but at the same time I needed raw material to train and there was a terrific market for horses in the £15,000-£25,000 bracket. “Those sires got me winners and Nordico didn’t do many any harm. He nearly got me a Heinz winner with Malvernico and I had plenty of good winners by him. Strangely though I don’t have any broodmares by him now. “Erins Isle was a good racehorse. He was the second best three-year-old of his generation in Ireland behind King’s Lake. He was sold to the US for a lot of money and did very well out there but the people who owned him weren’t stallion men and he ended up at stud in Florida and I was able to buy him for around $30,000. “Project Manager was a cheap source of raw material and it was a similar story with Lil’s Boy. This all meant that I could cover the majority of my mares with my own stallion and then be able to send a few of the others to high profile stallions elsewhere. “I have an interesting stallion there now in Vocalised who won a Greenham Stakes and a Tetrarch Stakes for me. He’s the only source of Bold Ruler blood in Europe. Bold Ruler was a champion as a two-year-old and a racehorse that I greatly admire. He went on to sire Secretariat (a picture of the great US Champion adorns the walls of one of the barns in his main yard) and I hope that one day I could have a horse as good or good looking as he.” A similar approach with outside stallions has also been employed by Bolger and has worked spectacularly well in the case of Galileo and not so well in other cases. “Yes that is a weakness. If I’m right I don’t just want one or two. If a stallion is that good and you really like him what’s the point in having just two or three of them?” “Ahonoora was probably the first one. I bought a few of them and got people to buy them and that worked out well. On the other hand Last Tycoon was not good at all and I don’t have any Last Tycoon mares now. More recently it was Galileo who worked out very well for me and John Magnier.” Galileo was to become the sire of the Bolger bred Teofilo whose first runners have just hit the track. “I’ve around 22 two-yearolds in training by him. I’ve about 16 yearlings by him and have sent 31 mares to him this year. I believe he will be the leading first crop sire and it will be a dead heat for second between Lawman and Dylan Thomas.”
Looking back to his very first mare purchase, the horse who was to give him his first winner as a trainer, Bolger states: “The first thoroughbred I had was actually a broodmare. She was in foal when I bought her and she foaled around April. After a month we weaned her as I wanted to have her ready for the RDS”. “I bought her as lady’s hack, she was very pretty and I intended to bring her to the RDS. I used to bring her down to the Phoenix Park to exercise and after a while I thought that she might have a chance as a racehorse so I sent her to Phil Canty as this was before I had a licence. “On her first start she was beaten at the Curragh but then she won the Woodville Maiden at Gowran the day after the Horse Show and then the following year I trained her and she won a hurdle race in Roscommon. “Subsequently we did breed from her and she went to Lucifer a few times. She bred a few winners and used to get good looking stock who sold well but she wasn’t a foundation mare or anything. “I then started to keep a few of the fillies that I trained and covered them. I kept them with my brother Paddy and then I bought Redmondstown in the 1980’s which entitled the breeding operation to grow. The mares that we were keeping became a source of winners but this was all very dependent on the training business going well.” Nonetheless despite the very significant size of his breeding operation it is training where Bolger’s first loyalties still lie. “The training comes first and immediately after a race I’m just happy to have won and I’m not thinking about where the horse was bred but when I’m driving home afterwards and realise that I’ve the dam and a number of close relatives that’s quite satisfying.” “I’ve 70 mares who will provide me with between 50 and 60 two-year-olds every year. That’s what I need to stay on track and the quality of mares is getting better all the time.” Further assistance to Bolger’s breeding empire is now supplied by Equinome, a company which he co founded and is a director of. The company was established in 2009 with the aim of maximizing the genetic potential of each thoroughbred through the development and provision of genetic tests. In short to make sure the right mare goes to the right stallion. “Equinome is a big help now too and if I were starting to go to Galileo again I’d have a better system of deciding what mares to send to him.” While he is most famous for his training exploits Jim Bolger’s success as a breeder has unquestionably been a cornerstone of his career and indeed his best days in this sphere could still be ahead of him On The Cover Interview
SPRING 2011
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