JOHN Hayes sat in the middle of the sales ring at Goffs with his wife Una last Wednesday as the clock ticked by 11am. The pair of them may as well have been strapped into a rollercoaster. There is nothing like a bit of sales ring theatre drama, especially when you’ve skin in the game.

Hayes, who is a partner in an engineering consultancy practice, admits that breeding horses is just a hobby, something to keep him sane when he arrives home from a 12-hour day at 7pm. That in itself could be described as mild insanity by professional breeders and indeed not many hobby breeders send their mares to Frankel with no real plan on how to pay the covering fee.

But that’s something of a trend in the John Hayes story. When he went to buy the filly foal that would be called Sophie Germain, he had no idea how to pay for her but then discovered he had a few shares in Yahoo worth a bit of money and that was that sorted.

Sophie never raced but has produced the brilliant Creggs Pipes who served the Hayes family so well, another blacktype filly in Silver Spear and an Australia colt that sold for 300,000 guineas. So she deserved the best Hayes thought. Indeed Creggs Pipes also had a Sea The Stars yearling at the Orby Sale last week.

“I had no idea how I was going to pay the fee for Frankel,” the Tipperary native recalls this week. “I hadn’t said to my wife where the money was going to come out of to pay the fee but in truth I didn’t think too much about where I’d get the money from. I kind of said, ‘John, you’re at a retirement age, if you have to dip into your pension, you could do worse.’

“Luckily enough, we had Silver Spear in a listed race at the Curragh the day before the Australia colt was due to sell at Tattersalls. She finished third and sure the way we celebrated, you’d think we’d had the winner. It was a big update for the page of the colt and I used the money from that sale to pay for the Frankel fee.

“Of course it was a big risk. There’s a lot of money tied up and it’s very stressful. You’re just hoping everyday that they stay sound. But having said that, I’m not one for dwelling on that type of thing. Every time I looked at the Frankel I couldn’t get over the width between her eyes and the width of her backside, and her width in front, she’s just a stunning specimen.”

When this stunning specimen began to circle the sales ring and auctioneer Andrew Nolan kicked off the bidding, Hayes had to look down to see if his hand was still there, with Una gripping it so tightly.

“Una was probably more nervous than me,” he asserts. “And that was saying something because when I went in to sign the reserve form, I could hardly write my name down. The easy bit was the signature, the hard bit was the slow capital letters in the block boxes!

Una and John Hayes with Pa Doyle of Galbertstown Stud after they sold their Frankel x Sophie Germain filly for €650,000 at Goffs last week

“I put €400,000 of a reserve on her, I was going to put 500, but then I got a little bit windy. I think in the end I’d have been happy to just get my money back. The whole thing is very nerve wracking. Especially for someone like me, with just two in the sale. It would be different if you had 20.”

The bidding commenced at €100,000 and gradually went up, soon developing into something of a tennis match between two bidders either side of the ring. In the end, the main number soared to €650,000, with a represenative of the UAE-based Al Shira’aa Farm getting the better of an American trainer Tony Dutrow.

It was a fabulous result – a mixture of relief, happiness and excitement. John, Una and Pa Doyle, who consigned the filly from his Galbertstown Stud, spoke to Nick Luck for the Goffs YouTube channel outside and it was visible just how much it meant.

Una, still holding her husband’s hand, looked at him proudly and said: “Nobody deserves it more than this man here. He has worked very hard for this day, he really has. He just lives, eats, sleeps breeding. Nobody deserves it more than him.”

Background

Based on that quote alone, you’d think Hayes was born into horses and has been at it all his life but that’s not the case. In fact his first dealing with animals was cattle. Reared on a dairy farm, his father, “a great stockman”, had he and his brothers buy a heifer each to bring to a yearling heifer competition at a Tipperary show.

He also proudly asserts that music is his main passion. He sings in the RTÉ choir and plays in sessions locally, and has used a musical theme with the naming of his fillies so far – Creggs Pipes and Silver Spear were named after Irish reels. But it was only when Hayes got married to Una that he ignited a passion for horses, which came about through Una’s father Austie.

“He was a dairy farmer also but in social conversation he’d never talk about cattle, it was always about horses,” Hayes explains. “He always had a broodmare, usually a three-quarter bred that he’d be covering with a draught stallion. Then he got sick and he asked me would I take a young horse that he had.

“Austie was happiest when he was at a horse show. He always had a horse entered in a leading class, that was his thing, then he’d sell him on. That was my kind of introduction to horses and I started breeding half-breds and our daughter was involved in the Scarteen pony club and we had a few years at that until she went off to college. We had great fun.”

All the time however, Hayes became more and more inquisitive about thoroughbreds. He loved the idea of buying a thoroughbred broodmare. In 2007, he went to the Goffs November Foal Sale and bought Sophie Germain, who was a daughter of Indian Ridge and a Group 1 winner in Italy, and cost €25,000.

“I had no idea what I was buying or how I was going to pay for it until I discovered I had a few shares in Yahoo that were worth a bit,” he admits now. “She had a lovely page and Joe Fogarty of Kilfeacle House Stud always said to me, John you can’t go wrong with Roberto, who is in the pedigree. But as regards to how she looked and all that, I didn’t have a clue. I still don’t. I’d always be asking Pa Doyle, why is that foal so much better looking than the other? I’ve always concentrated on pedigrees.

“I named the filly Sophie Germain after a French mathematician and we intended to race her initially but the economy took a downturn around that time and things got tough. It wouldn’t have been right to go racing her when we had to let staff go in the business, so we kept her for breeding.

“In the meantime I had been studying pedigrees. I’m a bit of a nut job when it comes to pedigrees. I’m a huge fan of Ellen Parker and her Reine de Course (Queens of the Turf) research. Her philosophy is that one should be in-breeding or line-breeding to the best female on the page. I’ve adopted that philosophy.

“Take the horse that won the Arc last Sunday. Torquator Tasso is by Alderflug. His third dam is listed Prix Occitaine runner-up Turbaine, who is by Trempolino, and is a half sister to Urban Sea. The fourth dam Allegretta is a full sister to Adlerflug’s second dam Alya so he is line-bred to a superior female Allegretta.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, after all Hayes’s research, he worked out the stallion to send Sophie to was Galileo. But with the great sire out of reach, he went for one of his sons, a cheaper alternative in Rip Van Winkle.

After a couple of underwhelming offers for the resulting filly at the sales, Hayes decided to keep her and put her into training with Andy Slattery, who he’d discovered had an excellent runners-to-winners ratio and was only just down the road. The filly was called Creggs Pipes after an Irish reel Hayes was trying to learn on the fiddle at the time, without much success Una will tell you.

Fabulous servant

Creggs Pipes was a fabulous servant for the Hayes family, the Delphi Six, made up of John, Una and their children Sheila, Mary, Tom and Alice. She won seven races in all, rounding off a wonderful run of form by winning the Colm Quinn BMW Mile at Galway as a four-year-old and then rounded off her career the following season with a win in the Group 2 Lanwades Stud Stakes.

“Sure it was just an amazing time,” Hayes reflects. “My sister Caitriona had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and she was very ill at the time so it was a great lift for her and the family. At the time, business was still very tough as well. Creggs just started to win races as we were coming out of recession.

“My business took an awful hiding – we struggled a lot from around 2008 to 2015, our staff numbers went down from 60 to 12. Thankfully we’re back to where we were. But those years were very tough and Creggs lightened it towards the end. She was the gift that kept on giving.”

And continues to give. Hayes sent Creggs Pipes to Sea The Stars for a foal share and had his half bought out by the Tsui family last Wednesday as well. She sold for €180,000 on the day.

Both fillies were consigned by Pa Doyle who Hayes describes as “a consummate horse man,” and foaled and taken care of in their very early days by Pia Tonani.

With Sophie at home with her two daughters Creggs Pipes and Silver Spear, Hayes has a solid foundation for a lucrative and effective breeding operation but somewhat surprisingly he plans to cull down his string at the end of the year.

“It’s always been a hobby for me,” he explains. “The horses keep me sane and I just want it as a hobby. I’m not sure I want the stress about worrying about going to a really expensive stallion.

“So I’m going to have to cull now because I’ve already too many and I need to reduce my numbers. I’ve actually entered Creggs Pipes and Silver Spear in the breeding stock sale at the end of the year. Creggs is in foal to Mehmas. She had a foal at foot by Lope De Vega, a big strong colt, but he got injured and we lost him only three weeks ago, but that’s life I guess.

“We’ll keep Sophie. She has an Invincible Spirit filly at foot. I’d probably like to keep her and race her – we might have a bit of fun with her. I’m not sure who I’ll send Sophie to next, I’d love to go to Siyouni or Kingman. I think that would be a lovely cross. We’ll see.

“I also have a lovely full-sister to Alhebayeb that I bought off Gay O’Callaghan; hopefully she’ll race next year. She’s called Mrs McCloud which is another beautiful reel.

“I think I’ll keep naming the horses after reels for now – they’re both nice and fast.”