Going it alone

Going it alone

Clare Manning is looking forward to the Orby Sale and Tattersalls with a first draft of yearlings selling from Boherguy Stud. Aisling Crowe meets the debutant consignor

S RIKING OUT. Making that decision to go out on your own and taking that first step by yourself; chasing the tomorrow you want to create for yourself. For Clare Manning, Boherguy Stud and the yearlings she will consign at Goffs and Tattersalls this autumn, are the physical embodiment of that act.

After an education that encompassed three continents and an apprenticeship served with some of the best in the business, Manning took the bold decision to go out on her own and, less than a year since handing in her notice at Baroda Stud, is certain the decision was the right one.

“I wanted something different,” she explains. “Baroda was great and I learned so much, especially behind the scenes and dealing with clients, but the job I wanted, the sales coordinator role, just didn’t exist in Ireland, and I didn’t know what to do.

“I was winging it really and I got asked to take a couple of foals after Goffs and I had my own mare here and I thought I could do that and maybe take on something part-time in the afternoons, maybe a small farm that needed help in the office.

Mares and foals at Boherguy Stud

“Then I thought I’d foal my own mare here and I got asked by someone if I was foaling and the next thing I knew I ended up foaling ten! It kind of took off really through word of mouth, just getting it out there.

“I went up to the February Sale, I met people there and thought I’d sit on it for two months and if I didn’t get anything then I’d look for that part-time job, but it grew and grew.”

Taught to ride by her father, the Classic-winning jockey Kevin, and raised on a diet of pedigrees and brilliant racehorses ridden by him, trained, and in many cases bred, by her grandfather, the champion trainer Jim Bolger, the chain that connects to her current venture is not so obvious.

Her passion for the adrenaline rush of the sales, and working with yearlings in particular, was ignited by time spent at Goffs, flicking through catalogues and watching the horses go through the ring, taken there after school by her mother Úna.

LATER MANNING worked as a bidspotter at the sales ring after her teenage dreams of a showjumping career foundered on the rocks of reality.

When her schooldays ended, she went first to her grandfather’s Redmondstown Stud in County Wexford and then to Kildangan Stud. Her mentors there suggested foreign shores as the next step in her apprenticeship and that led her to Kentucky and WinStar Farm, where she spent a year. That was where her infatuation with thoroughbred sales was well and truly kindled.

“I ended up falling in love with sales work. As much as I loved it coming out of Kildangan, if I had any hesitations they were gone coming out of WinStar, I did yearling prep, mare prep, foaling, I had a barn of 20 mares and foals to look after as well,” she says.

“But then I went into yearling prep and I was in the Derby barn, which is the barn for their top 20 yearling colts and just loved it, the hand walking and everything,” she recalls, her eyes dancing at the memory.

“That was the first yearling prep I had ever done. In between that I did the sales for Brookdale, Hunter Valley and Eaton and did sales for them at different times and went back out the next year and did more sales.”

While in America she met with David Cox, who invited her to work the sales season in Ireland and England for his Baroda Stud, Manning fitted in a sale season for Baroda and Colbinstown before she headed back to Kentucky which she did before travelling back to Kentucky to work the breeding stock sales. All the while, she debated the merits of applying for the Irish National Stud course, and the benefits of a more formal qualification.

Unsure as to whether it was the right move for her, any indecision evaporated the second she received the call from Sally Carroll, informing her that she had secured her place as part of the 2016 intake of students.

Manning doing the sales for Baroda

Paca Paca Farm’s Harry Sweeney was a guest lecturer on the course and she asked if she could travel to Japan to work the sales season for him.

Then followed Arrowfield Stud and the Magic Millions and Inglis Easter Sales. In between were stints in America with Hunter Valley and in Europe working the sales season for Baroda Stud, to where she returned in the spring of 2017.

Between America and the Irish National Stud course those 18 months were probably hands down the best and where I learned the most, from scratch in a way.”

Then for the first time in her life, she was solely responsible with nobody more senior to turn to when decisions had to be made. Before foaling began, this was a concern for her but she found that when needed, she had the decisiveness required.

“It’s great being out on my own, I love it. At the start, even though I’ve done plenty of foaling, I was trying to figure out who I’d ring if something went wrong, I’ve always had someone more senior, but it is funny when you get into it, when you have to make the call, then you do.

“You don’t think about it anymore, I was probably over thinking it in the build-up, but once you’re in the situation it’s up to you.” Her experiences preparing yearlings for sale on four continents have informed her approach to the process the yearlings who are going through Boherguy Stud. www.internationalthoroughbred.net 71

So, too, has the expertise of her father and grandfather, one a gifted horseman with particular way with young horses, and the other a master trainer with an encyclopaedic knowledge of pedigrees.

Treating each yearling as an individual and designing their preparation is the cornerstone on which she is hoping to build the reputation of Boherguy Stud.

“They are all prepped as individuals, the Dandy Man filly [Lot 130 Tattersalls Ireland September Yearling Sale] is lunged for 20 to 25 minutes a day but the others don’t.

“Feed is also designed for the individual, same with tack – everything gets rollers or bungees, depending on what needs what. Little things are important.

“Some need to get out first, do their work and get straight into it whereas others like to chill out. It doesn’t take any longer; if you take the time in the beginning to figure out what each horse needs or even to make little changes along the way. If you are constantly watching it is very easy to make the little changes and it makes your life easier because your horses are happier. They are not going to thrive if they are not happy and relaxed.”

“If you are constantly watching it is very easy to make the little changes and it makes your life easier because your horses are happier

Her Goffs debut sees her send two regally bred fillies to the Orby Sale, both pinhooks from last November’s Foal Sale.

First up is Lot 277, a Sea The Stars granddaughter of Because, a full-sister to Yesterday and Quarter Moon, while Lot 460 is a Galileo grand-daughter of Group 1 winner Banks Hill, a full-sister to Dansili, Interncontinental, Cacique and Champs Elysees.

Through the Sportsman Sale she consigns Lot 690, a filly from the first crop of the dual Derby winner Harzand out of a half-sister to the dam of Group 2 Ribblesdale Stakes winner Banimpire, who was trained by Jim Bolger.

Tattersalls Book 1 wasn’t in her initial plans for her first year consigning, but when asked to prepare a quartet of high-class fillies, she couldn’t refuse.

Lot 14 is a New Approach daughter of Scribonia, from the family of Cuis Ghaire and Verbal Dexterity, Lot 195 a full-sister to the Group 2 winner and Group 1-placed Turret Rocks and she is followed into the ring by a Dawn Approach filly out of Beyond Intensity. She is a half-sister to Beyond Compare, the dam of Lot 195.

The challenge of striking out on her own and making her own name for herself is one which she is relishing.

“The next thing now is to get foals in for the foal sales; I am hoping that people will see how well I have done the yearlings. I suppose this year is a showcase really of what I can do, regardless of pedigrees, pages whatever, that this is the way our horses are prepped, this is how it is done and this is the standard we achieve.”

Manning is more than prepared to be heading out under her own steam.