the doyles
Family business
Ross Doyle, now in his 20th year as a bloodstock agent, chats with Martin Stevens about the family’s bloodstock agency, which is flourishing with Group 1 results achieved, top lots purchased and busy days buying racehorses across all European sales
W
E HAVE BECOME SO accustomed to Peter and Ross Doyle buying blue-chip champions across the board that the profile of one of their more recent star purchases, the Group 1-placed Happy Romance, has a pleasingly nostalgic feel to it. The Dandy Man filly was sourced by the Doyles at their happiest hunting ground of Doncaster, and for the bargain sum of £25,000. Her breeder and vendor Jimmy Murphy of Redpender Stud had previously sold the champion Canford Cliffs and high-class half-brothers Estidhkaar and Toormore to the Irish father-son team of agents. Trained by Richard Hannon jnr – who else? – as a two-year-old Happy Romance won 2020’s Weatherbys Super Sprint, the Goffs UK Premier Yearling Stakes and the Group 3 Dick Poole Fillies’ Stakes, in which she took the notable scalp of Alcohol Free.
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Happy Romance is the sort of horse the agency made its name with. I think she’s only going to get better too... This year, she has won the Listed Chelmer Fillies’ Stakes and the Hackwood Stakes (G3) and finished fourth in the Haydock Sprint Stakes (G1) to take her career earnings to well in excess of ten times her purchase price. Her value as a broodmare prospect is, of course, much higher still.
So, is it fair to still think of Happy Romance as the archetypal Peter and Ross Doyle Bloodstock horse, even when they’ve bought winners at all points of the distance spectrum – sprint sensations galore, crack milers such as Canford Cliffs, Dick Turpin and Paco Boy, middle-distance marvels such St Leger Classic runner-up Mojo Star, Japan and Pether’s Moon, and even a celebrity staying chaser in Lostintranslation? “Some agents don’t like being pigeonholed but we don’t mind it if it’s for buying good horses!” says Ross with a laugh. “Yes, of course, Happy Romance is the sort of horse the agency made its name with. I think she’s only going to get better, too, and could do some serious damage later this season and next year as well, if she’s kept in training. “If we had four or five like her running for us each year we’d be very happy!” Thankfully, the Doyles usually do have more than a handful of high-class runners advertising their agency on an annual basis, and that has been the case for Doyle
