£180,000. And, if he covers a few extras for the farm and perhaps six or eight for the syndicate members, there’ll be another £15,000 in the pot each year. In three years that’s £65,000 profit, less the cost of his keep. If he is successful, which we won’t really know until his fifth year, there will be a serious amount of cash around for these brave fellows who have just risked £160,000.’
‘Christ!’ said Robert thoughtfully. He looked across at the young Irishman. He seemed such a countryman and here he was representing a group of Irish breeders risking phone numbers on the purchase of a racehorse. As far as Robert could see they had a long-term bet of nearly £100,000 riding on this race tomorrow. Now that was serious. Suddenly all that he had done in racing, all the fun and laughter and betting he had done in partnership with Eric Cousins seemed of little consequence. These Irishmen were playing a major game and Robert felt a weird compulsion to be part of it. He had just received a crash course in how modern thinkers were basing their judgments on the syndications of stallions. Forty shareholders, putting up three times the cost of one covering for a share. You ‘get out’ in three years, after that you are on the gravy train. It was new, but it already made rock-solid financial sense to Robert, and he could not stop thinking about it, through all of the hours that led up to the running of the fifth Vernons Sprint Cup.
The following afternoon when the runners came belting out of the stalls Robert could not take his eyes off Green God. He watched Lester Piggott try to straighten him out after a bad break, saw the horse keep hanging to his left in the middle of the pack, as Apollo Nine and Sweet Revenge fought it out in the lead. Then he saw Lester ask him to quicken, stared enthralled as Green God came to deliver his challenge at the furlong, felt his heart leap as Sweet Revenge swerved violently. And he stood rapt in admiration as Piggott kept his mount straight and drove Green God past the post almost a length to the good. Sweet Revenge was second, Apollo Nine two and a half lengths further back in third place.
Robert reckoned he had seen two great professionals in action in the past twenty-four hours: Lester Piggott, who had ridden this fiery son of the equally fiery Red God to victory; and the young Irishman, who had staked so much money on a six-furlong sprint for the championship of England. Late that afternoon, back in the members’ bar, everyone was talking about Green God, his pedigree and his prospects as a stallion. Robert walked over to talk to Jack Doyle who was deep in conversation with the young Irish purchaser. ‘Hello, Robert,’ said Jack. ‘Will you have a drink with us? I don’t believe you two have met have you.’
‘Well, I know of course who you are, sir,’ said the Irishman. And he leaned forward to shake the hand of Robert Sangster. It was a handshake which would begin a lifelong friendship, a friendship which would change the world of bloodstock breeding for ever, would send prices for young racehorses to heights never before contemplated. ‘I’m John Magnier,’ he said.
John Magnier was twenty-three years old on the day he first shook hands with Robert Sangster. Thus he was eight years junior to the heir to Vernons Pools. In terms of birth, that is. In terms of horses, John was about one hundred and forty-eight years older, since the Magnier family of Fermoy, County Cork, traces its roots in the serious business of breeding racehorses to at least 1800 and probably back into the previous century.
John’s father Michael Magnier stood the great steeple-chasing stallion Cottage at the family’s Grange Stud on the outskirts of the town. Cottage it was who sired three Grand National winners including Sheila’s Cottage and Lovely Cottage in 1946 and 1948. He also sired the immortal Cottage Rake, trained by Vincent O’Brien to win those three Cheltenham Gold Cups in succession 1948–50, while R. Sangster was grappling with elementary French a few miles to the north at the Leas Preparatory School. John’s grandfather Thomas Magnier owned the fine Irish stallion Edlington who won fourteen races in the 1880s and was then occupied in the traditional way as a ‘travelling stallion’, being ridden along the lovely valley of the River Blackwater beyond Fermoy and covering the racing mares of the local Irish farmers. Like John Magnier himself, old Edlington had a firm sense of place in this world and spent many weeks on an annual sojourn at the Duke of Devonshire’s great estates surrounding the castle of Lismore.
Home to Edlington was nonetheless Fermoy. As was the Grange Stud to Cottage. Green God would live about four miles away at Castle Hyde Stud, which had been purchased by John Magnier a few months previously. Green God was a lucky horse because in this deep, quiet Irish country grooms and stud owners alike understand the high-mettled racer perhaps as no other breed of men on earth. To the uninitiated, a thoroughbred stallion can look very fearsome, standing glaring in a paddock, his breath coming in short snorts, perhaps pawing the ground, irritated at being disturbed. Some farms in Kentucky and Australia carry the stark warning: STALLIONS BITE. beware. It is thus a source of absolute wonder to watch a gentle Irish groom unlatch the gate, close it quietly behind him and stroll out to the beast, muttering softly: ‘Will you come over here now? And stop your showing off. I’m not planning to chase you … Come here now.’ It is even more amazing to watch apparent anger fall from the stallion. To see him dip his head, almost as an apology and then walk sheepishly up to his man, his head held low like an old dog. John Magnier can charm a stallion like that. If Robert Sangster lived to be a thousand years old he could never learn it. Nor could most people. You have to be born in Ireland to achieve that degree of harmony with a fighting-fit stallion of the blood.
Even the language of the two men, that late afternoon at Haydock Park, was different. Robert is always inclined to talk in terms of great victories, courage, jockeys, bets and values. John Magnier is much more of the horse. His judgments are punctuated by the phrases of the horseman: ‘If you look at him in a certain light he can really fill your eye’, ‘For a sprinter he stands over a lot of ground’, ‘For a son of Red God he has quite a kind look to him, but at a certain angle you can see a touch of the devil in his eye’. Those are the timeless words of the stallion master, bred into the man as profoundly and surely as the speed, gallantry and temperament is bred into the horse. In John Magnier’s case, it was bred into him for just as many years. When he stands and looks at a racehorse going into action, he is not looking entirely at him. He is looking, in his own mind, at the foals of a future generation: ‘Will I always be looking for mares with better knees than he has?’, ‘Will he want medium to small mares given his own imposing height?’, ‘He was sweating when he went to post – is there more of Red God’s temper about him than I can see? Will I spend half the year looking for mares of a quiet, calm temperament for him?’
Always a thousand questions. Usually considerably fewer answers. He and Robert Sangster had many things to say to each other but largely in a different language. And yet there was a quick and early bond between them. That bond was money. Robert, having inherited his first one-third of the Vernons empire, had a considerable amount of it. John had long had far-reaching plans to make a considerable amount of it but, in broad terms, it occurred to him that he could go further, faster, with some serious Sangster money behind him. In turn, Robert did not care how far John went in the stallion business, nor how rich he became in the riveting business of syndicating expensive stallions, just as long as he took him, Robert, along with him. Great partnerships have thrived on less worthy premises. This one was destined to go every step of the way.
The two men talked for a long time at Haydock and, aside from the Irishman’s enormous knowledge of breeding, he demonstrated to Robert an equally grand knowledge of the actual racing. John Magnier’s family stronghold of Fermoy was a mere twenty-eight miles across the Cork–Tipperary border from the south of Ballydoyle, the sprawling training complex which was home to two of the last four Derby winners, Sir Ivor and Nijinsky. It was also the home of Robert’s boyhood hero, Vincent O’Brien, who had prepared them both for glory. The Magniers and the O’Briens, both originally Cork families, had
