HANDS up anyone who knows the thread that links today’s Qipco British Champions Long Distance Cup with tomorrow’s JT McNamara Ladbrokes Munster National, Tom Taaffe with John Gosden, and Paul Townend with Frankie Dettori.

While everyone knows Bjorn Nielsen as the owner-breeder of all-conquering stayer Stradivarius, who is expected to make it 11 wins on the bounce at Ascot next Saturday afternoon, it might surprise some to be reminded that Nielsen’s black jacket adorned Townend when the Cork pilot booted the Taaffe-trained Treacle to a neck triumph in the Limerick feature eight years ago.

Racing can be terribly unpredictable and Nielsen’s success reflects that. While what has fuelled his breeding and racing operation is the dream of owning an Epsom Derby winner, having lived close to the famous track when his family moved to England from their native South Africa when he was 12, he has become largely associated with stayers.

Assessor (Prix du Cadran, Prix Royal-Oak, and Yorkshire Cup), Masked Marvel (St Leger), Michelangelo and Biographer (both stakes winners that were placed in the St Leger and Champion Stayers’ respectively) represent considerable returns at an elite level for a man with 15 or so mares.

Group 1-winning sprinter Tante Rose and more recently, Wokingham victor Interception have been sharper types, while Treacle was one of four National Hunt horses he had in training with Taaffe, but the roll of honour is dominated by flat stamina.

Unbeaten

For all that came before, none have been like Stradivarius. Unbeaten since finishing third as a three-year-old to Order Of St George and Torcedor on Champions’ Day two years ago, Nielsen’s pride and joy has garnered two Gold Cups at Ascot and three Goodwood Cups among a slew of other significant prizes. He has also bagged the £1 million bonus put up by Weatherbys Hamilton to breathe life into the staying division in the last two seasons.

So enthusiastic has the five-year-old son of Sea The Stars been about his work this term that Gosden felt it necessary to fit the Doncaster Cup into his schedule between the Yorkshire Cup and Ascot.

The margin of victory over Cleonte might only have been a length and three-quarters but Stradivarius is very like his sire in that though the margins are rarely jaw-dropping, there is never any doubt about the authority of the triumphs.

Speaking from France, Nielsen was unsurprisingly upbeat about his charge.

“Frankie sent me a picture this morning of him on top. It must have been cold in England because he was wearing a mask!” he related, laughing.

“He’s very well. The plan after the bonus was always to go to Ascot for the Champions. Then of course John changed the plan, which we’ve never really done, and went to Doncaster because he came out of the race so well and rather than having him just at home for eight weeks in that form, he said he’d go there.

Stradivarius' owner Bjorn Neilsen and Frankie Dettori after Stradivarius' win at Goodwood \ Healy Racing

“The only worry would be if the ground was heavy. I don’t know if we’d go on heavy ground. Of course we wanna run. He won it last year when the ground was on the soft side, but if it was heavy, maybe we wouldn’t risk him.”

Though there was no peer example, Nielsen’s love of racing developed in his youth. It graduated from liking a bet to wanting to be involved in ownership.

As he became a successful financial trader in New York, he was able to afford to indulge his passion and when he decided that he couldn’t see enough of the type of horse he wanted on the market, turned his attention to breeding.

Golden era

“I remember those old stayers from the golden era: Le Moss, Ardross, Sagaro, which was when I was in my teens in the ‘70s. I never envisioned owning a horse that could be mentioned in that league and with 10 straight wins, I suppose his CV is built over the last couple of years.

“He’s a better horse this year than he was last year. He’s stronger and he’s been winning easily.

“He’ll definitely be back next year. The aim will be Yorkshire Cup or the Sagaro early on, as a prep for the Gold Cup, and we’ll take it from there. It depends on him being well and enthusiastic. There always comes a day when they start thinking about other things but it’s so far, so good with him.

Stradivarius and Frankie Dettori at York \ Healy Racing

“The other thing about it is it’s not like I’m getting phone calls offering all kinds of numbers to stand him. It’s not like there’s a risk like with a Derby winner or something like that, that they’ll get beaten as a four-year-old and all of a sudden people start thinking maybe he wasn’t so good, which is why these three-year-olds have short careers.

“There isn’t that pressure with him because the fashion hasn’t been to breed to horses that can stay.”

The conversation morphs into the tendency to make absolute judgements so early about horses and the prevailing fashion for speed stallions now. He is always going to go to bat for his boy but Nielsen reckons that Stradivarius is no one-dimensional plodding stayer and with the right support, could well prove a top stallion.

“Who knows if he can drop back? He has that turn of foot that very few stayers have. Sagaro used to have a good turn of foot but I remember the best stayers being more grinders that turned up the pace and ground their opponents to death. It’s rare to have the turn of pace he has.

“Two of the greatest, Montjeu and Galileo were basically mile-and-a-half horses and when they started off, they were going for five thousand. They were mile-and-a-half horses that turned out to be two of greatest stallions of all time.

“So it doesn’t have to be a miler, or a mile-and-a-quarter, or even a six-furlong horse, because everybody is looking at the speed element now – it doesn’t have to be that to be a great stallion. I think it depends on the book of mares if a horse has a good pedigree, but fashion is fashion.

“Because of the way the market is, Montjeu and Galileo had to prove themselves as against the likes of Frankel… because of what he was and winning at the distances he did, he had so much speed, so he’d have gotten the best book of mares you could possibly get. Montjeu and Galileo would have had to make it on their own, so to speak.”

He still finds it hard to believe the success he has enjoyed since delving seriously into breeding around 2003, having first started owning racehorses in the previous decade.

“I’ve actually had five horses that have been pretty much top-class stayers. That’s pretty phenomenal. It’s not by design I can tell you. At all. It’s not like I’m trying to breed the stayer. I don’t mind owning them because I love the staying division.

“The ironic thing is that people go to the sales and they’re always trying to buy speed. A lot of the reason for that is they know if they get a real good horse, they can sell it on as a stallion. But if you ask people what they prefer watching, the five- or six-furlong race, or the Gold Cup or Leger, I think the general public by far would prefer to see the staying races. Probably even people that own speed horses prefer longer distance races but that’s not what sells.

Enjoyment

“I really breed to race. That doesn’t mean I don’t sell, because I do. I prefer to sell a horse in training rather than at the yearling sales, because I get the enjoyment of seeing what ability he’s got. But I do sell yearlings because I’ve got to. The nominations are expensive.

“If you have good mares you’ve gotta use the good stallions. That’s the most expensive part of the game so I have to be selling. Often, my best colt might wind up going to the sales.

“Stradivarius was certainly my best colt that year and he went to the sales but they didn’t quite pay enough. There were some offers pretty close to where I was gonna let him go. We had a private offer afterwards which I turned down because it didn’t go where my number was.

Stradivarius and Frankie Dettori winning the Doncaster Cup \ Healy Racing.

“Anthony Oppenheimer famously kept Golden Horn. He got lucky there that he didn’t sell and I got lucky with Stradivarius that he didn’t sell. If you breed commercially, you only have one option. But I’m breeding to race primarily.”

When he decided to breed, Nielsen was doing so with a deep bank of information, putting in serious legwork, studying pedigrees and determining what he liked. His bibles were the books of stakes winners published by pedigree expert Alex Scrope.

Derby favourite English King

“Stakes winners are your best horses so I studied the pedigrees of stakes winners going back to before when the pattern was formed. I studied them every day for hours. I did that for 20 years. It doesn’t mean I have any magic answer, because otherwise I’d be breeding stakes winners left and right but it just gave me a feel for what I like to see.

“If they don’t have a pedigree, I don’t care how fast they can run. I’m not gonna look at them. I do like to see good families. There’s a reason that they’re good families and that they come up with good horses over and over again. There’s something in their mind obviously, that makes them better than the rest.

“Like any top athlete, they’re better performers under pressure than the rest of us.

“Everyone gets nervous at certain points in their lives but the people who really perform in the Olympics or Wimbledon finals or the Masters, get a little bit less nervous than the rest of us. And I think that probably applies to horses. It’s in their make-up.

“They have better lungs, they maybe have a better heart and it’s there in their mind, and it comes through. Not always but more often than it will in families that don’t have those.”

Stradivarius was foaled and raised in Kiltinan Castle Stud outside Fethard, which is part of Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Watership Down operation. The relationship with Kiltinan Castle goes back a long time, from when Nielsen bought My Branch as the first mare of his serious venture into breeding, and acquired her daughter Tante Rose from Wafic Said’s dispersal. It was Jeremy Noseda who advised him to send his mares to Watership Down and he has had no cause to regret that sage counsel.

“I’ve had some nice horses there and they also in their own right have bred Dar Re Mi, Lah Ti Dar, So Mi Dar, Too Darn Hot and that whole family, as well as The Fugue. They’ve done a very good job for me. Jean-Marc Moquet was the manager at Kiltinan for years before leaving and Donna Vowles took over. She does an absolutely brilliant job.”

Bjorn Nielsen with trainer John Gosden and Frankie Dettori after winning £1million bonus with Stradivarius \ Healy Racing

Nielsen is very pleased with his nice crop of well-related yearlings this year by Golden Horn, Frankel and Galileo. Some will move on and if they advertise his own mares and in the case of the fillies, produce good stock for someone else, that’s a win too.

But seeing his colours do the business on the track, as we have gotten used to a lot with Dettori and Stradivarius in the last two years, is why he’s doing it.

“Even if I had a Derby winner, there’ll never be another horse like Stradivarius, who’ll go on at four and five. But every year, I’m just trying to breed great racehorses and keep my head above water.

“It is very important to thank some people whose input has encouraged the breeding of staying horses. The BHA and the sponsors that have increased prize money for staying races like the Cesarewitch, the Ebor, the Goodwood Cup, where horses are kept in training rather than sold to Australia or you have the likes of Dee Ex Bee coming into the staying division.

“That’s thanks to the BHA, Qipco, Qatar Racing and especially Weatherbys Hamilton, who put up that £1 million for the last two years. That came at just the right time. It’s really important for the breed that we have staying blood, because as Tesio said 70, 80 years ago, if you keep breeding speed to speed, you wind up with nothing.”

Bjorn Nielsen listened and ended up with a whole lot more.