Raphuca was the first mare I ever purchased as a carefully considered first choice from a catalogue. I analysed the broodmares entered in the 2004 Tattersalls November Sale, working out the best prospects, their likely prices and what was happening in their families, then highlighted my choices.
Raphuca was my top pick, based on the fact that she was a full-sister to a Grade 2-winning hurdler In Contrast, by one sire I greatly admired, Be My Native, and in foal to another, Old Vic. Against that, in a brief career she had won only a Point-to-Point; and, as a Cork man might say: “The rest of the family would need all the Black-Type they’d have.” I calculated her most likely price as €47,000. I have no idea how I thought I could predict with such precision back then, since I certainly couldn’t today.
Of course, all of this was on paper, and much would depend on the mare’s conformation and the way she moved. As I was travelling to the Sale alone, and still felt I needed help in this department, I enrolled the support of Alfie Buller’s assistant, Caroline Kenneally. When we viewed Raphuca, I saw a medium-sized mare, rather straight in the front leg and not the greatest walker. Caroline, a much better judge than me, exclaimed: “She’s lovely, I luv her.”
Reservations overcome, I bought her after a competitive auction with what was probably my last bid, at €45,000, and promptly turned down the prospect of ‘taking a profit’ from the under-bidder. I should have taken it because I was right about Raphuca’s conformation, as was evident when we looked at her back home; whilst the more I studied her pedigree the less it impressed me – there were too many workaday individuals and not enough exciting names close-up. What on earth had I been thinking?
The Old Vic foal she was carrying turned out to be a filly rather than the hoped-for colt. She needed milk supplement early on but grew into a nice enough individual. Having abandoned an early intention to put her in training ourselves, we sold her for €8,000 as a three-year old. She was named Showcaller but neither raced nor produced a foal.
After missing a year when she was barren to the then virtually infertile Bob Back, after a late attempt at recovery via Presenting, Raphuca produced a foal by Presenting in 2007. At the time the stallion was becoming the hottest NH property around, having sired the Cheltenham Gold Cup winner, War of Attrition, the previous year. When a bay colt was born, I thought we had a €40,000 foal on our hands, despite the fact that after birth he was slightly affected by oxygen depletion.
However, this was reckoning without his knee conformation, evidently derived from Raphuca rather than Presenting, and a moderate walk that probably had the same origins. It took all Josie Moore’s persuasiveness to get €10,000 for him as a foal after he was initially led out of the ring unsold. As a four-year old he brought even less than this. Named Mr Utah, he proved himself a useful long-distance hurdler (Best OR 123, Best RPR 126), winning three races though evidently afflicted by unsoundness. However, these credentials made him by some way the best of Raphuca’s produce!
By now I had lost confidence in Raphuca as a broodmare and determined to sell her before her value depreciated further, even though she was once more in foal to Presenting. Three days after her colt foal went through the ring, I sold her privately for €20,000 after she too had failed to meet her auction reserve.
For her new owner (who needed a certain amount of encouragement to get round to paying for her), she later produced another colt foal, whose sale price fell from €12,000 as a foal to £5,000 as a 4YO before he went on to win two moderate races. None of her other offspring were successful either in the sales ring or on the racecourse, though several were by good stallions and two by outstanding ones.
Raphuca taught me the expensive lesson that, if you have reservations about a horse’s conformation, you should listen to yourself not to people whose money is not at stake; and it is unwise to become fixated on a mare largely on account of her sire and that of the foal inside her – in each case there will be other opportunities.
Actually, though, I would probably have made a mistake in buying any of the mares on my ‘long-list’ at that particular Sale, for the only one of the 22 that subsequently produced a Black-Type winner, the Listed winner I Can Imagine, was unsold at a price well outside my valuation.