KAUTO STAR was top-class, there’s no doubt about that, but what set him apart was his longevity and versatility, winning 16 Grade 1s from the age of five to 11, over two miles to the marathon trip of the Cheltenham Gold Cup (twice).

Three of those Grade 1s came in 2007, the same year in which Kingsgate Native won the Nunthorpe Stakes as a two-year-old. What the legendary chaser and brilliant sprinter had in common, was that they were both bought by Anthony Bromley.

“Kingsgate Native was such a wonderful horse,” the Highflyer Bloodstock agent recalls. “I bought him at the Doncaster Premier sale, for 20 grand off Tally Ho. I thought it was going to herald me in as a flat agent, but everyone just assumed he was a complete fluke, and I got absolutely no increase in flat business whatsoever from the success of that horse.

“I thought it would open some doors, but I suppose it was around the time of Kauto Star, who really did open many doors for me, but funnily enough Kingsgate Native opened none.”

It didn’t deter Bromley from trying to make a name for himself on the flat, while also forging an impressive reputation for sourcing National Hunt horses.

In 2023, his purchases won 10 Group/Grade 1 races between them, with El Fabiolo headlining his jumps buys, while top stayer Trueshan, Group 1-winning sprinter Bradsell and leading British juvenile filly Relief Rally were his flat flagbearers.

Fast forward to this week, and he’s preparing for the upcoming breeze-up sales (where he bought Trueshan, among others), while also looking forward to Aintree.

As racing manager for owners Simon Munir and Isaac Souede, he’ll be cheering on their homebred Intense Raffles, the current favourite for the Grand National.

Bromley has bought Grand National winners before – Neptune Collonges and Noble Yeats being the most recent – but this year’s fancy is a homebred, out of a Fred Winter Hurdle winner bought by Bromley for Munir.

Skipping Aintree is Albert Bartlett victor Jasmin De Vaux, who is likely to reappear at Punchestown. On the dual Cheltenham Festival winner, Bromley says: “He’s been a bit of an enigma, but he’s clearly a horse that likes Cheltenham, which is a great asset to have.

“If you just looked at his Cheltenham Festival form, then it’s not a surprise for him to go and do that in the Albert Bartlett. Going over the longer trip, his jumping was not put under so much pressure, and he was more measured.”

Teamwork makes the dream work

“It was a very welcome, but equally, a surprise, win. It wasn’t a surprise to Daryl Jacob, who seemed to have been tipping him up to all and sundry all week.

“He’s always the bottle’s half full sort of guy and I’m the one who always says it’s half empty, so we’re the ying and the yang of the team, really.”

Jasmin De Vaux is one of a number of ‘Double Green’ horses in training with Willie Mullins, with others in the care of Joseph O’Brien, Tom Gibney, Henry de Bromhead, Ross O’Sullivan and John McConnell. Then there’s the French and UK operations, so how does Bromley keep track of it all?

“We’re sort of fighting on a number of fronts, but it’s all about the team around us all,” he explains. “We’ve got Benoit Gicquel helping us to run the French operation and we’ve also got Bryony Frost keeping an eye on the job over there, plus Richard Powell keeps the mares and young stock.

“In England and Ireland, I’m a lot more hands-on in discussions with trainers and things like that, and now Daryl is also taking a bit of a role. He’s doing quite a bit of media work, which is great, but he can do a bit of part-time stuff with us as well, and going to sit on some of the horses.”

Jasmin De Vaux was purchased privately after winning a four-year-old maiden on debut for Larne-based Stuart Crawford, with whom a large percentage of Munir and Souede’s horses begin their careers.

On how the connection with the Crawford family came about, Bromley says: “Simon decided that the form horses were getting really expensive, and it might be another angle to buy some stores and try out our own, and I suggested the Crawfords is a good place to do that. It’s worked really well, we’re very happy with the setup. The four brothers are very hard working and their integrity is second to none.

“We do move horses on to the other trainers, if they show a bit of extra special qualities. Green Splendour would be one such horse that we moved - to Willie Mullins - and we’ll run him in the Grade 2 bumper next week. So, it’s a training ground, it’s a way to filter some of these young horses through and we can move a few around to other trainers if they look pretty special.”

Green Splendour was bought for £30,000 at Goffs UK, while recent Dromahane winner Green Hint cost €50,000 at the Goffs Arkle Sale, as did Le Frimeur, a seven-length debut winner for Pat Doyle. It’s safe to say all three would have cost far more after their wins between the flags.

“There’s a nice feel-good factor about that for an owner,” Bromley comments. “Also, it’s a little bit of that French angle of jumping as a young horse; it seems to stand them in good stead. You can start in bumpers if they’ve got speed when they go to a new trainer, but they’ve got that jumping already in the memory banks.

“There’s a lot of pluses for having done stuff like that at a young age. I think there were 10 Cheltenham Festival winners that had started in point-to-points. So, it obviously does work.”

Many paths to success

That’s not to say that Bromley, or his clients, are focussed solely on point-to-points. Intense Raffles was among those to have begun their careers in France, and Bromley sees merit in both.

“I think everyone wants to fight their own corner and wants to fly the flag for each country, and very partisan about their own sphere of influence,” he says. “The thing I find now is it’s so interwoven between the three countries which specialize in breeding and racing jumpers, which is England, Ireland and France.

“For example, Il Est Francais is a French-bred horse, running in the colours of a big English owner, trained by an Englishman, ridden by an Englishman, but trained in Chantilly. Everything is so intermixed that he’s neither a French horse, a British horse or an Irish horse.

“Energumene is another example – he was a French-bred horse who was bought as a foal or a yearling by Peter Vaughan, resold at the Irish store sales, bought by an Englishman, and trained to win an English point-to-point at Larkhill.

“He was then bought by Harold Kirk to go to Willie Mullins, but for an Englishman, Tony Bloom. That horse is a perfect example of what’s happening now, and we don’t need to say it’s English, Irish or French.

“I know that in many ways of our life, we’re under closed borders. But, actually, in the horse racing industry, there are no borders. I think we’re too quick to pigeonhole things. We don’t have to make it all about which flag a horse is under, because they now come under so many.

“All the journalists want to make it a competition of us and them, but it’s not us and them, we’re all just trying to get a winner past the post in front, aren’t we? And there’s different roads to that, and that can be either through Irish point-to- points, French hurdles, off the flat in Newmarket, or off the flat in Germany. Who knows?

“There isn’t a specific blueprint, and if there was, we’d all be doing it.”

Thinking outside the box

Bromley’s open-minded approach has helped carve a reputation for bargain buys. Trueshan is a good example at 31,000gns, and Alan King’s star stayer goes against the stereotype of breeze-up horses. Unfortunately for Bromley, it’s becoming more difficult to nab a bargain, he says.

“Some of the staying sires have been a bit better value, but I see that changing now as well. People have cottoned on to the resale angle of three-year-olds, to the foreign markets around the world - Australia, the Middle East, and, to an extent, Hong Kong. The middle-distance type of horse has become more popular and, actually, it’s not quite the easier market to buy in, as it once was, because there’s also less bred in that bracket.”

The National Hunt sales have their own set of challenges, he adds. “The point-to-point men underpin the store markets very strongly, so there’s not a lot of cheap nuggets going through - they’re well picked over at the sales.

“But again, you’ve only got to look at the Cheltenham Festival to show that hardly any stallion got two winners at Cheltenham. They were almost all individuals. Whilst when you go to a jumps foal sale, people only want to know about six stallions.

“There are lots of options of other stallions around that can do the job, but there aren’t enough people willing to pinhook jumping foals.

“You’re obviously sat on your money for longer to wait from foal to three-year-old, so I can see why there’s a lot more younger people wanting to pinhook on the flat because it’s a quicker turnaround. But I do genuinely think there is an angle to buying some jumping foals, not by the so-called six or seven hot sires.”

Bromley predicts a strong market at this year’s store sales, with high prices for form horses set to fund point-to-point handlers’ spending, and his breeze-up sale predictions should also encourage consignors. “Talking to people in the industry, I’ve got a feeling there’s going to be quite a good trade this year.

“There seems to be a lot of trainers who weren’t able to buy any extra yearlings on spec last October, with the trade going through the roof at Newmarket. It just meant people bought for order, they didn’t take any extras home with them.

“However, I think that the breeze-up men probably struggled to get horses bought if they kept their orders waiting for October Books 1 to 3, so they might have found it very difficult to get their shopping done. But if they bought in America, Somerville, Fairyhouse and Goffs, they might have got enough nice ones.

Timing isn’t everything

“The breeze ups have been a successful hunting ground for me over the years,” he continues. “I’m not handcuffed to times, but you have to be aware of them. If you’re not buying one to be a five-furlong horse, it’s not all about the fastest furlong that the horse can do.

“Again, it’s price correlated. Yes, it would be lovely to buy the horse who runs the fastest furlong, but if that’s costing you £300,000 plus, then I haven’t got that budget.

“I don’t need to waste my time looking at it, I need to move on to something I can possibly afford.”

There is one box that Bromley insists on ticking, though. “Soundness is the biggest thing for me,” he says. “It’s probably something coming through from my background in the jumping. If a horse can take all the work, then that’s more than half the battle.

“You might have a V12 engine, but if you’ve got flat tyres or wonky wheels, they will struggle to take the training. A well-made horse with good limbs, may only have a V4 engine, but can actually win plenty of races, and may well be more affordable at the outset.”

On that note, I find an excuse to return to one of my favourite horses, Kingsgate Native, who after proving infertile at stud, returned to training and continued to race as an 11-year-old.

I ask Bromley if he remembers him as a yearling. He recalls: “When he won the Nunthorpe as a two-year-old, one of my clients looked back at his notes and he’d written down ‘cob’ in the catalogue. He obviously thought he was a bit of a round-looking pony, but I felt he looked like a ball of speed.

“He did have a good walk, which is what everyone tells me sprinters don’t have but I’m still adamant; quite a lot of good sprinters now are athletic horses, so I’m going to stick with that.

“I do take on board that some sprinters have a very short walk, but I find it hard to buy them. On the whole, I still think you need an athletic horse, with a fluid gait, and it’s not done me any harm over the years.”

Future stars

Looking ahead, 2025 has the makings of a successful flat season for Bromley, particularly with purchases made for owner Phil Cunningham. “I’m really excited about what we’re doing together,” the agent says.

“We’ve got a couple of horses entered in the Guineas, which I think is probably a bit optimistic at the moment, but Yah Mo Be There won a listed race at Newbury last year, and he’s hopefully going to try a Guineas trial like the Greenham in the next couple of weeks.

“We’ve still got high hopes for Righthere Rightnow, who blotted his copy book by pulling too hard in the Champagne Stakes. He still works like a good horse and Richard is still hopeful he is a Group horse.

“Candy was a nice improver last year, who was cheaply bought and won the Redcar Trophy.”

Purse strings

Trained by Richard Spencer like the two previous colts mentioned, Candy was bought at the Tattersalls Somerville Sale for 28,000gns and is now rated 99 after his hat-trick.

Cunningham’s success encouraged him to up his spend last year, parting with £1million at the Goffs UK Premier Yearling Sale. Despite his profession, Bromley isn’t entirely comfortable with spending such lofty sums.

“I’d say to my detriment, I can sometimes be a bit cautious,” he admits. “I know it doesn’t always appear to be like that, having bought Caldwell Potter for a record price, but often I’m too geared to try to get good value for my client, and I stop bidding on a horse.

“Even now, I do sometimes lack that ultimate conviction to keep pushing, because you do look at it as if it’s your own money as well, and you’ve got to be happy with the purchase next week, rather than just that night at the sale. So, I suppose, in a way, it’s a criticism, and yet it could be seen as a good thing as well."

Intense Raffles

Tom’s thrilled with the horse, everything in the preparations has gone right. It looks like, if the handicapper could reassess, he’d have more weight on his back. So, we’ve got that bit right.

The Irish National is a great feeder race to the Grand National at Aintree. All the boxes are ticked except I just can’t see much rain about. I think he is a soft-ground horse, and that’s a pretty big warning light for those making him such a clear favourite.

They do water the National course pretty heavily, so it should be on the good-to-soft side, we hope, but I think his chances would be improved if it was proper soft.

Impaire Et Passe

He’s entered in the Irish National, but the initial plan is to run in a novice chase at Aintree, whether it’s over two and a half, or the three miles

I was a little bit underwhelmed by his performance at Dublin. We ducked Cheltenham and hopefully that patience and freshness will now repay itself. The Irish National entry suggests to me that Willie might be thinking of trying a long trip with him, which might help if he can switch off and then just use his turn of foot, which is still very, very good.

He has one big burst and if he could do that late in a three-mile race, that could be devastating.

It will be quite interesting to see what the entries are going to look like for both races. The three-mile race at Cheltenham slightly fell apart, so it’s an open-looking division.

El Fabiolo

It hasn’t been the season we hoped for. I know he got beaten by a 50/1 shot at Navan, but he got a clear round on ground that was pretty heavy.

It was his first go at the trip and, probably, in that ground he didn’t quite see it out, but I think on better ground at Aintree, two and a half miles will suit him well.

They seem to be happy with him at home and he’ll be one of the favourites, even though he got beat last time.

Blue Lord and James Du Berlais

The plan is to run both in the Topham Chase. James Du Berlais did everything but win it last year; he got nabbed late on and got beaten a length.

It was agonizing to watch; it was a long way from the last and he was clear at the elbow.

He hasn’t got the strongest finish in him, and he doesn’t win that many races, but he’s got a lot of talent, and he really did take to the National fences last year.

So, it did seem to be an automatic target for this season. He’ll have a big weight but I’m sure he’ll give a good account of himself, like he did last year.

J.J. Slevin was very taken with Blue Lord’s jumping in the Ascot Chase. He is a dual Grade 1 winner, so he’s a class act in a field like this. He’s getting a bit older now, but we think he could really take to it and enjoy it.

I don’t know how the jockey choices will go, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if J.J. is on Blue Lord, and Paul is on James Du Berlais, like he was last year. I wouldn’t be able to split them.