NIALL Dalton should be a poster boy for the possibilities that abound in horse racing, and for its accessibility even if you are not to the manor born.

Those that think the finest intricacies of the sport and industry in terms of form, conformation, pedigree and market forces can’t be learned from scratch later in life, to the extent that you can be a international bloodstock agent for example, have certainly been disproven by the Waterford city native.

For not just did he learn, despite having had absolute no background other than a love of watching racing fostered by his late grandmother Margaret Maher Power and encouraged further by his uncle, Bill Kelly, who remains an ardent supporter of the sport and his nephew, but Dalton did not begin that process in a practical sense, until travelling to America in his mid-20s.

Now 55, Dalton specialises in buying horses in training from Ireland to race in California. He has forged a strong partnership with Michael Donohue of BBA Ireland, who is a vital presence on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

California

Between them, they have made a lot of people happy, from Irish trainers and owners making profits on their investments as a vital part of their business models, to their US-based counterparts acquiring highly prized Irish stock that are still on the right side of the improvement curve and more often than not, have the quality and durability to prosper Stateside.

Going Global (bought from Michael Halford), Hunt (Johnny Murtagh), Beau Recall (Ado McGuinness), Gregorian Chant (John Murphy) and Earls Rock (Andy Slattery) are just some of those to have prospered at stakes level, the first two landing Grade 1 triumphs, and there are plenty more yielding strong dividends in all spheres.

That success, not to mention the morning sunshine he gleefully tells me about as he chats from the porch of the Los Angeles home he shares with his wife Lana and son Gabriel, are all far removed from Lismore Park, where his mother Maura still lives.

Packed pub

The pandemic slowed visits and he worried about his family here through Covid-19, particularly Maura, but they are all well and he is looking forward to being home in March and in particular, to watching Cheltenham in a packed pub, an experience that will be extra special given the tribulations of the previous two years.

He enjoys the National Hunt but Dalton’s area of expertise surrounds a completely different animal. As referenced already though, he had to learn from scratch. He wanted to work in racing and he wanted to go to America. Specifically, he was always attracted by the West Coast, having seen many friends fall into the trap of going to New York and Boston and spending their time in Irish bars. He yearned for a different experience.

Free spirit

“I just like lots of ways of life in California, you can go and make it yourself. That free spirit kind of thing.”

The plan was “to use my Irishness as a way in” to the US thoroughbred scene and it worked.

“I didn’t know a soul in racing when I came over. I stayed with friends and I had no money,” Dalton recalls.

“I don’t come from a racing background at all but as I said to more than one person over the years, when you’re Irish, it’s in your blood, isn’t it? Because you’re never far from a horse. It’s just part of our culture.

“When I think back on it, it was my grandmother was the one that really got me initially interested as she was the one would always have racing on. I would have lunch with her every day as I went to De La Salle and she lived quite close.

“I came out, initially on a J1 (visa), which I got for a year and the idea was to work in racing here. On a whim, I called up Barry Irwin (boss of Team Valor) and he gave me a chance all those years ago. I worked for him for five or six years.

“In between that I ended up going to Kentucky working for the late Richard Galpin, a very famous bloodstock agent, for a year. I met my wife in that time and then came back for another year with Barry. He moved his whole operation to Kentucky and I didn’t want to go back there. So I went out on my own then.”

For many racing followers, not to mention those on the outside looking in, the nuances of conformation and pedigree are a foreign language. You can back a horse, without knowing anything about horses other than their form. To start your education as late as Dalton did and become internationally established as a go-to agent is remarkable but also important, given the sometimes forbidding patriarchal, traditional reputation the industry can have.

“You learn all that stuff just from looking at horses, talking to people. If you start at a young age, you learn certain aspects of the horse trade a little more easily I suppose but things like picking out the kind of horses that work here, what I do, walking around horses at the age of 12 wouldn’t have taught me anything about that.”

Good team

The partnership with Donohoe has paid rich dividends.

“I get to see things from both sides here. I know the programme in Ireland very well at this point and have done for some time. But being on the ground here, I know very well what works.

“For the last eight years or so, I work exclusively with Michael Donohoe of BBA (Ireland). We work very well together. He was actually over last week. We make a really good team. I’ve introduced him to everybody over here, which is really important. I’m not at the track every day but being at the track in the morning, trainers and owners like the idea of working with someone who’s not on the other side of the world that they see on the odd occasion. And Michael in Ireland, just about everybody knows him and he knows just about everybody over there. So we really don’t miss too much.

“So if there’s a horse that we think is the kind of horse for here, if the price is fair, we’ll get it done.”

As in every walk of life, success breeds success.

“The longer you do it, the more nice horses you bring over, the more business you generate. I’m getting new people coming all the time. I have people looking for horses and I can’t satisfy their demands because we won’t sell a horse for the sake of selling horses. That won’t happen.

Going Global, winner of the Grade 1 Del Mar Oaks, is "a machine" \ Casey Phillips/Eclipse Sportswire/CSM)

“It has ramped up in the last seven or eight years in conjunction with Michael. Our whole methodology is not waiting for the TDN alert on the Rising Star or the obvious horse that wins first time out. I’m not saying that we don’t buy horses that win first time out – in fact we’ve just bought a filly that won first time out (for Murtagh) called Sixteen Arches, a Mehmas filly that won in Dundalk a couple of weeks ago.

Solid Irish form

“We love Dundalk. We love all Irish racing. The winter in Ireland is a nice time of year to buy horses. That track works very well over here and I think the primary reason is, much as it is with Irish flat racing in general, the form is very reliable. You can’t really hide in Ireland. On a week-in, week-out basis, the form is fairly rock solid.

“You align that with the fact that you’re dealing with people we have relationships with for the most part. Michael will go see the horse and there’s a good chance he’ll know the trainer. There’s a fairly high degree of confidence when you combine all those things. We will buy the odd horse out of England and France, but I’m going to say 90 or 95% of the horses we’ve bought together have been bought from Ireland.”

He points to the fact that even though Dundalk in the winter is ostensibly off-season, the top trainers and global breeding operations are invariably represented. That gives the form substance. The quality that has emerged from the Irish EBF Auction Series is self-evident, with countless Group 1 winners graduating from it, and it has been fertile ground for Dalton and Donohue too.

Horse traders

“As far as I’m concerned, Ireland is a nation of horse traders. You can’t make that statement about the UK or France in general. You can say that with conviction about Ireland. There are so many smaller breeders, owners, trainers, their whole model is – yeah, of course if they’ve a Group 1 horse they’d like to keep it in the yard – but otherwise they’re in the business of racing with the hope to sell on at a profit, then take that money, go back to the yearling sales or what used to be the Goresbridge Breeze-Up Sale, start the process again and hope that they’ll find something that we’re gonna be interested in in the next year.

“And they can win a race over there with some of these (Irish) EBF Auction races, do quite well and sell for a nice profit on top. I think it’s a great incentive, the whole set-up there versus what they’re up against in the UK. It’s much more owner-friendly, trainer-friendly for the small-to-medium-sized outfit. The number of yearlings that are bought cheap in Ireland and turn out to be nice horses is extraordinary. They’re spending, 10, 15, 20 grand, it goes off and runs third first time and we’re offering them a very nice profit on the horse. They’re delighted and maybe go back and buy two yearlings. The auction series is brilliant for that, for the lads in the syndicate from the pub and the likes. It’s fantastic.”

Stallions

He doesn’t focus on particular stallions though he notes that he has had plenty of luck with Mehmas and that Elzaam’s progeny has done well in America, but “there are very few stallions standing in Ireland that I’d have a knock on”.

The criteria in order of priority goes like this.

“It’s the form first, then the physical side of things has to match up. We’re quite tough on that and we have to be. Another factor that differentiates Irish horses is that they’re very tough and very sound horses. We’re not overly critical. It’s not like we’re buying million-dollar yearlings at Keeneland in September. They don’t have to be flawless but they have to meet certain basic requirements in terms of what their physical make-up is. And there are so many very good trainers in Ireland that educate them and train them well.

Blacktype

“The pedigree would be third. It’s a bit of a bonus in most cases. Fillies can make up their own pedigrees if they turn out to be stakes fillies, and that’s what we’re always chasing. Any horse we’re buying, we’re thinking that they might have a shot of developing into blacktype horses.

“Sometimes we’ll buy horses for people with the knowledge that the chances of them being blacktype horses are not good. But they do still fit a programme here. It might be a four-year-old gelding and I have a couple of orders there now for those kind of horses. And they’re harder to find a lot of the time at this time of year.”

While the CV is impressive, it does need to be continuously updated. Referring to historical success doesn’t cut the same ice as what you did in the past season.

“You have to turn up nice horses year after year and we’re doing that. We started off the winter/spring meeting at Santa Anita with a new stakes winner Bellabel, the three-year-old filly that won on her debut (at Santa Anita) three weeks ago. She came out of Jessica Harrington’s yard. And we had three or four other winners.

“Last year, during the Santa Anita winter meet, which effectively runs for six months, we had seven new individual stakes winners, who won 11 stakes. One of those was Going Global, who won five stakes races, she’s a machine.

“We started the meet off nicely this year and have some running soon. I’m too superstitious to name them yet but it’s safe to say we have a number of horses in the three-year-old colt and three-year-old filly division, plus in the older turf horse category. We’re as excited about what we have coming up for the spring and summer, as we’ve been. And we’ll be continuing to acquire more horses.

“We actually have one that’s in the air now, who’s landing in LA today (Tuesday), another Mehmas called Turn On The Jets, a sprinter who won in Dundalk last month for Jack Davison. A couple arrived before Christmas and we’re working on one or two more. We’re optimistic about having a very good season again at Santa Anita. There are one or two we bought at the end of the summer last year that the trainers are very excited about.”

Any breeder and trader will tell you that while producing a good horse and selling well is important, for them to deliver on the track and continue the demand for your supply line, you want them to land at the right home.

“It’s one thing to be able to find nice horses, but it’s really important that they go to the guys that know how to deal with European horses and aren’t in a rush with them immediately when they get here.

Turf wins

Phil D’Amato won the training title at Santa Anita, and I don’t want to be tooting our own horn too much, but the fact of the matter is the reason he beat Bob Baffert is that he had so many turf wins with the horses we brought over. I’ve a really strong relationship with Phil.

“There’s also John Sadler, Richard Baltas, Jeff Mullins and Simon Callaghan, a son of Neville Callaghan’s. These are all good with European horses and it’s a pleasure when an owner sends them to trainers like that. I’ll be honest, I’ve been contacted by people before and I know who their trainers are and you’d have to be thinking about where you want to put them on the list, because we have to continue to have success. It’s not all about us or the horse. It’s very much about who gets to train them out here.”

And that is how you make it, regardless of where you come from.

Have a passion, pay attention, take a gamble, form good relationships and produce results.

The Dalton way.