Lucy Procter, co-owner of the Glanvilles Stud, shares a diary of life on a Thoroughbred stud.
This month – double breeding and almost a hat trick.
October was quite the month for the Glanvilles Stud; storms submerged the fields, but out of the yard there were successes at the track and a new French arrival, as Lucy shares.
Despite the October storms briefly submerging some of our fields – much to the enjoyment of the foals (see image above!), the worst of the water has now drained off our land and the mares and foals are all still living out 24/7. They are protected from the excesses of the weather by our thick hedges, though a few of the mares with skin sensitive to prolonged drenching, are rugged at night.
Out on the racecourse
It’s just as well that the majority are living out and the stud is still relatively quiet, as things have been pretty busy on the racecourse recently and we have managed to get away and enjoy a few days out racing.
Since the end of September, our homebred flat filly, Beryl Burton, has run three times. She has achieved a win, a third and a fourth place. Her overall performance has improved with every run, and she has now been sold to her trainer, John Berry in Newmarket, for another owner in his yard. Not to be outdone, our homebred gelding, Soul Icon, made his handicap debut at Huntingdon on 5th October; a winning one.
He followed this up two weeks later with a win at Exeter and then again, a week later, he just missed out on getting his hat trick by a neck at Taunton.
Soul Icon has gone up over a stone in the handicap in just three weeks. This means his mark, which is used by the handicapper to allot weight to horses in handicap races, has gone up.
If a horse is deemed to have run its most recent race better than previous runs, its mark increases. A horse with a higher mark, say 110, would carry 12lb more than a horse of 98, the object being to give every horse an equal chance of winning. If a horse runs badly in a race, then the handicap mark can be reduced with the same aim of levelling out the racing field.
A family win
Particularly exciting for Doug and I was the fact that our eldest son Freddie rode Soul Icon in all three races, with the Huntingdon triumph being his first winner ‘under rules’ (professional racing as opposed to amateur Point-to-Point racing). As if that wasn’t pleasing enough, our daughter Alice had backed Soul Icon, pretrained him and taught him to jump at home. And a cherry on top, Soul Icon is the first horse we have bred out of a mare that raced in the stud colours.
Back at the stud
A well-bred filly purchased online from France, eventually made it across the water at the beginning of the month to be prepped and sold on at the December Mare Sale at Tattersalls in Newmarket.
Straight out of a flat racing yard, she was a slight little thing when she arrived, but is already, twoweeks on, beginning to put weight on nicely and has settled down to long days out at grass with a steady, elderly broodmare as her companion.
With two homebred winners this month, one of them ridden by a homebred jockey, everyone at The Glanvilles Stud has been given a little boost. and a timely reminder of why we pour our heart and soul into breeding and raising racehorses.
