Cause for alarm as one of the most successful British jumps breeders switches focus to the Flat

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Here, Martin Stevens speaks to Doug Procter of The Glanvilles Stud about a significant change of direction and the reasons behind it – subscribers can get more great insight every Monday to Friday.

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Doug and Lucy Procter of The Glanvilles Stud in Dorset have bred one of the best hurdling mares of all time in Honeysuckle and another Grade 1-winning hurdler in Sam Spinner, as well as numerous other smart jumpers.

But, in an alarming sign of the times, they are now switching their focus to the Flat.

Anyone who has taken notice of the across-the-board declines registered at recent National Hunt foal sales in Britain and Ireland will be unsurprised to hear that the Procters' reason for crossing the floor is the precarious finances of jumps breeding at present.

"I've been getting a bit nervous about the state of the National Hunt market generally," says Doug Procter. "There's a fundamental change in it, in that the store market isn't really an end-user market anymore. It's completely underpinned by the point-to-point bench – in effect, pinhookers.

"National Hunt foal-to-store pinhookers need to bear in mind they're most likely going to be selling to someone who then has to sell the lot on again, and it's just reduced the sorts of model and pedigree that are saleable.

"Added to that is the fact that the National Hunt pinhooking community is shrinking. There's next to none in Britain now. Brexit has obviously made buying British foals more difficult, as there's now additional transport costs to bear."

Attempting to breed jumps horses in such a polarised market has simply become unprofitable, and therefore unsustainable, reasons Procter.

"We can't all afford to go out and buy the champion mares coming off the track – not that I'm entirely certain the prices paid for them actually stack up commercially either," he says.

"That aside, at the working man's end of the market, you've got to try to be clever about buying mares. But even when you think you've got some value with one, if they don't produce the right physical type straight off the bat, it's an excruciatingly long time to wait until she's able to prove herself as a broodmare with her runners – unless you're lucky and something comes out and wins a juvenile bumper or four-year-old point-to-point.

"The sad fact is, when you add up all the costs of keeping the mare and producing more foals in the intervening years, you feel like you've had a great result if you merely wash your face by selling them."

The startling upshot is that British National Hunt breeding will continue to lose people like the Procters, leaving a core of industrious and enthusiastic mare owners to support the remaining stallion studs and boarding farms geared towards the production of jumpers in the country, but having to accept regular losses while doing so.

Away from the headlines, making a profit from a National Hunt foal is getting harder, says Doug ProcterCredit: Edward Whitaker

Clearly, that is no way for an industry to thrive, or even survive.

"I've not actually done the sums, but I have a sneaking suspicion that if you took a year's National Hunt crop, and looked at how much money had been spent on producing them and how much they had made in the ring or on the track, the entire industry just doesn't add up," says Procter.

"It is becoming ever more polarised, in that you need a very obvious type of mare and you then have to send her to one one of a handful of stallions.

"It used to be said that there's always money for a nice foal. Well, frankly, that's cobblers. Because the people that are pinhooking foals to resell as stores, they've got to think, 'Will anyone even look over the door when I'm trying to sell this in two years' time, when it's by this or that stallion?'

"A case in point was when I was selling Honeysuckle at the store sales at Fairyhouse. No-one knew who her sire Sulamani was and he had a Grand National winner [Rule The World] and a St Leger winner [Mastery]. No one knew him! That was seven years ago and I think it's got much worse since."

The resulting coalescence around a small handful of sires who are deemed to be commercially acceptable also makes life hard for breeders.

"Take Golden Horn for example," says Procter. "He covered about 180 mares at a £10,000 fee this year. A lot of the people using him will be breeding to race, and if you're breeding to race, you pays your money and you takes your choice. But from a purely commercial point of view, I do not think there are that many mares in Britain who would justify a £10,000 fee at the foal sales.

"Similarly with Nathaniel, who will stand at £20,000 next year. I'm sure the number of National Hunt mares he'll cover at that will be few and select because, basically, if you spend £20,000 on your stud fee, your break-even point when you walk into the ring with your foal is going to be £30,000 and not that many foals will make £30,000.

Nathaniel: price-point might lead to his book slanting more towards Flat mares, suggests ProcterCredit: Newsells Park Stud

"If you look at what they've cost to produce, not many of the Nathaniel foals that are making prices in the mid-teens will have made any money. I've seen the same happen in France with No Risk At All, Kapgarde and Doctor Dino: they reach a point where they're not particularly priced on what you can sell the stock for, they're priced on demand.

"So I'm not criticising the pricing at all. The studs have a certain demand for those stallions, and they want a certain number of mares, so they set fees accordingly. I'm not saying the valuations aren't justified from that point of view. I'm just saying that, at that level of fee, there can't be a huge number of mares that you could confidently say you're going to make money from."

Hence commercial National Hunt breeding in Britain is becoming almost an oxymoron; there is little or no market for foals who are by unfashionable sires and/or out of non black-type mares, but the costs of producing the sorts of foals who are in demand in the sale ring leave hardly any room for profit. A mare owner can't win.

"I'm not entirely certain for how many people in Britain, breeding National Hunt horses would be their day job," says Procter. “I think there must be a high proportion of hobby breeders or owners breeding to race.

"But the thing is, this is my livelihood, so it can't be a hobby. I'm struggling because the stud is more or less our only source of income. I genuinely think if I didn't change, in a year's time I would be seriously bust."

The Glanvilles Stud has therefore been gradually reducing its broodmare band from a peak of ten, at least eight of whom would have been National Hunt, to half a dozen next year, two-thirds of which will be Flat.

The first Flat mare was actually bought with the National Hunt in mind, but has been repurposed due to market considerations. She's Gina, a German-bred daughter of It's Gino, could do a job for either discipline, as she was Group 3-placed on the level in her native country and also won four times over hurdles for Seamus Mullins after being imported into Britain.

"I was just looking at the Tattersalls November Sale last year, when I heard something going through and the auctioneer saying she was Group 3-placed but wasn't selling for the minimum bid," says Procter. "I looked her up, and saw she had also been beaten three and a quarter lengths in the German Oaks. I got on the phone to Jamie Railton, who was selling her, and he answered the phone and said, 'Hello Doug, you're phoning about She's Gina'.

She's Gina: 1,000gns was enough to acquire her at the Tattersalls November Sale last year

"So I bought her privately for the minimum bid of 1,000gns and, long story short, her Galiway yearling filly made €87,000 at Arqana last month to go into training with Paddy Twomey.

"When I bought her, my first thought was, 'This is the mare I'm going to breed my next Champion Hurdle winner from'. But I hedged my bets and sent her to Golden Horn because I thought you could still go both ways with him. So I'll probably now send the foal to a Flat sale unless it looks like a lumping great thing that won't do anything until it's five, and then the writing will slightly be on the wall. I'll also probably take the mare to a seven-furlong or mile horse next year."

Procter got an even better update with his second Flat mare. He purchased Backstreet Girl, a placed Shamardal half-sister to subsequent Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint winner Starlust, for just 9,000gns at the Tattersalls July Sale this summer.

Backstreet Girl is in foal to Space Traveller, as is the third new Flat mare at Glanvilles Stud, Sidra, a winning daughter of Elusive Quality from the family of champion Sinndar who has already produced two winners. She cost €9,000 at the Goffs November Mares Sale on Friday.

"I've been looking at Space Traveller's first foals and I think for a working man's kind of stallion, the prices they've been making are quite encouraging," says Procter. "Before I bought the mare in the summer, I asked some people on the sales ground what they thought of his stock and actually, universally, they said they were fans."

With a reduced band of its own broodmares, The Glanvilles Stud will aim to keep stables filled with outside boarders.

"We're on the list for Whitsbury Manor Stud to foal down and walk in, as we're one of the closest studs to the farm," says Procter. "But what I would really like is clients who breed to race – ideally someone who lives in a flat in Chelsea and can't have the horse at home!

"The land really is exceptional here in the Blackmore Vale. It just raises good horses. Okay, we had Honeysuckle, who was exceptional, and also Sam Spinner. But there are other talented horses from relatively small numbers.

Honeysuckle: poster girl for The Glanvilles StudCredit: Patrick McCann

"Even running at the moment there's Soul Icon, who was just touched off in the Rising Stars Novices' Chase the other week, and Triple Trade, who has won five races and has a peak Racing Post Rating of 141. Both of those stayed on the farm beyond being a foal, too. Triple Trade was sold as a store, and with Soul Icon we originally raced him ourselves."

Lest any British National Hunt breeders are reaching for the Prozac reading all this, Procter isn't all doom and gloom.

"I think National Hunt racing is still an astonishing spectacle," he says. "I still absolutely adore it, even allowing for what happened to Alice (more of which in a minute). But, I do think there are choppy waters ahead.

"I'm still going to keep breeding National Hunt horses, I won't say as a hobby, but on a much reduced scale.

"The fashion for French bloodlines hasn't helped but I religiously go through all the racing results every night and I see encouragement every time, in that the product we have trouble selling is actually very good. Look at the number of winners that Pether's Moon gets on a weekly basis, for example. There's hope.

"I genuinely believe that percentage-wise, for the numbers produced and the stallions we've got standing here, British-bred jumpers stand up to scrutiny incredibly well. I think, too, that French jumps racing is starting to feel the effect of the fact that the Irish gut their foal crop every summer, and a lot of their best three-year-olds and four-year-olds are sold privately. The top slice of the French market is fine, but not so much as you go further down the ladder."

As for Doug's daughter Alice, who suffered life-changing injuries following a fall in a race at Cartmel in July, there is some positive news.

"Between arriving at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore and leaving there, the response to her tests has moved down the spine by one vertebra," he says. "It means there's improvement. It's small, but it's something. I think it's just going to be a long road.

Alice Procter: positive news from her father but a long road aheadCredit: Keiran Burke Racing

"The only other thing I can say is that the response from the industry, all the support and all the messages, has been humbling. I mean, really humbling…"

Procter doesn't often stop midway through a sentence; he admits with a sheepish grin that his enthusiasm for the sport and the business behind it tends to make him rather loquacious, to put it kindly. But he trails off there, as he reflects on how other horsepeople and jumps racing fans have rallied around the family in their hour of need.

British jumps breeders are indeed a friendly, passionate and mutually supportive bunch. It would be a crying shame if their number continues to be reduced because of the polarised market that has prevailed for several years now.

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Good Morning Bloodstock is our unmissable email newsletter. Leading bloodstock journalist Martin Stevens provides his take and insight on the biggest stories every morning from Monday to Friday.