1985

AFTER taking a financial hammering at its yearling sales, Goffs must have faced into last weekend’s foal and breeding stock sale with some apprehension.

However, not for the first time, pessimistic forecasters were proved totally wrong as the gross was marginally up on last year, the average improved by 8%, and a new European record for a mare was established.

After five days trading, 734 lots (44 fewer than last year) aggregated 13.1 million guineas compared with 12.9 million guineas in 1984, while the average rose from 16,585 to 17,861 guineas. As was generally expected, Turkish Treasure was the star. The Sir Ivor mare, in foal to Sadler’s Wells, attracted the big guns.

Over from America flew agent Clay Camp with the sole intention of buying the Thomastown Castle inmate and bringing her home. As he passed the million mark he must have thought it was worth the price of the ticket, but he was outstayed by David Minton, trading in the name of his old firm, the Curragh Bloodstock Agency, who went to the new record price of 1.2 million guineas for that well-known buyer, “an undisclosed client”.

“That was a very good sale indeed,” was managing director Jonathan Irwin’s reaction on Wednesday morning. “It was solid and those high-priced lots have to be good for future trade.” Questioned on the large, multi-million drop at the yearling sale, he said: “We simply didn’t have the high rollers. Like this week, the percentage sold was high and the trade very active.”

[Turkish Treasure moved from Vincent O’Brien’s Ballydoyle Stud to Sheikh Hamdan’s Derrinstown Stud. Having bred three stakes winners and a stakes-placed horse with her first four foals, all colts, she subsequently bred just another winner. She had her 17th and last foal at the age of 24. Her daughters bred nine stakes winners, the best of which was the Grade 1 Spinster Stakes winner Asi Siempre]

Blue Wind sells to Bert Firestone

1980

GOFFS sales ended in style on Tuesday night at Kill when a new Irish record for a filly in training was established. In an all-American battle, the Silken Glider winner Blue Wind was knocked down to Bert Firestone for 180,000gns.

Firestone was opposed by a Californian syndicate, and Tom Cooper bidding for trainer John Ward who had flown over by Concorde in the morning. Blue Wind was part of a draft involving the Solomon family interests and helped push up the aggregate for the three days to 2.5 million guineas, a rise of over 29% om the previous year.

In the year of the infamous recession Goffs has done well to increase its domestic bloodstock sales turnover from £10.9 million to £12.1 million. With nearly every sales company in Europe recording a drop in actual turnover, Goffs has done remarkably well to forge ahead.

The answer lies with its aggressive marketing policy that is paying dividends, and managing director Jonathan Irwin feels that vendors now realise that with the Kill concern it is “not just a question of cataloguing, but they know that we are out marketing worldwide. Hence the American presence in the sales ring on Tuesday night.”

[Blue Wind at three won the Group 1 Oaks and Group 1 Irish Oaks and was runner-up in the Group 1 Irish 1000 Guineas. At stud in the USA and Japan she had eight foals, three of which were winners]

A familiar name, O’Brien, is champion trainer

1960

IN spite of a long spell of dry weather which made the going hard, followed by exactly the reverse conditions, both of which affected the number of runners and helped to confuse the form, the past racing season in Ireland has been a very successful one from all aspects.

Irish-trained three-year-olds held their own in classic races across the channel, if not quite fulfilling expectations, and all the Irish classics were won by home-trained horses, although the only outside competition came in the Oaks. The two-year-old crop is above average.

A welcome innovation was the sponsoring of races or race meetings by well-known manufacturers, which added considerably to stake money, and aroused a great deal of interest.

A.S. O’Brien, who took over the training of his brother’s string following the much-discussed disqualification of the latter, comes out as the leading trainer, and if the winners trained by M.V. O’Brien are added, the stable would have had a very clear margin. The main winners for the stable were Chamour, Die Hard and Hunch.

A feature of the season was the riding of the three Australian jockeys, Garnet Bougoure, Ron Hutchinson and Bill Williamson, the latter two of whom were newcomers to Irish racing, and it is good news to know that they will all be back next year.

Bougoure, pipped by Liam Ward last season, comes out on top this time with three more winners than his Irish rival; over 27% of his mounts going into the winners’ enclosure. Hutchinson is third and Williamson fourth, both having a very high percentage of winners, and they are followed by five home riders, between whom there is very little.

The leaders in this group are Mick Kennedy, who had his best season ever, and Brendan Mooney, who made a rapid rise to prominence while still an apprentice.

“He is a capital raconteur”

1930

A SIDE issue on Saturday, the last day of racing on the flat in England, was the decision of the long drawn-out rivalry between Freddie Fox and Gordon Richards as to who would finish as champion jockey of the season. The eventual ending was victory for Fox, but only by just one winning mount.

What interested the public was the contest it actually was between maturity and youth. Each jockey had his following, but the balance of public sympathy lay, we think, with Fox, and he received a great ovation when he won. Richards would have been given it also had fortune smiled upon him.

The difference in ages between the two jockeys has led many to believe Fox is old actually rather than relatively. It is said that it annoys him, and this can be understood readily when it is remembered that he is only 43 years of age, and has his living to make.

‘Galtee More’ in The Irish Times the other day gave a vivid pen picture of the personality of Fox. “He is a capital raconteur,” he writes, “and is much in demand to take the chair at political meetings in the Wantage area, where he lives. I do not know many men who have a wider knowledge of the habits, peculiarities and eccentricities of that elusive quadruped, the horse, and he is a pocket encyclopaedia of horse sense and horse lore.

“When other jockeys go abroad in the winter to sunnier climes, Fox retires to his modest establishment at Wantage and hunts all season.

“If Richards has lost the lead, I am perfectly sure that there is no one he would rather have lost it to than Fox. Had it been Weston, or Wragg, or someone nearer to his own years, it would have been different. Richards is nothing if not dead keen, and he hates conceding a point. Anyhow, the honours of the season are perfectly even between them.”