WHAT a sorry state the National Stud in Newmarket was in for most of the first decade of the new millennium. There was boardroom strife, including a mass walk-out of directors in 2003, the stallion roster had become bloated with commercially unattractive names and the balance sheet showed bruising losses.

Happily, the stud became a more peaceful and prosperous place during the 2010s thanks to its acquisition by the Jockey Club in 2008 and the appointment of renowned horseman Brian O’Rourke as managing director in 2009.

Co Limerick native O’Rourke is rightly credited with turning around the fortunes of the National Stud, and it was considered a huge blow when he left to manage Copgrove Hall Stud in North Yorkshire four years ago.

But since then, his successor Tim Lane has done an equally commendable job in driving the National Stud forward. The operation now has five viable, high-class horses in its stallion boxes in Aclaim, Advertise, Flag Of Honour, Rajasinghe and Time Test, and there was a steep increase in turnover to £3.3 million in 2018.

Not that Lane would overstate his own role in that upswing.

“It was Brian who pulled the place out of the mud and got it climbing the mountain,” he says. “I’m just trying to push it further up.”

Such self-effacement and generosity of spirit are typical of the 44-year-old Lane, who is a popular figure in the industry – all the more so because many regard him as one of their own, someone who did it the hard way and knows all too well the struggles involved in rearing stock. He is far from the aloof, aristocratic Newmarket stud manager or senior Jockey Club figure of times gone by.

Farming family

Lane was born into a farming family in Lincolnshire, where his father helped train horses for permit holder Frank Gilman, many of them inexpensively purchased or bred from unpretentious pedigrees, including the 1982 Grand National winner Grittar.

“I had my first ride on Grittar, hanging on to his anti-cast roller while he trotted around the stables,” he remembers fondly.

With that upbringing, it was only natural that Lane caught the racing bug. But whereas many horse-mad youngsters might have pursued an equine science degree or a vocational course as a route into working in the industry, he was determined to get his hands dirty straight away.

And so at the age of 16 he left home with a suitcase of clothes, box of food and £25 in his pocket.

“Deep down I thought I’d get through the food and have to return home, but I surprised myself,” he says.

Lane’s first port of call was the colourful livestock dealer and hunting enthusiast Henry Hill, who was based near Huntingdon in East Anglia.

“Henry was some man for trading,” Lane recalls. “He’d have sold anything bar his own wife. He sold a giraffe once. He would work you hard. You’d start at 7am and finish at 9pm but it didn’t feel like work, it was just a way of life.

“His yard was behind a beautiful country pub and there were times when he’d suddenly tell me to tack up a horse and take it to the pub’s car park. I’d ask why but was told to just get on with it, and when I rode around he’d have me jumping the railings of the car park to try and sell the horse to one of the pub’s patrons.”

There was never a dull moment with Hill, who passed away last year.

“His land adjoined Jim Hunter’s, a proper countryman and chairman of the Fitzwilliam Hunt, with a gate between the two properties and the caravan I lived in, overlooking Jim’s garden,” Lane relates.

Aggressive chimp

“Jim wintered the animals for Chipperfield’s Circus so he had all manner of beasts in his garden, including an aggressive chimp called Chico in a pen that he would muck out every day. It was a terrifying thing, you’d try and feed it a carrot and he’d nearly rip your arm off.”

As it turned out, Hunter was not only a keen amateur zoologist but he also had a wicked sense of humour.

“One day two ladies from Peterborough turned up to Henry’s yard wanting to buy a horse,” Lane says. “Now, if I wasn’t out of my caravan quickly enough to attend to potential customers, I’d hear about it from Henry as the rule was whoever came into that yard, you had to sell them something. But on this one occasion I was busy elsewhere.

“So Jim seized the opportunity and beckoned the ladies through the side gate, directing them into a stable of his own and telling them that he’d be along soon with a harness. The first I knew about it was the sound of screaming as the women ran out of the yard chased by the camel from Chipperfield’s Circus spitting angrily at them.”

Safe to say that’s not the sort of character-building experience that students on the Godolphin Flying Start course will benefit from.

“I was always someone who had dreamed of getting a degree, but I sometimes think my time with Henry Hill was a better education than anything,” says Lane.

He later became a stable lad in James Fanshawe’s yard in Newmarket in the mid to late 1990s. Needless to say, he was overjoyed when his old boss hit the big time again recently with Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf heroine Audarya.

“James deserved that,” says Lane. “He’s trained champion sprinters, milers, middle-distance horses and Champion Hurdle winners – only a great trainer could do that.”

The next stop on Lane’s CV is perhaps the most important one, as he credits the time he spent as assistant to widely admired pre-trainer and consignor Malcolm Bastard as having moulded him into more knowledgeable and more respectable management material.

“I’m indebted to Malcolm,” says Lane. “He saw something in me other people didn’t. I’m sure I’d still be mucking out without him. When things go wrong I ring him for advice, and when things go right he rings me to congratulate me, and it still means a lot.”

Lane came to further prominence in his first managerial role at John Deer’s Oakgrove Stud in Chepstow from 2004 until 2017.

During that time he oversaw the breeding and raising of Deer’s homebred four-time Group 1 winner Al Kazeem, and helped reignite the subfertile stallion’s covering career back at home after his failed first attempt at the Royal Studs. He was also responsible for a Tattersalls October Book 1 top lot, when the Oasis Dream colt out of Maganda sold to Coolmore for 700,000gns in 2009.

“At Oakgrove Stud I was able to apply some of the lessons I had learned from James and Malcolm,” says Lane. “James is amazingly patient with his horses – he knows that if he has a potential Group 1 winner on his hands, it’s worth waiting for, and that helped with Al Kazeem. Malcolm taught me to be similarly patient with people and that’s crucial as a manager.”

O’Rourke called

It was while tending to a filly on an otherwise unexceptional day at Oakgrove Stud that Lane received a phone call that he could hardly have dreamed of when he first embarked on his career working with horses.

“Brian O’Rourke rang up encouraging me to apply for the National Stud post he was vacating, having recommended me to the then chairman Ben Sangster,” Lane says. “I couldn’t believe it, I think my wife Gemma thought it was a prank when I told her.”

It was no joke, but rather another shrewd move by the estimable O’Rourke, and Lane commenced his current role at the National Stud at the start of 2017.

Lane admits to still suffering from impostor syndrome now and again. “I’ll always look at myself as a stable lad,” he says – but he shouldn’t, as he has won significant new business for the stud and refreshed its educational offerings.

Wesley Ward

The National Stud now boards mares for clients from as far afield as the US and Japan, as well as those from Australia who fly in for southern hemisphere covers by Newmarket’s leading stallions. It also hosts Wesley Ward’s runners during the American visitors’ stay in Britain for their assault on Royal Ascot.

Furthermore, it has become a popular base for independently owned stallions, with Martyn Meade entrusting his Group 1 winners Aclaim and Advertise to the stud, Rebel Racing standing its Coventry Stakes scorer Rajasinghe there, and Trevor Hemmings sending Irish St Leger winner Flag Of Honour.

Lane and the late National Stud chairman, the Duke of Roxburghe, meanwhile oversaw the purchase of the operation’s own stallion Time Test, a beautifully bred son of Dubawi who was a multiple Group 2 winner and Group 1-placed for his original owner and breeder Khalid Abdullah.

Although all of the National Stud stallions are unproven, a strong set of results for Aclaim and Time Test with their debut crop at this autumn’s yearling sales suggests they are on the right track, while Advertise covered a glittering first book of 138 mares this year.

“I really feel that Time Test has helped bring the feel-good factor back to the stud,” says Lane. “The business that he’s brought in is crazy. I sold eight noms just with people coming up to me at the yearling sale at Tattersalls on Monday.

“I wouldn’t swap any of the stallions we have on the roster at the moment. I’m just so pleased that we’ve elevated ourselves in the marketplace to become the independent choice for standing stallions in Britain.”

Strong team

Nor would Lane swap the team he works with at the National Stud. One of his closest colleagues is the farm’s nominations and marketing manager Joe Callan, son of Kildangan Stud stalwart Anthony and Siobhan, a sister of the Co Kildare-based training brotherhood of Peter, Paul, Seamus and Jarlath Fahey.

“Brian O’Rourke gave me the best advice I ever received: that I needed to get a good strong team around me,” says Lane. “He was so right, as you’re only as good as the people you work with and luckily I’ve got a great team here.

“That’s the thing with Joe. He’s passionate, he cares and he’s switched on. It makes the job so much easier and the days go more quickly when you work with someone like him.”

Lane is also ably assisted by Listowel native Fiona Dowling, a former John Durkan Award winner on the Irish National Stud course who worked as travelling head girl to Gordon Elliott and barn manager for Jamie Osborne before joining the National Stud as education manager.

“Fiona has turned our courses inside out, she’s been amazing,” says Lane. “She’s a great horsewoman and has experience lecturing at Hartpury, so she’s able to teach the students all they need to know on a theory and practical level. She’s taken a huge weight off my mind.”

University of life

As a graduate of the university of life himself, Lane is especially proud of the fact that the National Stud courses are open to students of all social and academic backgrounds, including several each year from Ireland.

“We’ll give everyone a chance regardless of their education or experience and we take great satisfaction in giving people a start, even if they’re setting out from the bottom in terms of practical knowledge,” he says. “My philosophy is that as long as you’re prepared to put in the hard work, we’ll help you.”

Indeed, the National Stud’s E2SE (entry to stud employment) course was launched in 2017 with the specific aim of taking people of any age and from all walks of life and giving them the basic skills and enough work experience to be able to start working on a farm.

“I like to think the course has achieved what it set out to do,” says Lane. “We’ve had some good people who just needed a chance, and helping them is very rewarding.”

It is that empathy for his fellow workers at the coalface at the industry, from the stable lad just starting out to the cash-strapped small breeder, that sets Lane apart from many of his peers who manage studs in Britain.

“I usually understand all the problems colleagues and clients come to me with, as I’ve suffered most of them myself,” Lane sums up with a wistful smile.