The records show me as breeder of the Grade 2 winner Kornati Kid, but he was actually inside Hiltonstown Lass when we bought her. Still, the fact that she was carrying a foal by Kayf Tara was a major reason for the purchase, for he was a stallion that I greatly admired and by one (Sadler’s Wells) I idolised. Accordingly, I never took too much trouble to emphasise that the idea of pairing Hiltonstown Lass with Kayf Tara was not my own.
Hiltonstown Lass, or ‘Kate’, was the first NH broodmare Sandra and I bought, and the transaction was riddled with naivety. Her co-owner and trainer, Tim Walford, suggested the purchase one evening when he and wife Gill came to dinner; and the deal was agreed, subject to viewing, at £12,500 plus another £2,500 if she was carrying a colt. For a 12-year-old mare who, although a tough and consistent chaser and a clever jumper, had a highest Official Rating of 105 and RPR of 107, possessing a pedigree in which the nearest good horse was four generations back, this was, to say the least, a very full price.
Tim had promised that when we saw ‘Kate’ we would like her, ‘unless you’re a bad judge’. We found a big, rangy mare with good limbs but what an admirer might call ‘an honest head’, or others a common one. She seemed the right type to suit a lighter-framed, quality horse like Kayf Tara, though, and we confirmed the purchase. Nor (still showing excessive naivety) did we seek to renegotiate the deal when we got her home and found we had a chronic wind-sucker on our hands.
‘Kate’ was the first mare we foaled, and at the time we didn’t have a foaling box 10 yards from the house, complete with TV monitor. She was stabled 150 yards away in an American barn. So, of course, we missed the foaling – I went out to feed her one morning and found a foal sitting on the floor, apparently unable to get up. We quickly rectified this and got him feeding, initially by taking milk from his mother into a bottle; and the flashy foal with a blaze and two white socks grew into a handsome colt.
He was the last foal we bred from ‘Kate’. The next year she got in foal to Exit To Nowhere but was empty on October 1st. A uterine ‘MOT’ indicated significant damage. We tried to sell her at the DBS January Sale but got no bid, and I was happy to accept her breeder’s offer to take her back for £2,000, though feeling rather guilty about the transaction. I needn’t have, for ‘Kate’ bred three foals for him before the wind-sucking caught up with her and she died of colic – although the only one of the three to run was useless.
Hiltonstown Lass’s Kayf Tara foal, ‘Jack’, more formally known as Kornati Kid, was an attractive bay with good limbs, though in his early life he suffered a worrying tendency to nose-bleeds (which may or may not have had implications later on). Although my instinct was to sell him as a store, I was ‘overruled’ on this point and he went to Mill House Stud to be consigned to the DBS Foal Sale, then held in November.
There, Aiden Murphy purchased him for 7,000 guineas. This seemed like a satisfactory sum until ‘Jack’ turned up at the Derby Sale 3½ years later and brought €60,000. On this occasion he was consigned by Ballincurrig House Stud, which has been our principal sales consignor since Sandra and I first visited Michael Moore and his sister, Josie, later that year when holidaying in Ireland.
By this time the horse who became known as Kornati Kid had grown to be around 17 hands, with plenty of scope and athleticism. Understandably, trainer Philip Hobbs was in no rush to race him. He was rising six when he first raced, running promisingly in three bumpers (6th, 3rd and 4th, the third coming in a Kayf Tara 1-2-3 behind two other promising horses of the time, Cryptic and Earth Planet) before winning two maiden hurdles early in the New Year.
Next Autumn, Kornati Kid was turned to the purpose for which he had been bred, chasing, placing three times in good company before winning at Exeter. He then achieved what was to prove the highlight of his career, when, despite regularly jumping right on the left-handed Wetherby track, he ran on strongly at the finish to just get up from Will Be Done in the Grade 2 Towton Novices Chase. Right On Target’s relative, Companero, was third, completing a memorable Black-Type result for our stud. The £7,000 breeders’ prize that used to be awarded for Grade 2 winners in those days helped too!
Kornati Kid next ran in the 4-mile National Hunt Chase at the Cheltenham Festival, where I went to see him race. Here he continued a habit of jumping right-handed, which can be fatal on the tight Cheltenham track, regularly losing ground that his jockey promptly asked him to make up. He was scrubbed into second place at the top of the hill but unsurprisingly tired, finishing a very weary sixth behind Tricky Trickster.
Next season began with a real challenge, the Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury. Unfortunately for ‘the Kid’ this was the day that Denman put up one of his greatest performances by carrying top weight to victory over What A Friend. Kornati Kid ran encouragingly, travelling just behind the leaders on the outside and staying on well to be sixth, ahead of the former Gold Cup winner War of Attrition, the future Grand National winner, Mon Mome, and several times National-placed Cappa Bleu and State of Play. At the time I entertained serious hopes that he might be a future National winner himself.
Of course, it was not to be; and, sadly, this was the last really good race Kornati Kid ever ran. Next time out he bled in the Welsh Grand National and was pulled up. His next two chases also ended with his being pulled up. After nearly a year off he did manage to win a hunter chase at Exeter as a nine-year old; but his best results after that race came with four Point-to-Point wins. According to Aiden Murphy, he lost confidence after his experience in the Welsh National and, though perfectly capable of jumping bigger fences, only felt happy with Point-to-Point obstacles.
My last sighting of ‘Jack’ came in a hunter chase when he was aged 12, after he had been absent with tendon problems and was being trained by ‘Mrs F. Marshall’ and ridden by ‘Mr Charlie Marshall’. He made several mistakes early on and was already struggling when he lurched at the 17th fence, hitting it hard. He was pulled up after the next. Apparently, ‘Jack’ had been ‘cheap to a good home.’ I hope that the Marshalls gave him one, and treated him with the respect due to a horse that once raised high hopes that were ultimately unfulfilled.