LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

not least because she had what they call the nick.

      Thoroughbred racehorse breeding is high-octane stuff. Not much is left to chance and such is the huge volume of statistical data from both breeding records and racecourse performances that every Juddmonte decision, certainly at this level, is based on quantifiable facts. Naturally, today the amount of information is huge, but that is not a strictly modern phenomenon: Kind’s family tree, and that of every thoroughbred, can be traced back with certainty to the seventeenth century thanks to the publication of the General Stud Book by James Weatherby in 1791 who set to record ‘the pedigree of every horse, mare etc. of any note, that has appeared on the turf for the last fifty years, and many of an earlier date …’ He was well placed to do this, as the Weatherby family were publishers of the Racing Calendar that had been recording all horse races and matches since 1727, something they continue to do today with the annual publication of both books.

      It all looks so easy now, but when Prince Khalid, assisted by Juddmonte’s general manager, Philip Mitchell, sat down at Banstead Manor Stud, with background analysis done by pedigree experts Andrew Caulfield and Claire Curry, as the beech tree leaves started to curl brown with the first frost of autumn, Galileo was not the potent force we know him to be today. He was still up and coming. Likewise, Kind was unproven. Even little Bullet Train was still two years away from his racecourse debut. But the reasoning was not overcomplicated: Galileo was a proven middle-distance performer. That is to say, he was at his most effective between a mile and a quarter and a mile and a half. Kind, as a sprinter, could provide speed.

Prince Khalid and Philip had some other salient facts to draw on: Although Kind’s dam Rainbow Lake had plenty of stamina, Kind herself had sprinting speed through her father Danehill, whereas her half-brother Powerscourt demonstrated the middle distance class of the pedigree, having recently retired with a gilded reputation after winning his final race, the Arlington Million. (This was one of the leading turf contests in the US, so called as the first ever TB race to offer a purse of $1,000,000 when inaugurated in 1981.) And finally there was that nick.

      I have to confess I had never come across the term the ‘nick’ until I began to research this book. If you do some googling, you will discover that vast amounts of cloud space are given over to this concept, as algorithms are deployed to drill down into every breeding permutation there has ever been to discover those that work best. It is a sort of genetic prospecting, trying to discover a new vein of equine gold. Summarised in a few words the nick is when the offspring of a particular stallion and the daughters of an unrelated stallion produce a higher than expected proportion of good performers. In our particular case, the two in question are Sadler’s Wells, Galileo’s father and Danehill, Kind’s father, with one such ‘nick’ being Powerscourt. Now not everyone is entirely signed up to the nick theory. Horse-breeding writers Matthew Binns and Tony Morris, who provided the summary you just read, are less convinced. They contend, without absolutely coming down on one side of the fence or another, that if you mate superior individuals the probability over time is that you will produce a higher than average number of superior offspring. But that is enough of the theory; what Kind and Galileo were about to do was put it into practice.

It is still dark as the horse box rattles down the estate road to the Lakeview Yard. Kind had been allocated the first slot of the day, 7 am. Her reaction to Padraig had pronounced her ready the previous day. The vet was satisfied. That combination of old-fashioned breeding lore and modern science told the Coolmore team that her time was upon them.

      Kind and her foal are loaded together into the box. There is no question of them being separated even though this will take under an hour. Separation would cause too much distress for both; after all, in the wild, in a herd, the foal would be at his or her mother’s side during mating. Why should this be any different?

      The journey is not long. Ten minutes at most. Back up the estate road, across the public road and into the home grounds of the Coolmore stallions, which is altogether more grandiose than that of the mares. The gate man, from inside his temple-style, Portland stone gate house pushes a button to allow the huge, black wrought-iron gates to swing open. Along the drive of mature trees and manicured grass, the statues of the Coolmore greats pay silent heed to our early-morning arrivals. Ahead is the Magnier home, largely obscured by a high hedge above which peeks a fancy Swiss Family Robinson-style treehouse that reminds us that this is still, for all the bloodstock high finance, a family business.

Around the back, among the complex of stables, barns and offices it is altogether more workmanlike. Kind and her foal are unloaded and led into the pre-covering shed. The horse box remains, ramp down. This should not take long. The shed is cream-walled with a corrugated-iron roof and a large, blue-black sliding door that opens into a double-height shed lit by halogen lights high up in the rafters that counter the morning gloom. The floor has a deep covering of fine shredded rubber that muffles all sound. To the side are the three teaser stalls; behind the mesh door of one, the nose of a shaggy head moves from side to side, tracking every movement of the incoming occupants. At the opposite end is a rubber-floored, brightly lit veterinary bay that has the air of a surgery. Into here is led Kind; her foal, still in sight of mother, is gently held outside by two stable hands.

      None of this would be unusual or unsettling to our pair; being handled, put in and out of horse boxes, moved to unfamiliar places and meeting unfamiliar people is part of the daily fabric of their lives. As the team wash her vulval area and bandage her tail to avoid any stray hairs interfering at the moment of covering, Kind thinks little of it. If nothing else, she has gone through precisely all this a year before. The hand-held scanner is passed over her neck, bringing up her ID number on the display from the microchip that was inserted soon after birth. A check against her passport confirms she is indeed who she is purported to be. It is not always that easy: American horses are identified by a tattoo on the inside of the lip which is notoriously hard to read, and Australian horses are branded. Again, not always easy to read. That is not to say high-end technology has all the answers. The Coolmore way of reminding everyone which mare is destined for which stallion is the leather fob bearing the stallion’s name, which is attached to the mare’s head collar. Simple. Effective.

Back out among the fine shredded floor covering of the shed, there is one last test. A stall door swings open to reveal our moving nose which is attached to a Padraig lookalike. Different barns, different teasers, but let’s call him Nosey. In half a dozen of his very short strides he is upsides Kind who doesn’t move at his approach, and almost without breaking stride he rears up to mount her, not from the rear as you might suppose but from the side, draping his front legs across her back where a saddle might be. It is practised and smooth. Almost balletic. Kind’s compliant acceptance of this act is the final confirmation she is ready. From the moment the door opens to Kind shrugging him off and Nosey on his way back to his stall – both seem to accept this for what it is, a final unrequited affirmation – takes no more than twenty seconds. As the stall door closes shut and Nosey is shrouded from view, Kind and Bullet Train leave the barn. Outside, in the pretty arbour, they await the call to attend Galileo like brides before the door of the church.

      Galileo doesn’t need a horse box for his thrice daily journey to the covering shed; there is a private back route that takes him from stable to shed in a minute or two. No distractions. Nothing left to chance. This is a stallion prepped and ready to go. He knows the walk. He knows the routine. He knows what lies at the end of this particular yellow brick road. This is, after all, his job.

      It is hard to overstate how very simple Galileo’s life is. Wake up. Have some food. Take a bit of exercise. Relax between two or three bouts of servicing your ever-changing harem. Retire for the night. That has pretty well been the sum of it for fifteen years; yesterday the template for today and today the template for tomorrow. For the highest paid athlete on the planet it is all remarkably, well I want to say boring, but that is not the correct word. People sometimes worry that horses get bored, but that doesn’t seem the case to me. As long as you attend to their essential needs with kindness, food, warmth and care, the passing of the days seems not to matter to them. They are, in the best of ways, simple souls. Shall we agree his life, of which a human might have much to envy, is comfortingly routine?

Galileo starts his day with

Скачать книгу