ENGLISH TEXTS turning in to a stallion if it was ever going to be possible who knows but you never know until you try.” Well, they certainly tried giving it a good go in the sales ring to begin with when, sourcing a walk in the park colt foal out of Shattered Love a grade one winning mare for Gordon Elliot and Gigginstown for 155000 euro. I asked Ahearn was it always the plan to buy them as foals?“ Our primary thing is that we are a breeding farm, we stand stallion. The most important people we need to look after are the ones that breed. We had been buying a lot of stock at the store sales, but a lot of the sellers are those store sales are pinhookers, they aren’ t breeders. We wanted to take it back a few steps and support the people who support us by sending their mares to our stallions. We still will buy at the store sales and always will, but it was just the act of buying them as foals made more sense to us and then we also have everything we need to facilitate them, get them in to our system and control their careers from as young an age as possible.” It’ s not just the trend of stallion making they wanted to copy from France it was getting them going at a younger age as well.“ With us wanting to keep them as colts, you can’ t buy three-year-old colts from a store sale they all would have been gelded because nobody would have kept them as an entire. Whereas in our system we basically treated them like as flat horse as if they were by Wootton Basset. We got them broken in the October of their yearling year and then just treated them accordingly. The longer you left a colt doing nothing out in a field the more difficult it would be to bring them up to fitness and there is nothing to suggest they cannot take it because they are bred on similar lines to some flat horses, its only history that’ s tells us to wait until they are three- or fouryear-old’ s. After breaking them in we did three different sessions from the October to the January then we let them out for some spring grass for a little break before bringing them back in to do a little bit more with them and send them off to France what would effectively be 13 months after they’ ve had a saddle on. A lot of work was done though, they’ d been schooled and had plenty of work done so they were ready for it when they arrived.” I know what you must be thinking at this point, if they have the facilities and the capacity to do this why not race themselves or send them up the road to Willie Mullins?“ It was down to the program; we would have had to wait another year is the long and short of it to get any results. When you’ re dealing with entiers its very difficult to keep them in a racing program, up to the age of 5,6,7. If you are having to wait until their three turning four to start them it shortens their racing window, especially if they have an injury and you have to give them six months, all of a suddenly they are nearly a ffive-year-oldunraced colt. Whereas the French system allows us to start them earlier and target a spring campaign with the knowledge that if they do pick up a slight injury or is abit back ward, then you still have the autumn period of their three-year-old season to run them. There is just more of a program for three- and fouryear-old.” Looking at how they’ ve got on so far you can only be impressed with their two debutant winners in Wild Bill Hickok and The Mighty Celt, along with a pleasing run from Jolly Swagman too who finished 5 th.“ We were abit disappointed with Jolly Swagman, but it turns out he wasn’ t 100 % afterwards and he’ ll have the summer off and be aimed at an autumn campaign which is the beauty of starting them earlier. The dream would be, run them for two years max and then stand them at stud if they have earnt it because the reality is its difficult to keep an entire in training once they turn five. Aiden O’ Brien did it with Yeats and is doing it with Kyprios but it’ s not very easy and he’ s a genius. There is no opportunity for a threeyear-old to run in a grade one hurdle in Ireland or Britain but there is in France
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