Nearly into its ninth decade, Kilcarn Stud remains as relevant as ever

Ask Pat O’Kelly for the secret to Kilcarn Stud’s success and there will be neither an earnest monologue of self-aggrandisement nor a display of false modesty.

"I’d say good land, and good attention," she says with a chuckle as she turns to Stuart Lanney, groom and right-hand man of a farm which casts asunder to the general conventions of continuity.

Lanney has worked at Kilcarn for 36 years, and his father Seamus spent half a century in exactly the same role. It was O’Kelly’s father, Major Edward 'Ned' O’Kelly, who had returned from service in the second world war to cultivate these several hundred acres along the road just outside Navan into a regular supplier of Classic winners.

They made waves with Sodium, who took the Irish Derby and English Leger in 1966 and the trickle has continued ever since; only last month Kilcarn’s Channel took the French Oaks.

"My father being a vet originally was a help, to have some idea of what a horse should look like, and I did a course at the National Stud," she says before the unfailingly polite Lanney adds: "You were helping your father buying horses, the Major died, my father was there, and we’ve always done it together. Even matings, we always sat down together and discussed them."

The greatest of all the alumni is Salsabil, who in 1990 became the first female Irish Derby winner since the turn of the century, having already plundered the 1,000 Guineas and the Oaks. That same year, Kilcarn’s Snurge took the St Leger. Salsabil’s dam Flame Of Tara won the Coronation Stakes and produced another Royal Ascot hero in Marju as well as others who have maintained that same strain until this day.

Perhaps it is worth posing that same original question to Lanney.

"I think it’s Miss O’Kelly’s attention to pedigrees and matings," he offers. "We’ve always worked on the basis of quality instead of quantity. That seems to have worked. Then when it works, we don’t mess around with it, we leave it, feeding wise, and exercising. Then it’s the whole thing between breeding, vets and farrier, it’s all one big team."

O'Kelly says: "If anyone lets you down in the middle it doesn’t help.

"We probably do more with our yearlings before we sell them than a lot of other people. Handle them more, almost pre-train them and drive them with long reins. I think it saves them getting too many shocks about things when they go into training.

"A lot of the trainers have too many horses, they wouldn’t have enough time to give attention to detail. When you handle them you get to know their individuality and ways."

Kilcarn's magnificent Salsabil struck a rare blow for fillies in the 1990 Irish DerbyCredit: Mark Cranham

The Flame Of Tara line is continued by her granddaughter Dream Of Tara and the family of top-class mare Banimpire is another being maintained in the paddocks.

Recent results prove, though, that Kilcarn is not locked in the past. It continues to supply six-figure yearlings at Goffs Orby and reinvests. Channel was from a newer family, with her Rothschild dam Love Magic having been bought in-foal to Nathaniel for 170,000gns. As the sire had not yet taken off, the resulting Channel was knocked down for €18,000 at Goffs and Love Magic now has a Sea The Stars foal to come.

"You try to have an open mind going to the sales," O’Kelly explains. "I don’t have to buy a mare, which is good, but you look through your top choices in case something is available that you might like to get in on."

Consultancy, again, is clearly key, with Lanney adding: "I always say you can’t make mares on paper. You can get a small mare who’ll throw a big horse, and the other way round. She might need a stallion with substance. You have to know what they’re throwing, and what the stallion’s conformation is."

A nod of agreement from the boss. "If you have a big ungainly mare, she’s likely to have the same kind of foal, whatever you send her to," she says. "Most of our mares would be middle sized, I would think."

Plainly, they don’t make studs, or their custodians, like this any more. Kilcarn has only ever operated with around a dozen privately owned broodmares, managing to be commercially competitive but never sacrificing its principles.

And although the crisply spoken O’Kelly is bound to rely upon Lanney and his three staff more than in her youth, one suspects that she doesn’t miss much that happens about the place.

"Once you think you know it all, you’re finished," she says.

"I like to be able to look out of my window in the mornings and see things. There’s a good big field there that goes down to the River Boyne which is not fenced, and which they don’t do anything stupid about. You can sometimes do too much, fencing off things.

"Horses aren’t fools, they just have two places where they drink in the bigger field, one place in the others, usually, and they look after themselves. They don’t wish to commit suicide, touch wood!"

Channel won last month's French Oaks for trainer Francis GraffardCredit: Scott Burton

Little changes in the dynamics, and Kilcarn seems all the better for it.

O'Kelly says: "Sometimes the grass looks a slightly better colour than other times, but other than that… We always graze cattle with the mares and foals and everything there.

"They don’t disagree, you never see any troubles with them, actually. They are quite often grazing quite close to each other, there’ll be a foal lying down, a bullock poking around, they don’t pay any attention to each other really.

"The cattle keep the grass more or less the way the horses like it, horses don’t like great long grass. They like it well eaten down."

Salsabil, who carried all before her 29 years ago, could finish only tenth in a Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in which Snurge managed to take third.

In another open year, perhaps the lightly raced Channel could be the one to right that particular wrong.

"I didn’t really expect her to win, we’d have been happy if she had finished in the first three, but she looks a nice filly," says O'Kelly. "I don’t think we’d ever bred a French Oaks winner before and they wouldn’t often get to France to have the chance of winning it.

"We haven’t had an Arc, have we?" she asks. "That’s an idea..."

The class of 2019

Kilcarn Stud’s yearling draft at Goffs Orby is always keenly anticipated and has had some notable results over the years, including the €2,000,000 sale of Tocco D’Amore and €1,300,000 for the unraced Queen Of Tara. It is likely to offer around half a dozen this September.

Zoffany colt ex Dream Of Tara (Invincible Spirit)

First foal of a daughter of Salsabil’s sister, Dream Of Tara

Kingman colt ex I Am Beautiful (Rip Van Winkle)

Group 3-winning half-sister to Rumplestiltskin was bought by Kilcarn in 2017

Invincible Spirit filly ex Primo Luce (Galileo)

Full-sister to useful Emmaus, sold for €580,000 in 2015

Invincible Spirit filly ex Quixotic (Pivotal)

Half-sister to Criterium de Maisons-Laffitte winner Fighting Irish

Holy Roman Emperor filly ex My Renee (Kris S)

Full-sister to Ribblesdale winner and Irish Oaks runner-up Banimpire

Sea The Stars colt ex My Spirit (Invincible Spirit)

Mare is a half-sister to Banimpire