‘I Went to Coolmore From School and Didn’t Come Home’: David Bowe’s Life in Bloodstock 

“I was speechless,” says David Bowe of being presented with this year's Wild Geese Award at the ITBA's National Breeding and Racing Awards on Sunday night. 

The award recognises Irish men and women who have forged successful careers in the bloodstock industry worldwide, and its recipients to date have included those working in Australia and America. Bowe didn't fly too far afield, though he did serve a stint in the States early in his career. For more than a quarter of a century he has been based just across the water in England, with the last 22 years spent as manager of Jeff Smith's Littleton Stud in Hampshire.

“I was humbled, absolutely blown away, the fact that I was chosen, especially when you think about all the previous recipients,” he adds. “I can't understand why, but it's just wonderful to be acknowledged by the ITBA, being an Irishman. Well, it's phenomenal, absolutely, I couldn't ask for better.”

He may not be able to understand why but plenty of people who have worked with Bowe over the years can vouch for the skills and horsemanship that put him in the running for such an award. The video of tributes shown on the night included one from Bill Dwan, who said, “He's an absolute gentleman. I don't know anyone in the business who has a bad word to say about him. It's not ever about David; it's about the horses, it's about Jeff.”

Smith himself said, “Year by year he has improved the stud from what it was.”

Growing up partaking in all the usual pony endeavours during his schooldays, Bowe's real education began in a nursery famed not just for its equine graduates but for plenty of two-legged graduates as well.

“I went to Coolmore from school and didn't come home,” Bowe says. “I think my father hoped I was going to go on to academia but it was never going to happen.

“Coolmore was just the best training academy in the world. If you rose to the occasion, they let you and enabled you to do everything. So they sent me to America, and I came back from America and ended up managing Abbeyleix estate for Lord de Vesci for five years.”

Bowe eventually found himself in England, with his early time there spent working at the National Stud and at Longholes Stud in the days of the Hon. John Lambton when it still stood the stallions Komaite and Wolfhound.

“And then I came to Littleton Stud and met Jeff Smith,” he continues, “and really, I guess, all the graft and work I did previously at Coolmore and Abbeyleix and in America, I was able to put it into practice here. Jeff is a unique man. He's probably going to be the most influential person I've ever met, in that he enabled me to be able to go and do what I've been lucky enough to do. It's been brilliant.”

Smith is of an increasingly rare breed of owner-breeders running a select operation. He is loyal to his trainers, many of whom have had horses for him for decades, and he races his homebreds, which are supplemented from time to time by the odd foal purchase.

On top of his regular stud management duties, Bowe has been key to this element of the Littleton operation in selecting the foals at the sales, and with some notable success, headed by the four-time Group 1 winner Alcohol Free (Ire). The daughter of No Nay Never was bought from her breeder Churchtown House Stud for €40,000 and was resold following her four-year-old season for 5.4 million gns at the Tattersalls December Mares Sale. 

“We had land here, we had staff, and sometimes we came up short on numbers, so Jeff let me go off and buy a few. It's going back a long time ago now, but the first horse we bought as a foal was called Dream Eater. He did very well for us,” says Bowe of the son of Night Shift who was a Listed winner and was placed eight times in Group races, including finishing third in the G1 Queen Anne S. behind Goldikova (Ire) and Paco Boy (Ire).

“We've done that ever since, really. We never buy any more than maybe three or four every year. We've been lucky. We buy them from good nurseries and you know that they're in good shape when you buy them,” he adds.

“I would go out there and spend the money as if it was my own. You're looking for value. But basically, I'm lucky enough that I can go and buy an individual and I don't have to worry about the fact that the sire is not fashionable. I like the horse and I'll buy it, and Jeff and myself are on the same page. It's about the actual individual rather than what it's by or what it's out of. Equally, that's very important for the residual value afterwards if you're going to breed or resell. But primarily, the first thing is the physical specimen.”

Casting his mind back to the halcyon days of Alcohol Free, he says, “Honestly, nobody could tell me or anybody else that she was going to be as good as she was. I liked her and I hoped, like we all do every time you buy one, that she was going to be good, but for her to be as good as she was, was beyond our wildest imagination.”

The old imagination was fired up again last year thanks to another foal purchase, Ghostwriter (Ire) (Invincible Spirit {Ire}), trained by Clive Cox. The colt finished his unbeaten run of three last year with victory in the G2 Royal Lodge S. to leave Smith and Bowe dreaming of the 2,000 Guineas. 

“Again, one of the important things is buying from good nurseries and we bought Alcohol Free from the Gaffneys, and they're just proper horse people. And the same with Ghostwriter. We bought him from Norelands. They always produce brilliant stock. You're ahead of the game already because you're bringing home healthy stock,” he says. 

“The lovely thing about buying foals is we can bring them home here and then we have them for the next 14 months until they go into training. We're at an advantage because we have such good relationships with everybody, and it is about the bigger picture, it is about the team. It is about the girls here on the farm, like our head girl, Kelly Stevens, and the trainers, the pre-trainers. It can't be put down to one person, but it's wonderful to be credited by it anyway.”

Ghostwriter is not alone in fuelling the Classic dreams of the Littleton Stud team this year. Of arguably greater importance to a breeding operation is to have a talented homebred filly, and Smith looks to have just that in See The Fire (GB), who won her maiden last August and was then second in the G2 May Hill S. and third in the G1 Fillies' Mile. But then again, she was bred to be good, as the Andrew Balding-trained filly is by Sea The Stars out of Smith's G1 Juddmonte International winner Arabian Queen (Ire) (Dubawi {Ire}), making See The Fire a fifth-generation Littleton homebred. 

“We've had a really, really good winter,” Bowe says. “We're dreaming about what we're going to do. See The Fire has done so well and we're hoping to go to the Guineas without a trial because she ran so well in the Fillies' Mile. It was a good test of stamina and she saw it out well.

“So we hope she'll do the fantasy stuff: Guineas and go to the Oaks and maybe the King George, who knows?

“Ghostwriter, he loved that hill [at Newmarket] and he was seriously impressive. So we're chuffed to bits with him also. Clive is delighted. I was speaking to him the other morning actually, and he doesn't think he'll go for a trial with him either.”

Arabian Queen, Alcohol Free, Ghostwriter and See The Fire are just the latest names on a long list of classy animals to have carried Smith's purple and blue colours over the last four decades. From the speedball Lochsong (GB) to the high-class sprinter/miler Chief Singer (Ire) and the people's favourite stayer Persian Punch (Ire), the owner has been rewarded for his investment in the sport with plenty of days in the sun. To hear Bowe describe his boss is to understand that there would be few people more deserving of such success. 

“Jeff  understands the game intrinsically,” Bowe says. “He understands that, one, it's a sport. Yes, there is a lot of money involved, but he takes bad news as well as he takes good news. 

“Jeff said to me a long time ago, 'If you don't trust your trainer, why would you have a horse in training? So why would you interfere with the training regime?

“We discuss things with the trainers but, fundamentally, the trainer makes a decision and it makes life an awful lot easier. Sometimes we might say, 'What do you think about dropping back in trip?' But the upshot is they're the trainers, we're not. So trust your trainer, let them get on with it. Let them train the horse. And then if it doesn't work out, it is not for the want of trying.”

He continues, “Jeff is in it for the sport. There's a huge aspect of enjoyment in it, and it gets you over the dark days when it doesn't go so well. 

“He is a purist and we are looking to win the Derby. We love speed and going back to Lochsong, a lot of the families were speed, speed, speed. And we weren't trying to breed the speed out of them, but daughters and what have you, have gone to proper Classic-type sires that may not fetch you a fortune in the ring if you went there, but they could breed you a Classic winner.

“We have a nice boutique stud with some lovely mares that we can breed to whoever we like. We've had some fun.”

With hopefully plenty more fun in the offing, Bowe concedes that he has enjoyed his decades in England. “Don't, whatever you do, say that I've become anglicised,” he says.

Right, so we won't say that then. But this particular wild goose admits that he may well be called home eventually to Ireland, where he has land of his own. Bowe's advice on Sunday night for younger folk wishing to become involved in the industry was, “Immerse yourself in it, get involved in it, and stick with it.”

They are words to live by, whatever your passion in life, and as he acknowledges, when you find that passion, a job becomes simply a way of life.

“I would imagine I'll retire back to Ireland,” he adds. “By retiring, I mean buying and selling a few, walking around the farm. I would love it, but I also love England so much, and my kids are here, so going back would be difficult, but it's only over the water.

“I'm here for the time being, though, and enjoying every minute of it.”

 

The post ‘I Went to Coolmore From School and Didn’t Come Home’: David Bowe’s Life in Bloodstock  appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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ITBA Awards Honour Todd Watt Among Top Breeders

Dolphins swimming in the Venetian canals may have been pandemic fake news, but that the world will have benefited environmentally is one of the few upsides to the coronavirus crisis. What is not fake news is that many heads and livers will have been feeling better on Sunday morning than would otherwise be the case following the annual ITBA Awards, but that is the only benefit to missing out on what is always one of the social highlights of the racing year.

Attendance at this event is not for the faint-hearted or the early-to-bedders. Traditionally, gongs are still being handed out past midnight and then the celebrating begins, on the dance floor, in the residents' bar and often through to the breakfast table. Like pretty much every other event of the past year, the ITBA Awards, celebrating the best performances by Irish-bred horses on the Flat and over jumps, was forced into a virtual format, but that didn't stop it being a memorably emotional evening.

Ireland's reputation as a country of Thoroughbred breeders of the highest calibre has long been a cause for celebration but before we toast the best in show for 2020, the award which will have lightened the lockdown gloom the most among the tight-knit breeding community was the Rathbarry Stud-sponsored ITBA Special Recognition Award for Todd Watt. The masterful Tattersalls auctioneer has been absent from the sales for the last few years since suffering a stroke but, with the awards presentations posted in individual video segments across social media channels throughout the evening, viewers and followers were able to see Todd receive his award from Niamh Woods. That he is missed as much as he is loved was clear from the many deserving tributes from his friends and colleagues, both in the moving film and subsequently on Twitter.

“All through his career in Tatts, he was our go-to guy, not just for me but for all the Irish,” said Eddie O'Leary of Lynn Lodge Stud, summing up the regard in which Watt is held by many vendors at the sales.

Fellow Tattersalls auctioneer John O'Kelly added, “Todd Watt is the great ambassador. A lovable character; everybody in the industry has huge respect for him. He sold horses with a smile on his face, he made people feel good, and no stone was unturned to ever get somebody an extra bid for a horse.”

Horseracing and breeding are not immune to the financial concerns generated by the Covid pandemic but in Ireland some comfort must be taken in the close links between the industry and government, which is doubtless the envy of other racing nations. This was evident in the fact that the Taoiseach Micheal Martin gave a video address at the start of awards evening, recognising the  major contribution of the bloodstock world to Ireland's economy.

“The tumultuous events of 2020 and the continuing pandemic have had a significant impact on your industry,” he said. “An important pillar of government policy is to ensure that the horseracing and Thoroughbred industry achieves its maximum potential and, in so doing, continues to contribute to economic and social development across a wide geographic swathe of the country. It is estimated that the Thoroughbred industry has an annual economic impact of €1.9 billion, with direct and indirect employment of up to 29,000 people. Additionally the industry brings a high level of international investment into Ireland. The Irish racing and breeding industry is extremely competitive at a global level. We are the third-biggest producer of Thoroughbred foals in the world and estimates place Ireland behind only the United States as the biggest public seller of bloodstock globally.”

Three of those foals produced in 2018 led to Derek and Gay Veitch's Ringfort Stud being named Breeder of the Year. The Co Offaly-based farm had a year to remember with its 2-year-olds in particular, with Minzaal (Ire) (Mehmas {Ire}) and Miss Amulet (Ire) (Sir Prancealot {Ire}) winning the G2 Gimcrack S. and G2 Lowther S. at York's Ebor meeting, followed by the G2 Flying Childers S. win of Ubettabelieveit (Ire) (Kodiac {GB}). The latter and Miss Amulet both went on to be placed at the Breeders' Cup, and Minzaal was the second consecutive Ringfort-bred winner of the Gimcrack following Threat (Ire) (Footstepsinthesand {GB}).

“The best 2-year-olds that we had in 2020 were all by stallions out of Tally-Ho. I love it because they were cheap horses to produce, just farm costs and running costs, and they've ended up great racehorses which has helped us immensely with the mares,” said Derek Veitch. “The couple of days in York was amazing. To have the Lowther winner and then the Gimcrack winner for the second year in a row was just incredible and very satisfying for us.”

Ghaiyyath (Ire) (Dubawi {Ire}) was the toast of the Longines World's Best Racehorse ceremony last week and he was recognised again in the award to his breeder Dermot Weld's Springbank Way Stud in the Older Horse of the Year category. Ghaiyyath's former stable-mate Pinatubo (Ire) (Shamardal) earned the Three-Year-Old Colt of the Year award for his breeder Godolphin, while the Two-Year-Colt of the Year was the G1 Middle Park S. winner Supremacy (Ire) (Mehmas {Ire}), bred by The Hon. Kenneth Lau of Kangyu International Racing at John Tuthill's Owenstown Stud. 

“It is very exciting to have bred Supremacy from one of the first mares I have owned,” said Lau. “Thank you to Owenstown Stud for raising Supremacy and to Ed Sackville for buying [his dam] Triggers Broom (Ire). We sold her very good Cotai Glory (GB) colt at Book 1 to King Power and we have a lovely Cotai Glory filly to race. Tiggers Broom now visits Frankel (GB).”

It is overseas that the best Irish-bred fillies excelled in 2020. Trained at Ballydoyle by Aidan O'Brien, the Coolmore-bred Love (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) was unbeaten in her three starts, all in England, in the 1000 Guineas, Oaks and Yorkshire Oaks. Farther afield, the 2-year-old Aunt Pearl (Ire) was also unbeaten in three races in America, culminating in her becoming the second daughter of Lope De Vega (Ire) to win the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf after Newspaperofrecord (Ire). Aunt Pearl was bred in partnership by Ballylinch Stud and the French-based Ecurie Des Charmes.

A highlight of Saturday's afternoon's racing was the success of Shishkin (Ire) (Sholokhov {Ire}) in the G2 ITM Lightning Novices' Chase but it was his victory in last March's G1 Supreme Novices' Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival which sealed his Best Novice Hurdler award for breeder Clive Bennett. 

Philip and Jane Myerscough received the award for the Best Novice Chaser, another Cheltenham winner in Champ (Ire) (King's Theatre {Ire}), while Hurdler of the Year was Paisley Park (Ire) (Oscar {Ire}), who won the title for the second year for breeder Michael Conaghan. The Chaser of the Year was another multiple winner, the great Altior (Ire) (High Chaparral {Ire}), bred by Paddy Behan who has now won five consecutive ITBA awards. 

One of the most popular prizes given at this event is the annual Wild Geese Award which recognises the success of Irish men and women overseas. Recent recipients include bloodstock agent Mags O'Toole, Keeneland's Geoffrey Russell and the late Gerry Dilger of Dromoland Farm. 

As awards host Leo Powell said, this year's winner has ventured just about as far from home as it is possible to be: New Zealand. Gordon Cunningham may have settled a long way away but his Irish roots are not forgotten, as the name of his successful Curraghmore Farm in Waikato suggests.

The Waterford native is a grandson of legendary Irish trainer Michael Collins, and thus cousin to current trainer Tracey Collins, who succeeded her father Con at Conyngham Lodge on the Curragh.

“We were always excited to go to the Curragh for the summer and of course Uncle Con was an icon for our family and we were inwardly very proud of just being in his presence or being able to visit Conynhgam Lodge, where mum was raised,” said Cunningham in a video made at last week's Karaka yearling sale.

He added, “I know there are many people around the world who are worthy of this award and I feel very privileged to be considered worthy of it. I'm very grateful to the ITBA and would like to congratulate all the other recipients of awards thought the evening. I would like to acknowledge my late Uncle Dick Collins and my Aunt Bernie, who took my younger brother and I under their wing when our father passed away when I was pretty young. They brought us up to the Curragh every summer. From my first summer at Lisieux [Stud] I knew horses were going to be my life.” 

Among the notable graduates of Curraghmore Farm are Melbourne Cup winner Efficient (NZ), Australian champion 3-year-old Fairway (NZ) and Hong Kong champion stayer Liberator (NZ).

Andrew Seabrook of New Zealand Bloodstock said, “Gordon takes it to another level. He's more focused on breeding quality and good horses than getting the top price in the sale ring. He's so focused on just getting the very best out of a horse and he reads the market so well.”

The wide world of bloodstock boasts many graduates of the Irish National Stud breeding course, which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary. Further celebration is due in that the government-owned stud itself has now become the first organisation to be inducted to the ITBA Hall of Fame.

“The Thoroughbred industry in Ireland is something which we are justifiably proud of as world leaders, and having an organisation like the Irish National Stud that essentially belongs to the people is very important,” said Goffs Group chief executive Henry Beeby. 

In accepting the award, the Irish Minister of Agriculture John McConalogue acknowledged the stud's “continued determination for excellence” and said, “I am delighted to be accepting the 2020 Hall of Fame award on behalf of the National Stud. This is in recognition of the stud's invaluable contribution to the Irish Thoroughbred industry over many decades, from the stallions it stands to the world-renowned breeding course and the impact it has as a national tourist attraction. This award sees the Irish National Stud join an august group which includes JP McManus, David and Diane Nagle, Jim Bolger, Sadler's Wells and Michael Osborne.”

While Ireland and Britain remain under strict lockdown, with racing continuing behind closed doors and sales online, there are currently few opportunities for the industry's participants to meet in person. What the ITBA successfully pulled off on Saturday night was bringing people together, albeit virtually, in recognition and celebration of one of Ireland's best attributes: its deserved reputation as a centre for equine excellence. Congratulations to the ITBA team and to all the award winners.

The post ITBA Awards Honour Todd Watt Among Top Breeders appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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