Stanley feature - Jan.qxd
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Stanley House Stud and has been a very loyal supporter of ours. They’ve turned down some rather substantial offers for the horse and it was lovely for us to end up standing him and to be able to buy him at a price where we were able to form a syndicate, not to get the highest price available, but to get the best syndicate of breeders available.” Thirty-five outside shares have been sold in Notnowcato to a wide variety of breeders, including Cheveley Park Stud, Meon Valley Stud, Genesis Green Stud, Newsells Park Stud, Moyglare Stud, George Strawbridge and Usk Valley Stud. “The point about being an independent stallion stud is that you can’t just go out there and be the highest bidder,” says Stanley. “If you’ve actually got to get a commercial return from that horse, you can’t afford just to use a deep pocket. You’ve got to have a view on what will make a good stallion. “Inchinor was such a friend and therefore it’s particularly thrilling to have a son of his, rather than another horse, coming to the stud. Mrs Robeson is going to the sales specifically to buy mares to send to this horse and my brother and I will be doing exactly the same thing. The idea is to give him every chance.” Back in Hyperion’s day, the ‘stallion wing’ of the family’s breeding operation was known as Woodland Stud, while Stanley House Stud, across the road, housed Lord Derby’s mares. Since the sale of the family’s Newmarket home, racing stables and a significant slice of the stud land to Sheikh Mohammed, Woodland Stud now bears the family name. The Stanley brothers, just like many other smaller stallion masters, now find themselves in competition with the might of the Sheikh’s breeding enterprise, Darley, which is not a fact that bothers Peter. He says: “I find that the big studs are great to deal with and we’re incredibly fortunate to have Coolmore and Sheikh Mohammed in Britain and Ireland. They have a wonderful array of stallions and it’s merely a fact of nature that it’s hard to compete, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. In reality, not everyone wants to sell their horses to Shekih Mohammed or John Magnier, so you do have a bit of a chance as an independent. “The other fascinating thing about the
Notnowcato replaces his sire Inchinor, whose headstone at the stud is below
“It’s hard to compete but that is not always a bad thing” – Peter Stanley
stallion market is that however much we link the importance of pedigree and conformation and everything else, stallions come from strange places. Inchinor himself started as a £3,000 stallion and covered very limited books of poor quality mares. “Yet he was able to show his prepotency and breed some very good horses, some better than himself. So he was a horse who was able to improve on the mare he covered, which to me, when I’m looking for a stallion to send a mare to, is the most important thing; to be able to upgrade that mare.” Stanley may have inherited his love of the game from a family steeped in racing for generations, but his ethos as a breeder stems firmly from the necessity to be as commercial as possible. “In order for my brother to retain the stud, it had to be run along purely commercial lines,” he says. Dramatic culling of the stud’s existing mares took place after his uncle’s death, with just a hint of sentimentality being allowed to prevail. “Really, only a few of them were any good,” reflects Stanley. “We have a number of mares whose families have been at the stud since the late 1800s, so lines like that you are cautious about culling just for the romance of being able to keep those families going.
JANUARY 2008 THOROUGHBRED OWNER & BREEDER 55