niarchos mares
A bloodstock recalibration
The Niarchos family is in the midst of restructing its Flaxman Holdings breeding empire, racing manager Alan Cooper chats to Daragh O’Conchuir about plans
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T IS ARC WEEKEND so you might expect Alan Cooper to be speaking from Paris, at the arena in which Bago provided the Niarchos family and their racing manager with a lifetime peak by winning the autumn feature in 2004. Instead, Cooper is in Ireland, having taken in an All-Weather meeting at Dundalk the night before. Initial impressions are that it is a little off-piste at this time of the year for the British-based Cooper, who began his association with the heavyweight Niarchos/ Flaxman Holdings operation in 1984 as an assistant to Philip Payne-Gallwey, the bloodstock agent that the Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos turned to when taking the first concerted steps towards establishing what would become a breeding and racing empire. By the time Cooper joined the organisation, Nureyev had already been a headline purchase at $1.3m as a yearling in 1978 and after finishing first past the post in the 2000 Guineas two years later, the son of Northern Dancer would go on to be an exceptional stallion. Ten-time Group 1-winning homebred Miesque was his greatest flagbearer and she continues to deliver, with in excess of 40 individual black-type winners amongst her descendants. Astute distaff acquisitions would prove to be the cornerstone of what was to come and Stavros Niarchos with Nureyev
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