SIERRA

At times I couldn’t quite decide whether I wanted to breed Flat horses as well as NH. Sierra was purchased at one of those times, for she seemed to offer both possibilities. We went to the Newmarket December Sales in 2007 looking to buy a Flat broodmare; but two options were too expensive and a third seemed so psychotic as to be unmanageable. I then identified Sierra as having potential for Flat breeding but with a NH ‘Plan B’.

Although herself only a winner of a minor race over just under 8 furlongs, Sierra was a daughter of the good sire Anabaa and the French 1000 Guineas winner Silvermine, and half-sister to Group 1 winner Sillery along with a Listed winner on the Flat and another over hurdles. Her first foal, Songe, was a useful Flat winner and had recently placed in two Black-Type events as a 3YO hurdler. She was in foal to Numerous, a beautifully-bred son of Mr Prospector who had sired good winners in South America; but, since he had proved a disappointment in France, this was likely to keep her price in check. We bought her for 50,000 guineas.

The Numerous foal was the only one so far foaled (or ever likely to be) by B. Mayoh unaided. We had been expecting the foal for several semi-sleepless nights but nothing happened. Sierra was kept in the foaling box (a converted garage just outside the house) during the day, ‘just in case’. One lunchtime I was alone and took a brief nap on the settee. I woke up, glanced at the TV monitor of the foaling box, and with horror noticed a white bag protruding from Sierra’s rear, imminently about to burst. I telephoned for help, but help was 40 minutes away, so there was no choice but to do what I could.

I went to the mare and felt inside her, hoping and praying to find a head and two legs, this being the combination that one likes to find in a foaling. To my immense relief I found them. I then began to pull on the foal’s legs, in sync with the contractions. Without much effort out it came. Apart from the fact that the mare immediately leapt up and separated the placenta, which they are not meant to do, it was a textbook delivery.

Oh yes, and I should have waited until Sierra had actually gone down before I started pulling, but she soon put me right on that… and for absolute perfection it would have been better if the ‘she’ that came out had been a ‘he’ – or at least a better racehorse.

The filly was a well-proportioned individual that gave no problems with her development. She was sold as a yearling for €11,000 at the Tattersalls Ireland September Sales, put into training with Dave Evans and never troubled the judge in six races at two. She was then given away as a hack. The only foal I delivered was not one subsequently named Frankel.  

The first of Sierra’s matings that we planned was to the Derby winner Motivator, intending to follow the ‘Flat route’. This mating was repeated the next year after Sierra was rejected for covering by the then fashionable Nayef. (Later in his career not even a dray horse would have been rejected for Nayef, so long as the drayman could pay the fee). Both coverings produced colts, the first a handsome animal later named Black Moty, of whom for a time we entertained great hopes.

We sent him to Highclere Stud to be raised and consigned, although whilst there he was somewhat outshone by another youngster by his grandsire, Montjeu, who subsequently achieved rather greater fame under the name ‘Camelot’. Our colt needed treatment for osteocondrosis (OCD), but that seemed to go well; and, although he was in Book 2 rather than Book 1 of the Tattersalls October Sale, he ought to have brought a decent price.

Unfortunately, two things went against him. The first was that Motivator was distinctly ‘cold’ at the time, with his yearling prices well down on those of 12 months before. The second was that, as the consignor informed me on the morning of the sale, he was a ‘rig’ (i.e. one testicle had not yet descended). I had looked in on him at Newmarket the day before, but no mention had been made of this problem.

Perhaps if I had been informed somewhat earlier I might have moved onto selling him as a gelded NH store, but, having incurred costs for entry fees and preparation, it was rather too late to take this course. That morning there seemed nothing to do but to instruct that he be sold for whatever he could bring, which was 8,000 guineas to race in Italy. He was placed there on his only outing but achieved no further distinction.

The second Motivator colt was slightly smaller but with plenty of power, but by now the attractions of the mating were beginning to wane. Motivator looked dead in the water as a sire, whilst neither had Anabaa set the world alight as a broodmare sire. This one was sold as a foal for €13,000 at Goffs November Sales, after a farcical scenario in which a Turkish gentleman wanted to buy him before the sale but put him through the ring in my name, and then changed his mind. The colt was neither raced nor named.

In any case, sending a mare by Anabaa to the failed stallion Motivator was clearly a really bad idea, because that year hardly anyone else tried it. One of the few that did (it may actually be ‘one of the two’) was Haras du Quesnay, from whom we had bought Sierra. They had slightly better luck with the cross, producing a fairly useful filly called Treve.

Sierra’s problems really began once she realised, before anyone else did, that she was the Anabaa mare that, when covered by Motivator in 2009, hadn’t produced a dual winner of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe; for this seemed to have a traumatic effect on her productivity. After being rested for a year, she produced a lovely filly by Midnight Legend that died from colic as a foal. Next came a dead foal by Robin des Champs, in a year that Robin des Champs produced very few foals but with those that appeared being much in demand.

By this time, my separation from Sandra led to my selling Sierra to Michael Moore for under a quarter of what she had cost, but the legendary luck of the Irish did not extend to Merry Michael; for Sierra’s misfortunes continued. She was barren in 2013 to Malinas and in 2014 to Fame And Glory (despite having had a successful operation to rectify the conformation of her girly parts the previous year). Exasperated, Michael sent her back to England, saying I could have her.

Returned to the care of the vet who had originally sorted out her vulval problems, she immediately got in foal to Sulamani. The resulting colt sold for €12,500 as a foal and as ‘Siberian Star’ later became a useful, though ‘interestingly campaigned’, hurdler and chaser in Ireland, winning two races in 40 starts, with a best RPR of 117.

After that we hit a pattern of dead foal / early abortion / live foal for two three-year spells. The first of the live foals were a 2018 filly by Telescope whose stable name was ‘Xena’, who we initially hoped would race for us under the name ‘Seeyouinmydreams’. (The name was chosen because Dorte had a dream of seeing her late father, Eric, in a dream in which she got nearer and nearer to him, tried to hold him, and then his face aged from his appearance when she was young to that when he died and gradually faded away.)

However, when ‘Xena’ was being pre-trained by Denis Leahy there were concerns about whether, without soft palate surgery, her breathing would stand up to the rigours of racing – and on the previous occasion we had tried this with a filly in pre-training it had proved an expensive failure.

Accordingly,, I decided to sell the filly at a Horses in Training sales at Ascot in December 2021, where she brought £10,500. I must confess that this was not what Dorte wanted to do, since she still believed in ‘Xena’ and thought we should stick with her. However, icy logic won the day, this being to generate positive cash flow from the daughter of an old mare that had brought us little success to date, rather than investing more time and money finding out if ‘Xena’ could or could not race successfully.

At least, it seemed like icy logic until just under five months later, when her new handler, an Irish Point-to-Point trainer named Andy Pierce, ran her in an 11-runner 4YO Mares Maiden Point-to-Point at a place called Largy. When Xena won by a most impressive 15 lengths I was forced to admit that I may have made a mistake.

I had to repeat the admission (although with suitable caveats about the difficulty of making practical use of knowledge afforded by hindsight) one month later when Seeyouinmydreams strolled around the Tattersalls auction ring at Newmarket to attract a bid of 235,000 guineas to go to Paul Nichols. She is the second of our fillies to be trained at Ditcheat, after first being sold for relatively little money before bringing rather more after winning an Irish Point-to-Point – and I still hope Seeyouinmydreams is able to do as well as Lifeboat Mona did!

She began the right way (following the customary Nichols wind operation) by winning a well-contested Mares NH Flat race at Newbury on her Rules debut, making all the running and winning by 11 lengths whilst being on the bridle the whole way. However, her next two runs indicated that the breathing issues may not have been fully resolved, for she faded badly after leading early on in the Aintree G2 Mares NH Flat race, and then was pulled up when reappearing in a Mares’ Novice Hurdle the next season.

At this stage I made tentative moves to try to repurchase her as a broodmare, for a sum much nearer to the £10,500 I had been paid than to the 235,000 guineas her new owners had paid for her; but a further wind operation was arranged and she returned to the track after a six-month absence.

Her desirability as a broodmare increased, though the possibility of affording her reduced, when she won two hurdle races (a Mares’ Maiden and a Novice) in impressive style, making all the running and jumping beautifully each time. We now await further developments in seeing whether Xena can produce similar performances in better company when she is taken on for the lead, rather than being able to relax in front. Will she still be able to breathe so freely? If she becomes available, will I?

***************************************************************************************************************

Sierra’s next live foal came three years later, a handsome, strong-willed 2021 colt also by Telescope. Dorte nicknamed him ‘Shetan’ (which apparently means ‘the Devil’ in Arabic, though I have no idea how she knew that). Perhaps buyers were put off by the name, or perhaps we were unlucky that big sister hadn’t run yet, but he brought only £8,000 as a January yearling.

Sierra’s Breeding Record

It would be marvellous if one of the offspring produced by Sierra in her dotage is able to achieve as much over jumps as did her very first foals, who were produced carrying hopes of Flat glory.