How the master of the breeze-ups secured Ardad and Dream Ahead

It has been five years since Blandford Bloodstock agent Richard Brown ventured to the Goffs UK Breeze-Up Sale and first laid eyes on a strongly built bay son of Kodiac out of Good Clodora.

Bred and consigned by Tally-Ho Stud, the colt displayed an abundance of speed and professionalism when put through his paces on the Town Moor turf, and duly fetched a joint sale-topping bid of £170,000 from Brown.

The colt in question was, of course, Ardad, who repaid that initial outlay in spades by going on to score in the Windsor Castle Stakes at Royal Ascot, a race he won by no less than three and a quarter lengths, and the Group 2 Flying Childers Stakes during a productive two-year-old season.

"You literally couldn't fault him," says Brown as he recalls seeing Ardad at Doncaster. "He's the most beautifully correct, great-moving individual. I actually went and looked at him five or six times, purely because I just enjoyed looking at him.

Ardad goes through his paces at the 2016 Goffs UK Breeze-Up SaleCredit: Sarah Farnsworth/Goffs UK

"I was in a very fortunate position with Mr Al Naboodah [owner of Ardad] because he very much backed my judgement and told me to go out there and buy the best two in the sale. Funnily enough I highlighted Ardad and [joint sales-topper] Prince Of Lir, but when I looked at them both on the morning of the sale I said the one we should concentrate on was Ardad.

"He did a brilliant breeze, was very quick and showed like a trooper, so he was a very obvious and simple horse to purchase - I just needed someone to back me. Abdullah Al Naboodah did and he was well rewarded."

After his heroics on the racecourse, Ardad entered the stallion ranks at Overbury Stud in 2018 and has made a rapid start with his debut two-year-old crop.

His record currently stands at four winners from seven runners, making him not only the leading first-season sire of his generation, but also the most prolific source of two-year-old winners of any vintage at this admittedly early stage of the campaign.

Given his yearlings fetched up to £55,000 (a sum comfortably eclipsed by a 100,000gns filly at the Tattersalls Craven Breeze-Up Sale), it augurs well that even those who cost as little as 1,000gns have made successful debuts, with a couple coming out of stables not known for their early-season juveniles.

View this year's Goffs UK Breeze-Up Sale catalogue

"It's obviously early days but I couldn't be happier with what he's done," says Brown. "He's had four winners and a couple of them have looked like they might be above average. Probably what excites me most is what hasn't run yet. There are some leading trainers, and particularly leading trainers of two-year-olds, who have bowled up to me to tell me they've got a good Ardad.

"David Easterby came up to me at the Craven Sale and told me they've got five, that every single one of them will win and that two are very decent."

Ardad wins the Windsor Castle Stakes at Royal AscotCredit: Edward Whitaker

Such eyecatching results have not gone unnoticed, with breeders keen to secure nominations that now look particularly good value at a mere £4,000.

"We went past 100 mares on Saturday, which is fantastic, and we're delighted with the level of quality as well," says Brown on Ardad's 2021 book. "What he's doing hasn't been missed and some very shrewd people have come on board this year. We've got a lot of mares coming over from Ireland, which is a real vote of confidence, and we also took three bookings from France last week."

Brown attended his first Doncaster breeze-up sale in 2002, the year after he had joined forces with Tom Goff and the revered, and now much-missed, Joss Collins to form Blandford Bloodstock.

The intervening years have shown Doncaster to be a happy hunting ground for Brown, who last year unearthed Firth of Clyde winner and Cheveley Park Stakes third Umm Kulthum, while in 2010 he signed for a certain Dream Ahead before the son of Diktat went on to claim five Group 1 prizes.

Although Dream Ahead ranks as one of the most talented sprinters of recent times, having annexed races like the Middle Park Stakes, July Cup and Prix de la Foret, Brown needed a bid of just £36,000 to secure the Tally-Ho Stud-consigned youngster.

Dream Ahead wins the Middle Park Stakes by nine lengthsCredit: Mark Cranham

However, all becomes apparent when Brown recalls the day he saw Dream Ahead go through his paces, saying: "I remember how lame he was! He did a phenomenal breeze on one rein but was extremely lame afterwards.

"We x-rayed his shin on the morning of the sale to make sure there was no star fracture or anything serious, but he just had a very sore shin, which is actually something I don't mind in breeze-up horses. To do what he did being as sore as he was afterwards, it was obvious he was pretty good, but you've got to have somebody that's willing to take that risk.

"David Simcock and I had already been working together for probably ten years and he was willing to take a chance so we went for it. He was a phenomenal racehorse and is probably a bit underrated as a stallion, but he was a very exciting horse to be involved with. He was a total freak."

As well as buying a whole host of classy performers during the last 19 renewals of the Doncaster breeze-up sale, Brown has also seen the dynamic of the two-year-old market place undergo some marked changes.

"The first Doncaster breeze-up I went to was in 2002, and back then the majority of horses were breezing in pairs and were basically doing a strong canter," he says. "The thing that's really changed massively is the timing - and even that's advanced a lot. It's only really in the last five or six years that basically everybody has access to the times.

Richard Brown: 'Times are important, it doesn't matter which way you look at it'Credit: Patrick McCann

"I remember the year we bought Dream Ahead, I had Archie Watson, who worked the sales with me for three or four years, down at the start with a stopwatch. Now you've got laser systems that'll tell you within a hundredth of a second how fast a horse has gone. It's still advancing too so it's really changed beyond all recognition."

Although Brown says that the clock is an important tool in a breeze-up buyer's armoury, he stresses that context and nuance are vital when assessing the merit of a horse's performance, with other metrics, such as stride data and some other "closely guarded secrets", also having a big part to play.

Blandford are now into their seventh year of compiling complex breeze-up data, an endeavour that gives them a clear view of the correlations between performance at the sales and the racecourse.

"Times are important, it doesn't matter which way you look at it," he says. "But if you went to the breeze-ups and bought the horse who clocked the fastest time in every sale you'd spend a lot of money and wouldn't do very well."

On what other factors the Blandford team take into account when purchasing at the breeze-ups, Brown says: "Action is very important, we take a lot of horses off our list because of how they move, and the big thing for me is temperament.

"It's such a test of a young horse; they've got to gallop in a straight line over two furlongs, go fast when there's all these people around, all the other stuff to stare at, and most of them have never seen big, wide open spaces before. If they can come through that without turning a hair, like Ardad did, that's a great sign."

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