be a certain demarcation within each enclosure, with a small herd of cattle, maybe six or eight in all, and a similar numbered harras of horses. Without any suggestion of animosity, they appear to be keeping to very separate groups. So you might wonder, as did I, if they don’t offer any companionship why they are there at all? For surely it can’t be economic; the cattle, even if they run to a few hundred in number across the stud, can’t be worth in aggregate more than a single mare or foal. The answer lies in land management. Horses are horribly fussy eaters of pasture. Look at a field grazed by cattle or sheep and it will be lawn-like; evenly cropped. But a horse paddock will be an unsightly patchwork of the tightly eaten, the almost bare, rank looking tall grass and thrusting weeds. Cattle on the other hand eat it all, keeping the grass both healthy and fertile.

After shock of the incongruity, the cattle soon become part of the scenery; it is really the groups of foals and mares that draw the eye. If you thought the idyll Anna Sewell describes in the opening chapter of Black Beauty was fantasy, think again: ‘While I was young I lived upon my mother’s milk, as I could not eat grass. In the daytime I ran by her side, and at night I lay down close by her.’ This picture-book tale of contented mothers, in the bloom of maternity, letting long-legged foals suckle, idly wafting tails to disperse the first few flies of spring, actually exists. The groups of six or eight are loosely circled both for companionship and out of some long-inherited knowledge that they are safer when in together. Occasionally, a brave foal wanders to the periphery, but a single look or a low snort will draw it back into the fold. The foals are mostly still young – a few days to a few months – and their coats raggedy, with clumps of hair, in contrast to the smooth sheen of the mothers. In time that will change. For now the world offers the sort of great adventures only a young foal would appreciate within the confines of a paddock: fluttering butterflies, buzzing bees and overly bold crows who strut from one fresh horse hoof divot to the next in search of newly exposed worms.

As with Banstead Manor, my trip to Coolmore is part research, part reveal; that moment when I’m presented with the thing I have come to see. Leaving the paddocks, mares and foals, you cross into what might best be described as the inner sanctum. The holy of holies. The place where this story really begins: at the stable of a horse called Galileo, Frankel’s father.

As you approach, the security is discreet but impressive. Twenty-four-hour-a-day guards monitor every arrival and departure. Cameras look upon you. Gates glide open. There is something a little James Bond about it all as the driveway welcomes you, lined with statues of the Coolmore greats. It might seem a little over the top, but behind these gates lie assets. Though they may be in horseflesh form, that is indeed what they are: as valuable as currency, diamonds or works of art, demanding the same level of protection. You think I’m exaggerating? You’ll see.

If, as a horse, you ever had the chance to determine your own paternity, you’d likely choose Galileo. He is the supreme stallion of his generation. In recent history, he might only have been bettered by his father Sadler’s Wells. In the future, he might be bettered by his son Frankel. But I suspect you, along with most others, would be happy to pick him as your father for now. As part of the Northern Dancer dynasty (you recall he was Sadler’s Wells’s father) Galileo was born to be great, but as you might also recall from the auction duds, this does not always turn out to be so. But in his particular case, genetics came up trumps. In a short but explosive career, he was the horse that carried nearly all before him. He raced just once as a two-year-old, slaughtering a field of his contemporaries right at the butt end of the season by fourteen lengths. This began a run of six consecutive wins that continued into the following year when he won the Derby, Irish Derby and King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes. In Europe, as a three-year-old, it is difficult to win a trio of races any better than that, but when he tried to make it seven in a row he tasted his first defeat in the Irish Champion Stakes at Leopardstown before heading to the United States for the Breeders’ Cup Classic, the most valuable race of his life. But whether it was the travelling or racing on the dirt surface for the first time, Galileo’s racing career closed on its 364th day when he came sixth and was retired to stud. That has turned out to be a very wise decision.

My first meeting with Galileo is altogether more friendly than with his famous son. Maybe that’s just a reflection of age; the young buck versus the sage old man. For at just past twenty years of age, Galileo is getting on a bit these days. Perhaps he has mellowed. His groom Noel Stapleton tells me he is incredibly laid back and easy to handle. No quirks. No oddities. Just a particular love of having his teeth and gums rubbed. He arrives in the yard wearing an anonymous green, waterproof horse blanket, with piped red edging. It is early April. The days are still chilly and damp. The trees still bare. Galileo likes to keep dry and warm. It is hardly a big ask for one so valuable.

As Noel goes to strip off the blanket, I feel tempted to say don’t bother. Let the old man be. But Galileo seems up for the inspection. Clearly he doesn’t know how little I know as he pricks his ears, looks me in the eye and nods his head in my direction as if by way of greeting. I keep silent as this amazing stallion is exposed, because I know I really want to see Galileo in the raw. Measure him in my mind against his son. Or maybe I should be measuring the son against the father?

My immediate thought is that Galileo is a bigger horse than Frankel, even though they both stand a shade over 16 hands high. That is, translated into more normal measurement, 65 inches (a hand is 4 inches, an ancient measure based on the breadth of a male hand) taken from the ground beside front leg to the top of the withers, the ridge between the shoulder blades. But the size thing is a marginal difference, for in many respects they are so much the same, though the son is more muscled than the father, but again like demeanour that might just be as much about age as physique. True, Frankel has four white socks (well, that’s what it says on his passport, but really it is three and a half because one is a rather indistinct sock) and his father just the one. Otherwise they are both bays, coats a reddish-brown colour with black mane, tail, insides of the ears and lower legs from just above the knees. Both have those distinctive white stars on their foreheads, though it is Galileo that has the most pronounced, with a more obvious blaze.

As with Frankel, I have the insistent urge to do more than just rub my hand along the horse that had sired not only the greatest racehorse ever but a plethora of other champions. Being petted and handled is almost in the DNA of thoroughbreds; from the very first day of birth it is something they become accustomed to. In fact, they almost expect it. Good horse handlers make a point of it. It becomes a conditioned response for both horse and human. So I take Noel’s tip and rub Galileo’s gums. It is true, he really does like it. And like many a horse he revels in the attention, though what he thinks of the meaningless babble of words I mutter, I do not know. But he takes it all in good part. It has happened thousands of times before, and will, God willing, happen thousands of times again. But, and we have to be realistic, he is coming towards the end of a truly epic life at stud.

Winning two Derbies is an impressive achievement by any measure, but if we are being truthful Galileo would only just make it into the list of the top one hundred racehorses of all time. His short burst of a racing career, allied with that famous bloodline, would suggest at the outset solid and successful years at stud. But horse genes are a peculiar thing.

We will be back to see Galileo again, but for now let us savour where he stands just past his twentieth birthday. As we all know, Frankel is his most famous son, but even if you took him out of the equation, Galileo would still reign as the supreme stallion. Since he first came to Coolmore in 2001, he has sired 2,743 foals, 2,089 of which reached the racecourse winning 3,868 races all over the world, amassing total prize money of £177,088,490.* And as I stood beside him on that greyish April day, he didn’t seem to have any inclination to stop. In the previous season, he had been the leading sire in Great Britain and Ireland, eclipsing his nearest rival (the title is determined by racecourse earnings, in this case £13,663,938) by a factor of three. His roster of great sons and daughters, many of them now successful at stud themselves, would take up more pages than this book has to spare; his stud record (i.e. every significant race his children have won or been placed in) on the Coolmore website runs to fifty-seven pages. Suffice to say, there is barely a major race anywhere on the globe that the Galileo progeny haven’t won, in many cases more than once, including three Derby winners, winners of all five of the English Classics and in one year the first three home in continental Europe’s premier race, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.

All this, as you might imagine, comes at a price. If you visited that same Coolmore website to see exactly how much you will have to pay, you are going to be disappointed: the stud fee for the current year is marked as private. But the rumour is €600,000. That is to say, over half a million pounds to have your already valuable mare mated with Galileo. And you will not be the only one. Galileo will ‘cover’, as they like to call it in the business, around 150 mares in the breeding season. Forget your Cristiano Ronaldos, LeBron James, Lionel Messis, Roger Federers and Lewis Hamiltons of this world, for Galileo leaves them puffing in his wake. With an annual income of close to £80 million (some of his progeny have been foal shares), he has been one of the highest earning and most valuable sporting athletes on the planet in recent times. And if you think your cheque book will be enough to guarantee visiting rights, think again. Each year over three hundred applications are made for the available places.

But when I see Galileo, do these figures tumble through my mind? Not a bit of it. All I see is a horse completely at ease with himself and with people who love him for what he is. A truly magical creature, the equine incarnation of genetic alchemy, who continues to sow the seeds to an ever-growing dynasty. And who knows, maybe another Frankel?

* Foals’ figure to 2017. Other figures to 2016.

2

A certain kindness

Another Frankel? What are the chances? Realistically speaking, infinitesimally slim, but maybe even more slim than we might ever imagine, even though the thoroughbred you see striding out on the racecourse is very much the product of man.

As a nation we started riding horses in the seventh century; up to then horses were beasts of burden carrying loads, pulling carts or, in the time of Boudicca, war horses powering chariots. By the early 600s, it was considered a matter of status to appear on horseback, with the riders largely confined to those of the first rank of a society still adjusting itself after the departure of the Romans. Wind forward three centuries and the first mention of racehorses appears, called at the time ‘running horses’, and were so well regarded that Athelstan, the tenth-century king of England, passed a law prohibiting their export. However, the owners were not blind to the benefits of new bloodlines and started importing stallions from the continent, a process that was inevitably accelerated a century later in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings and the arrival of William the Conqueror from France.

So the sport of racing evolved, largely under the patronage of royalty, noblemen and the well-to-do. But it wasn’t always smooth. Oliver Cromwell banned racing in England, dissolving the Royal Stud at Tutbury, disposing of both Charles I and his 140 horses, though the latter were sold, meeting a better fate than their master. Happily the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 marked the restoration of horse racing, for in the new king Charles II the English had an enthusiast for the sport. He hosted races at his park at Windsor before establishing Newmarket as the place to be devoted to horse racing, running his own horses and putting up prize money with silver trophies. With this royal imprimatur, racing as we know it today was on its way and the emergence of the thoroughbred as a specific breed of horse was just around the corner.

The word thoroughbred is not unique to horses; it is often used to refer to somebody or something of outstanding quality. However, in the context of horses, with the T capitalised, it denotes a very particular hybrid of the breed. The Thoroughbred has a specific genetic make-up, with all the unique characteristics of agility and speed that flow from that. It has been bred for a singular purpose – racing – which sets it apart from other horses, in the same way that say the Shetland pony or the Shire horse have become deft at the tasks for which they have been bred over the centuries. However, while the Shetland is a product of island isolation, the Thoroughbred came about due to a very different set of circumstances, both at the same time deliberate and accidental.

The deliberate was the arrival of three stallions from the Middle East over a period of forty years from the 1690s, imported to breed with the native mares to produce ‘bigger, tougher, stouter and faster racehorses’ as Binns and Morris, authors of the definitive book Thoroughbred Breeding, succinctly put it. The accidental is how Byerley Turk, the first of those three, arrived in England to take up his stud duties. You might imagine that a party was dispatched to the Arabian Desert to track down nomadic Bedouin tribes. In a windswept tent, among ever-shifting dunes the adventurers would, over sweetened tea, parlay gold or some such into horseflesh before making the long and arduous journey home with this newly prized stallion. It would be quite the adventure; reminiscent of Indiana Jones. But the truth even out-Hollywoods Hollywood.

The Turk, as he tends to be known for reasons that will become apparent, was foaled in the Balkans in 1679 and, as the story goes, was adopted by a near-penniless groom who saw in him great potential and the chance to escape to make a new life for the both of them. So, having trained this young horse in the art of warfare, the pair made their way to Constantinople (now Istanbul), the capital of the Ottoman Empire, where they joined the Turkish cavalry. By way of the Siege of Vienna, the Turk, along with his groom, ended up in June 1686 as a military charger protecting the Hungarian capital of Buda (now Budapest), a Turkish conquest since the sixteenth century, in yet another siege. The odds against their side, the Turks, winning were slim: they numbered 7,000 soldiers with the massed ranks of the European army, including the British, somewhere close to 100,000. By the end of the summer, Buda had fallen and the Turk along with his groom were captured by a group of English aristocrats who brought them back to England.