A real Diamond

IT IS OCTOBER when I catch up with Blue Diamond Stud’s adviser Tony Nerses during the yearling sales at Newmarket. There has been much to talk about on the track for the operation in the past 12 months, including stakes successes for colourbearers Extra Elusive and Majestic Noor, and there is inevitably plenty of mulling over the implications of Covid-19 for the bloodstock industry, but the conversation repeatedly returns to the subject of 2021 and the excitement the new year holds.

That’s because next season the stud, owned by Kuwaiti businessman Imad Al Sagar, gets to race the keenly anticipated first crop of two-year-olds by its homebred triple Group 1 winner Decorated Knight.

Furthermore, the majority of the stud’s own runners by the brilliantly bred son of Galileo will be partnered by its newly retained jockey, Hollie Doyle.

Decorated Knight, a son of Galileo, was bred by Blue Diamond Stud from Pearling, an unraced Storm Cat sister to the great Giant’s Causeway signed for by Nerses at 1,300,000gns at the Tattersalls December Mares’ Sale in 2011. The striking chestnut lived up to that blue-chip breeding by winning eight races, most notably the Jebel Hatta, Tattersalls Gold Cup and Irish Champion Stakes for Roger Charlton.

A strong traveller with a potent turn of foot, he was also notably tough, with the Irish Champion Stakes victory over such luminaries as Poet’s Word and Churchill coming on his eighth start of the season.

Blue Diamond Stud chose the Irish National Stud to stand its pride and joy, and the young stallion’s career has taken an unusual course.

Whereas many will cover their largest book in the first season and gradually fewer each year until their debut runners hit the track, Decorated Knight’s book size has actually grown every year since an initial intake of 66 in 2018. He received 79 bookings in 2019 and a bumper 122 this year, in what should have been the notoriously difficult third season.

Nerses explains that Decorated Knight was close to the operation’s heart from birth, and not just because of his outstanding breeding.

“Decorated Knight was born on our first stud in Tuddenham on February 11, 2012, on what was a snowy morning,” he says.

“Pearling’s waters broke at around 10. The stud manager Andrew Rawlin was there, and he immediately rang his assistant Amanda Earp for assistance. She arrived at the stud straight away. There were slight complications with the delivery and when the foal came out he wasn’t breathing.

“They realised quickly and, while Andrew went to bring oxygen and resuscitation equipment, Amanda was giving him mouth to mouth resuscitation and managed to get him going. A star was born! He was a very courageous boy right from the start.

“He had it all on the track, but what stood out was that turn of foot. If you look at a video of the Jebel Hatta you’ll see he was boxed in with nowhere to go right up until the 2f pole, but when he got space he finished like a train. He showed the same devastating turn of foot in the Irish Champion Stakes.

“He was detached from the field in last as they turned for home and I thought ‘what’s going on?!’ but then he just took off and flew down the straight to win in the style of a true champion.”

Nerses sums up the horse who is clearly the apple of his eye.

“Decorated Knight’s got it all,” he says. “Looks, attitude, substance, walk, pedigree – and that pedigree is improving all the time, too. Since I bought Pearling, her sister You’resothrilling has produced Gleneagles, Happily and Marvellous.

“Most of the members of the family show talent at two, as well.”

He adds that he expects Blue Diamond Stud to campaign around eight of the first Decorated Knight two-year-olds, who will be spread around a number of trainers including Roger Charlton, John Gosden and Roger Varian.

“We’re very hopeful for his stud career,” he says. “The way in which his book size has climbed year to year is unreal. Breeders are realising what a smashing horse he is when they see him and his early stock.”

Nerses is also rapturous in his praise of Hollie Doyle, who got the retainer to ride Al Sagar’s horses off to the perfect start when steering the John Gosden-trained Majestic Noor, a Frankel half-sister to the stud’s Royal Ascot Group 2 winner Aljazzi, to a decisive victory in the Listed John Musker Fillies’ Stakes at Yarmouth in September.

“I’m so happy that Hollie’s riding for us, she’s fantastic,” he says. “She’s easy to get on with, she always does her homework on the horses and is very informative when she debriefs us after her rides. The success hasn’t gone to her head and I don’t think she’s the sort of person that it will; she’s very down to earth.

Nerses insists Doyle’s gender was not a factor in the decision to hire her, though.

“Male or female, it doesn’t matter,” he says. “If you show talent as a jockey you need the quality of horse to progress your career. If you haven’t got that then how are you going to ride more and better winners? Hollie deserved that support.”

Having produced a multiple Group 1-winning young stallion and with a highprofile retained jockey on board, Nerses and Al Sagar can be satisfied with the progress made by Blue Diamond Stud since its establishment around ten years ago.

And that is not including the two Classic winners who gilded Al Sagar and former Blue Diamond Stud co-owner Saleh Al Homaizi’s entry into ownership in Europe before that: Araafa, who took the scalp of George Washington to land the Irish 2,000 Guineas in 2006, and Authorized, who famously broke Frankie Dettori’s Epsom Derby duck a year later.

“It’s been an incredible journey from the start,” says Nerses. “We were very lucky to have two Classic winners in a very short space of time and, of course, they were both bought in the same year, less than two months apart, one as a foal and one as a yearling. That’s a unique achievement.”

He goes on to tell the history of how Blue Diamond Stud was founded.

“At the time we were breedingfrom a few mares, but the success of Araafa and Authorized whetted the owners’ appetite and so we started to look at broadening our horizons and have our own stud,” he says.

“We found what we now call Blue Diamond North in Tuddenham and purchased it in June 2010. We modernised it and put in a spa and water treadmill. It’s only a small stud but it has served us well and is now an overflow stud for our horses out of training.

“The stud in Tuddenham soon got a little congested with horses and so I got in contact with Bidwells to ask if there were any studs around Newmarket we could rent.

“The first stud we were interested in turned out to be withdrawn from the market, but they told me there was a stud that they had valued a few months earlier that could be for sale.

“I said I’d have a look at it. It was the old Chevington Stud in Six Mile Bottom and when I viewed, it was love at first sight. A beautiful drive, nice buildings and plenty of space. I rang Imad and Saleh and they came to see it and loved it too.

“The negotiations to buy it took ages as the wife of the then owner [Felipe Hinojosa] loved the house on the stud and was reluctant to move.

“At last we managed to come to a figure that was acceptable to both parties and we moved into the stud, which we renamed Blue Diamond South, in 2012.”

The two studs act in symbiosis, with yearlings based at the North and mares and foals at the South. When the yearlings leave Tuddenham to enter pre-training, then the foals head from South to North.

Neither the Covid-19 pandemic nor lockdown measures have disrupted day-today business on the stud, Nerses reports, as all bar one of the staff live on site and extra sanitary measures such as face masks have been adopted with the minimum of fuss.

Travel restrictions have, of course, meant Al Sagar has not been able to get to the races as much as is usual, but as is the case with many owners he is grateful for racing to be taking place at all.

“Imad is involved in all decisions and loves seeing the stud and the horses,” says Nerses. “It’s fantastic for me to discuss all the decisions together, and for all the staff on the stud to see him enjoying his investment.”

Due to Al Homaizi’s departure from the partnership, the Blue Diamond Stud stock needed to go on the market to dissolve the partnership in 2018.

Al Sagar bought some – including Pearling at 2,400,000gns and her Galileo filly foal at 1,700,000gns – but other prized horses were sold to outside parties, including Duke of Cambridge Stakes heroine Aljazzi to Newsells Park Stud for 1,000,000gns, a price that broke the Tattersalls Autumn Horses in Training Sale record.

PEARLING is now in-foal to Kingman and Dubawi has been appointed as her suitor for next year.

“We’re going to stick to the system of selling the colts we produce and keeping the fillies,” says Nerses. “We want people to know what we’re trying to achieve so they don’t need to ask why we sell what we do.”

Yes, the overriding impression from our conversation is that there’s much to look forward to for Blue Diamond Stud in the near future.

But I can’t let Nerses go without asking him about his eye for a horse, and what he sees in potential purchases.

How did he select Araafa, a colt from the first crop of the inexpensive and otherwise inconsequential Mull Of Kintyre? What did he see in Authorized when he bought the son of Montjeu at just nine months old?

Nerses, whose purchase record stands at three Group 1 winners, five Group 2 winners, seven Group 3 winners and eight Listed winners despite not signing for many, and has bought every horse owned by Blue Diamond Stud, plays his cards close to his chest but says: “I look at the horses as an overall picture, taking into account how all the parts are put together.

“There are certain faults I will forgive in some horses and not in another, and I tend not to just focus on individual parts of the horse.”

Nerses is also a pedigree connoisseur and insists on plenty of black-type high up on a page, especially in breeding prospects. So it was hardly surprising that Giant’s Causeway’s sister Pearling came onto his radar, especially as she came with the added bonus of being in-foal to Galileo – that pregnancy turning out to be Decorated Knight.

“I remember Imad and Saleh rang me that year to ask what I had seen at Tattersalls,” says Nerses, “and I replied if you want to buy a top mare, there’s only one: she’s going to cost a lot, but if you want a proper horse you’ll have to pay.

“Thankfully, they had full trust in me and gave me the go-ahead, and we got Pearling.”

After the interview, Nerses heads off to add another Decorated Knight yearling to the Blue Diamond Stud string for 2021, paying 40,000gns for a half-sister to Listed winner Elusive Beauty.

Judging by the preceding conversation, we may hear a lot more of her in future.