Monday Musings: From Laundry House to the very top

It wasn’t just at Coolmore Australia or the parent company’s headquarters in Co Tipperary that news of Wootton Bassett’s demise brought abject misery and frustration just as last week’s offering here hit the laptops, writes Tony Stafford.

For the Laundry Cottage Stud Farm, in Hertfordshire, 35 miles up the A1 from Central London, it ended a magical 15 years for the breeders of the brilliant, unbeaten juvenile and then an even more remarkable stallion career.

It seems a contradiction in terms that a precocious horse, good enough to go through five races at two unbeaten, including the sales races with their massive fields and prizemoney at York and Doncaster and then the Group 1 Jean-Luc Lagardere at Longchamp, would become a late bloomer as a sire. That was Wootton Bassett to a tee. Melba and Colin Bryce, owners of the aforementioned stud, bought the seven-year-old mare Balladonia at the Tattersalls July sale in 2003, for 27,000gns.

She had already captured the imagination of owners The Cosmic Cases – hard to track them down I’m afraid – but they still have one in training this year with their equally elusive (except on the racecourse) trainer, Richard Fahey.

The Cases – I feel I can call them that as despite never speaking to them, I’m one of their dearest racing admirers by now – paid 30k in successive years for Balladonia to produce Mister Hardy (2005) and Mister Laurel (2006). So when two years later the colt son of Primo Dominie arrived in the Doncaster ring, they (along with Frank Brady) were again in action, stretching the price to 46 grand at the St Leger yearling sale.

Sent to Fahey, he had that stellar year in 2010, making him champion two-year-old in France after winning their top colts’ race. His counterpart in the UK, and overall European champion, was another unbeaten (and how!) juvenile in Frankel. Wootton Bassett raced only four times as a three-year-old, once encountering Frankel, to whom he was an admiring and remote seventh in the St James’s Palace Stakes.

So no Classic achievements for Wootton Bassett, but for Laundry Cottage the exploits of their star graduate had a major influence on prices paid for his younger siblings. Next up was Pretty Primo, 120k in 2009; then Related (2010), and Abbey Village (2011), both 80k; Glenalmond, 100k in 2013 and Barton Mills 42k in 2015. They all won races, so some performance from a mare bought quite cheaply as a seven-year-old. I make it more than £650k all round.

The Bryce family all pitch in at the stud. Daughter Gina finds time between her television and family commitments to help, as do her brother Calum and sister Ailsa. Gina’s husband, Alex Elliott, as well as being a regular buyer of Amo Racing youngsters and older horses, acts as stud manager.

I’ve mentioned it before, about when over a breakfast expertly presented by Michael Bell at his stables in Newmarket around a decade ago, I met the charming duo of Melba and Colin. During the acceptable hour or so, Colin revealed that, when Gina graduated from the Darley Flying Start programme that has set so many on their way to success in racing and its associated activities, they presented her with a book – written by me! I wonder does she still have it?

Meanwhile, the slow developer had started his stud career in France, and in five seasons he went from an initial fee of €6k, via €5k and €4k twice, before getting back up to €6k, by which time his stock had taken an exponential leap (one of several in his amazing career).

Twice more he did his Gallic job at a revised €20k and then twice again at double that, at which point Coolmore stepped in.

Wootton Bassett’s progeny had already shown high-class ability and in restrospect (always helpful!) it seemed a fair assumption that given the improved quality of mares likely to be available for him at Coolmore, he could prove a wise investment. Whichever of the stud’s astute executives came up with the idea deserves the greatest of respect.

Wootton Bassett was already 12 years of age when covering the first of sadly only five crops. At 17 he leaves the legacy of Group 1 winners galore including Aidan’s Whirl, and also Twain, the unbeaten (two from two) horse that we have waited all year to see from Ballydoyle, so far in vain.

Both are among the 83 horses remaining in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, run next Sunday at Longchamp, but Whirl, after her last of six performance behind local four-year-old Aventure, is dropping back in trip for the Prix de l’Opera.

Aidan is relying on four-time Oaks winner Minnie Hauk (Cheshire, Epsom, Irish and Yorkshire) and she is the obvious threat to Aventure, my pick to improve on last year’s second to Bluestocking, who had also beaten her in the 2024 Vermeille. Los Angeles also gets the gig.

At age 17, then, Wootton Bassett was no spring chicken, but the consolation is that he leaves behind three full Irish crops and that will almost certainly amount to around 500 individuals. Plenty of opportunities over the coming three seasons. Hopes that he would be the natural successor to Galileo, who died age 23 in 2022, may be largely dashed, but he’s still up there with Frankel as the sire whose progeny the big owners want to buy into.

Saturday’s racing at Newmarket threw up a tough Coolmore winner of the Cheveley Park Staes in True Love, who is getting tougher as she continues her career. “That’s what Aidan does”, said Michael Tabor in the winner’s enclosure afterwards.

The best performance of the three Group races on the card for juveniles was undoubtedly that of the Godolphin favourite Wise Approach in the Middle Park Stakes. Slowly away and then hampered, William Buick was right at the back for much of the race.

As Coolmore’s Wootton Bassett colt Brussels took what seemed an unassailable lead into the last furlong, suddenly you saw Buick on the wide outside and his mount sustained the unlikely run for an exceptional victory. He looks one for the Commonwealth Cup next June.

The training achievement of the day, however, was that of Karl Burke whose four-year-old Boiling Point made all under 9st12lb to win the Cambridgeshire. Most observers had ruled out horses drawn in the first ten stalls as many more recent runnings of the race had been dominated by those racing on the stands side.

But this was an unusual and in many ways unsatisfactory first leg of the old Autumn Double – if anyone bothers to link the two races anymore. Only 24 were declared, they normally have at least ten more, and this was reduced by one by race time.

The jockeys immediately after the start decided on a two-group strategy and many from the grandstands might have been surprised that the split seemed equal, with acres of Suffolk turf between them. In the event, Boiling Point under Clifford Lee made all the running beating ten others on that side with the Roger Varian-trained Indalo, receiving 18lb, getting to within a nose at the line. First home on the stands side was Erzindjan in fourth, trained by Terry Kent.

Karl’s 106 wins and £2.65 million domestic earnings are some way short of both numbers (121) and winnings (more than £4 million) from last year, but a remarkable 52 of this year’s victories have come from his two-year-olds. Only three of these have been on all-weather.

A reminder of other days occurred at Aqueduct racecourse in New York, otherwise known as the Big A, taking Belmont’s fixtures while it is being remodelled. There, Frankie Dettori teamed up with Charlie Appleby and Godolphin as Rebel’s Romance mopped up the ninth Group or Grade 1 success of his career, landing prohibitive odds of 13/20 by an easy three and a half lengths in the Joe Hirsch Turf Classic. Mentioning the title, I can see lugubrious Joe in my mind from the press boxes in the US in the 1980s and 1990s.

Talking of late bloomers, although Rebel’s Romance won his first two races, it wasn’t until his tenth that he collected his initial Group 1. In the subsequent nineteen appearances, he’s won another eight, while his cumulative tallies are 20 wins from 29 and earnings of £11,269,144. A money-machine par excellence and the seven-year-old is yet another testament to the gelding of horses before they can get irrevocably out of love with the game.

• TS

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