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a small European palace than a working stud farm. But it is unashamedly commercial. In the world of breeding, it is rivalled only, at least in numerical terms, by Godolphin, the name that covers the racing and breeding interests of Sheikh Mohammed and the famous all-blue Godolphin racing colours.

      The scale and spread of Coolmore is, in every sense of the word, awesome. As I was driven around (covering 7,000 acres, you don’t walk) I have to confess to frequently suffering from information overload. It really is quite something to take in, but here are the salient facts of how it has become what it is today. Coolmore is owned by the Magnier family, but its origins lie with Battle of Britain fighter pilot Tim Vigors who, having been demobbed from the Royal Air Force, came to Ireland to work as a bloodstock auctioneer then agent, and inherited Coolmore, which was at the time just 350 acres. It was here he set about establishing the stud in 1968.

At that time, seven miles away across the fields at Ballydoyle, Vincent O’Brien was hitting the prime of his flat training career, along with jockey Lester Piggott, with a string of great horses. Sir Ivor, Nijinsky, Roberto, and The Minstrel come immediately to mind. If those names don’t mean much to you, don’t worry. It is possibly just enough to know that they were Derby winners all, the most prestigious race on the planet, in a ten-year purple patch that ran from the same year Vigors set up shop. And this success initially came within the partnership of Vigors, O’Brien and football pools magnate (a huge UK national gambling pastime until it was first decimated by the National Lottery and then put out of its misery by the internet), Robert Sangster.

      But Coolmore wasn’t just a breeder, it was a buyer of bloodstock, in the early years supplementing European bloodlines with North American horses, especially the offspring of Canadian sire Northern Dancer who just happens to be Frankel’s great-grandfather. You might now have a clue where this is all going. At the time, Coolmore was not the only one to recognise the value of this particular sire, leading to epic showdowns in the sales ring as it went head-to-head with the Arab buyers in the bloodstock boom of the 1980s. This resulted in the first eight-figure sum ever paid for a horse when a yearling, who was subsequently named Snaafi Dancer, sold in 1983 for $10.2 million ($25.1 million in today’s money), bought by Sheikh Mohammed. If you are assuming he went on to do great things, you’ll be disappointed. Sent into training in England, this colt was considered too slow to even race, and attempts to harvest the genes of his father failed; in two years at stud, with all sorts of fertility problems, he sired just four offspring, three of which won minor races. It is said that he ended his days eating grass in a Florida paddock.

Not to be outdone, the Coolmore syndicate went higher still two years later, paying $13.1 million ($29.8 million adjusted in real terms) for the son of Nijinsky (who himself was the son of Northern Dancer), making him the most expensive yearling ever sold at public auction. This story had a slightly happier ending as Seattle Dancer, as he was named, without ever being considered a world beater, won some good races for Vincent O’Brien and competed against some of the best. He retired to become a Coolmore stallion standing in the USA, Ireland, Japan and finally Germany until his death in 2007 at twenty-three years of age.

      So evolved this powerful triumvirate: Sangster provided the cash, Coolmore the raw material and O’Brien the training expertise. It is a model that many have copied since, admittedly rarely with this scale of success. Three decades on, the essential template persists, though with some subtle changes. John Magnier is now the sole owner of Coolmore. As the son-in-law of Vincent O’Brien, and previously a successful fourth-generation National Hunt breeder at the nearby Castlehyde Stud, Magnier has over time bought the interests of Vigors, O’Brien and Sangster. However, the connection with Ballydoyle remains, where Aidan O’Brien took over in 1996 following the retirement of Vincent in 1994 (the two are not related), training the Coolmore homebreds and purchases.

During the writing of this book, you may not be surprised to learn that I visited all manner of horse farms, studs, stables and training yards across countries and continents. And the one thing I will always take away from them all is an immense feeling of calm. Away from the hustle and bustle of the racecourse, horses lead the most perfectly ordered lives. Everything, wherever possible, is refined down to routine and peacefulness. When you pass through the gates of any horse establishment, the world as most people know it is left behind. Time exists at the pace that suits the horses. The animals come first. People come second. Once the daily chores are over, the horses settled and the stable hands departed for breakfast or a well-deserved afternoon nap, human activity is supplanted by stillness. Horse heads hang over the stable doors quietly, watching very little. If you happen to pass through the yard, you might hear the grating grind from somewhere deep inside a dim-lit stall as a mouthful of hay is chewed as much for its properties as a calming balm as for its food value. Or the slurping sucking of water through tightened lips. Occasionally, a steel-shod hoof scrapes against a concrete floor or bangs against the wooden door, drawing disapproving glances from the neighbours. But that is about it. The biggest excitement might be a flock of doves whistling by or the stable cat on patrol.

      Somehow, I think that is what draws people into the horse business and captures their hearts forever. There is a wonderful other-worldliness about caring for these highly-bred thoroughbreds who are, once you strip away the speed and contest of the racing, calm, benign and content.

      I say all this because you might expect Coolmore, with its giant scale and financial heft, to be anything other than this. At the height of the breeding season, in addition to the fifteen resident stallions, there will be in the region of 900 resident mares. Just under half will be there with a foal, while the others will be in foal, at some stage from conception to pre-birth, or there being readied for one of the stallions. They are attended by a huge team: nine vets, three farriers – you can imagine how this list goes on. It even includes an acupuncturist. In all, 380 staff work at Coolmore, and that takes no account of the US operation in Kentucky and the Australian stud in the Hunter Valley.

But big really does, in this case at least, mean beautiful. As far as the eye can see, life is dedicated to the horses; railed paddocks and green pastures. In the far distance, the ridged peaks of the Galtees, Ireland’s highest inland mountain range, provide shelter from the worst of the weather, ensuring a temperate climate. For Coolmore, along with the myriad of horse studs and farms, from the one-man bands to the truly huge, are all clustered around the Rock of Cashel in Tipperary because of nature not man. We might have named this the Golden Vale, but it was the Ice Age that gave us the right to call it that, leaving behind as it did a land of limestone from which grows the most perfect turf.

      You don’t need to see it to know it – just walk on it. It might not feel like the soft lawns of Banstead Manor. In fact, it slightly scrunches underfoot as the aroma of wild thyme, basil and marjoram is released by your footfalls. It is said that a square metre of this calcareous grassland contains forty species of native flowering plants, which along with the butterflies, insects, curlews and skylarks, thrive with the chalky soil. And for growing foals and broody mares, what could be better than picking at calcium-rich grass?

      Coolmore is not ordered in the sense that the paddocks are in regimented lines. Nor are the connecting roads Roman straight. Each stable yard is not a cookie-cutter creation of the next. I assume this is because Coolmore has evolved over four decades. And for that, it has a certain charm. Humpbacked stone bridges cross little limestone streams. Wiggly lines of mature horse chestnut trees and hawthorn bushes decorate the landscape. Ponds have gathered in low-lying ground. The buildings range from spartan utility to perfectly formed yards in quiet, out-of-the-way corners. As you travel around, I’d be tempted to say everywhere you look there are horses. But that is not altogether true.

For of all the things I didn’t expect to see at Coolmore were cattle; there are more white, large-muscled Charolais, black Aberdeen Angus and the white and brown Simmental beef animals than you might imagine, all mixed in with the mares and foals, sharing the same paddocks and grass. That said, there does seem to be a certain demarcation within each enclosure, with a small herd of cattle, maybe six or eight in all, and a similar numbered harras of horses. Without any suggestion of animosity, they appear to be keeping to very separate groups. So you might wonder, as did I, if they don’t offer any companionship why they are there at all? For surely it can’t be economic;

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