'I've found myself fascinated by it all' - meet the Classic-winning jockey selling one of the best bred mares at Tattersalls

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Here, Martin chats to jockey and now breeder Chris Hayes, who sells Butoolat at the Tattersalls December Mares Sale next week. Subscribers can get more great insight from Martin every Monday to Friday.

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Classic-winning jockey Chris Hayes bought his first broodmare prospect by paying the princely sum of 10,000gns for the Oasis Dream filly Butoolat at the Tattersalls July Sale of 2017. The venture, made when he had only a rudimentary knowledge of breeding and bloodlines, was solely for the purpose of using the nomination he owned to his Irish 2,000 Guineas winner Awtaad. 

Six years later, and now a self-confessed breeding nut, he is bringing the mare back to Park Paddocks with an upgraded page, thanks to her siblings Mostahdaf and Nazeef having won multiple Group 1s in recent seasons, and having accomplished the mission to breed a winner by Awtaad from her.  

Needless to say the nine-year-old mare, who will be offered in foal to Cotai Glory by Ringfort Stud as Lot 1,733 at the Tattersalls December Mares Sale next Tuesday, is now worth many multiples of that original outlay of 10,000gns. 

Hayes rebuffs any suggestions of genius, though.

 “It wasn’t a shrewd purchase or anything, I just did what most people do: try to get into a Shadwell pedigree, as you know they’re top quality and you get the chance of updates,” he says.  

“To be honest I was just trying to diversify at the time, seeing what I liked and didn’t like in case I needed to retire from the saddle a few years down the line, and I had that nomination to Awtaad to use, so that’s how it came about. 

“But when I started to get more into pedigrees, learning all about sires and what their progeny are like, I actually really enjoyed it and found it helpful for riding.” 

Butoolat wasn’t just any Shadwell three-year-old filly being offered out of training at the Tattersalls July Sale that year. She was one who had been trained by Kevin Prendergast, and had been ridden by Hayes himself in four of her five outings, doing best when finishing fourth in a Navan handicap. 

So did the jockey have ‘insider knowledge’, and knew she might be better than her form figures suggested she was? 

“I'd always thought she was a filly well capable of winning a maiden, after that I didn’t know, but she hadn’t brought her homework to the track,” says Hayes. “That was the Shadwell business model with fillies of that age at the time. If they weren’t up to a certain level, they were moved on, and they had given her every chance to reach the sort of criteria they would want to breed from, in fairness. She just never got there. 

“I thought she had a certain amount of ability, and was on an attractive mark, so I put my money where my mouth is. She wasn’t a big filly, so I was confident I wouldn’t have to break the bank for her.  

“It wasn’t rocket science to work out that Oasis Dream would be a good broodmare sire, and she was a first foal from a big family so it was easy to see her page improving. In fact, having worked at Kevin Prendergast’s for 21 years, I even remembered her dam Handassa. She was a nice filly who we thought at the time could have been even better as a four-year-old.” 

Butoolat duly returned to Prendergast’s Friarstown Stables, but now carried the Hayes family’s silks. She never did quite manage to win, although Chris steered her to a second and two third-placed finishes. 

Butoolat (Shadwell silks) in action on the trackCredit: CAROLINE NORRIS

She got her date with Awtaad in his second season at Derrinstown Stud in 2018 and the result was a colt who was sold to Tally-Ho Stud as a foal for €65,000. Eventually named Bobby Dassler, he broke his duck – and got Hayes off the mark as a breeder – in a Nottingham handicap this summer. 

“I got as much of a kick out of that now as most winners I’ve ridden,” says the man whose social media profile proudly states ‘journeyman jockey and winning breeder’. “I wouldn’t usually be one for celebrating, but after he won I got a bottle of champagne and brought it home and my wife Rachel and I toasted it.

“Look, it hadn’t been straightforward getting to that point. He sold well as a foal and I foolishly thought this was an easy game, and went and invested in another mare, whose page went dead as soon as I bought her, and I ended up losing money on her. 

“Then Butoolat slipped a foal late into her pregnancy for no reason one year, so we got another kick up the backside. I thought racing brought you down to earth, but the breeding side brings you down a hell of a lot quicker.” 

Butoolat also has a three-year-old son by Awtaad named On Sabbatical and a yearling colt by Kodiac who sold for 80,000gns as a yearling in October and will be trained by William Haggas. 

“We let her have a rest last year, because she delivered the Kodiac colt in April and then it got too late,” says Hayes. “I don’t like covering mares on foal heat, so I left her, and then she didn’t go in foal on the first cover after that, and by that point we were looking at a late May cover. 

“The Flat season would have been at its height by the time the foal would have been born, and I did have a certain filly called Tahiyra to be worrying about this year, so I didn’t think it was a headache I needed. She deserved a year off anyway and we got a lovely early cover this year, as she went to Cotai Glory in the first few days of March.” 

Hayes doubled his broodmare investments with the acquisition of another Shadwell mare in the autumn of 2021. Shahaada, a daughter of Awtaad related to Sakhee’s Secret, won a Clonmel maiden at three for Prendergast that year before carrying Rachel Hayes’s silks to finish third in the Listed Victor McCalmont Memorial Stakes at Gowran Park at four. 

Shahaada (foreground) before a race at Limerick in April last yearCredit: Patrick McCann

Shahaada’s first foal, a Starman filly, was born in February, and she was put back in foal to Mehmas.  

“I’ve committed the biggest crime you can in breeding,” says Hayes with a chuckle. “I’ve fallen in love with the Starman filly. She’s just a lovely foal to be around, she’s very easy to do and is a pleasant, good natured soul. So I’ve said to Rachel we should hold on to her until next year at least, depending on what happens with Butoolat.” 

Butoolat clearly holds a special place in Hayes’ heart, but since the mare’s half-sister Nazeef won the Falmouth Stakes and Sun Chariot Stakes, and half-brother Mostahdaf established himself as a star by winning the Prince of Wales’s Stakes and Juddmonte International this year, the decision has been made to let her go on to bigger and better things. 

“Mostahdaf doing what he did this year made it a no-brainer for us,” reports Hayes. “It’s really time for Butoolat to find a bigger farm, who can afford the more expensive stallions she deserves. When I say that, I don’t mean to knock the ones we’ve been to so far, as we’ve been very lucky that Tony and Roger O’Callaghan have supported us and let us use Kodiac.  

“If Butoolat sells, my intention is to do similar to what we did with her, and buy another young filly with a big farm’s pedigree to send to Awtaad. 

“I like him as a sire. I find his stock are nice and uncomplicated, but they just need a little more time; they’re not precocious types running over five and six furlongs in March, April and May. From relatively small numbers, he’s boxing away well.  

“So I’d love to support him again, although that said when you’re trying to do it commercially like I am, you do find that if your foal isn’t on a list of sires that buyers and pinhookers think are hot property at the time you might as well not be at the sales. That’s the mad thing: you can have a lovely foal, but if they don’t like the stallion, that’s it.” 

Hayes might find the breeding game frustrating at times, but he says he finds it conducive to good mental wellbeing in general, as it serves as both an intellectual pursuit and a source of relaxation. 

“I’ve found myself fascinated by it all,” he says. “I’ve been in the racing side of things for 21 years, so have a fair idea of how that operates by now, and I’m kind of unfazed by anything. I’m used to the highs and lows, getting jocked off, getting beaten. But this breeding game, it baffles me. You can never have it sussed. Anything can happen, anything can go wrong. 

“I love looking at Butoolat with her companion while she’s not in foal in one paddock, and Shahaada in another paddock with her foal. It’s great to go out and check on them with the dogs running around you, seeing the work you’ve put into it and hoping and praying it all works out. 

“It’s especially nice if it’s after a day when I’ve lost a race I should have won, or lost a ride to someone, or gotten a bollocking. The mares and foals don't know and don't particularly care. They just want feeding.” 

Just as importantly, Hayes’s new found love of breeding also keeps the memory of a much missed old friend alive. 

“A lot of this is down to the late Pat Smullen,” he says. “He loved breeding and I remember when I first told him I was thinking of getting into it, he said it was brilliant and encouraged me to do it too. I used to sit beside him in the weighing room and we would talk about the stock.  

Pat Smullen: late great had a big influence on Chris Hayes when it came to the breeding side of the gameCredit: Patrick McCann (racingpost.com/photos)

“When Butoolat had her first foal in 2019 I asked him who he’d recommend to take him to the sales, and he introduced me to Derek and Gay Veitch at Ringfort. They’ve been brilliant and consigned everything we’ve had so far.” 

Hayes would like himself and Rachel to consign their homebreds from their base near the Curragh themselves eventually, to complete every step of the journey of breeding and selling horses, but they are currently too busy to do so.  

He of course is on the crest of a wave, having partnered the brilliant Tahiyra to victory in three Group 1s this year, and is still busy throughout the winter riding at Dundalk, while Rachel works as a racing administrator for HRI. 

“Breeding was meant to be a hobby but it feels more like the main job now, and everything else is the pastime instead,” he observes with a wry smile. 

Hayes will be taking a little time out of his busy schedule to be at Tattersalls for the sale of Butoolat next Tuesday, though. 

“I wouldn’t want to miss that,” he says. “I’ve been there from when she was a two-year-old and then when we bought her and my brother raced her in Kevin’s and I used to go back and give her a few picks of grass. It was like going back to my apprenticeship in those days. 

“It’ll be a strange feeling if she sells, but I think it’s the right time for both of us, with the way her pedigree is going. And it’s not as if Mostahdaf is the end of the line, of course, she’s got more half-siblings coming through: a Frankel two-year-old colt, a Kingman yearling colt and a Frankel filly foal.” 

Shadwell’s homebreds will no doubt enhance Butoolat’s page further in the years to come, but the newly converted breeding aficionado Hayes might just do his bit for the pedigree too, with the Kodiac yearling colt and Cotai Glory foal in-utero. 

And with his perceptiveness, passion and perseverance, it would be no surprise to see him join the likes of Mick Kinane and Willie Carson in becoming a jockey turned Group 1-winning breeder.

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