Hanley's Winning Eye for Equine Stardom

On the last day of 1990, T. Murray McDonnell made his regular call from the United States to Ireland.

“David,” he said. “We're going to have the best year ever. I can feel it.”

The next day, a call from McDonnell's son instead. They had found him that morning on the kitchen floor. David Hanley flew out for the funeral. He was reserved a spot in the second row, next to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

McDonnell had never had the best of health, so his heart attack couldn't be the biggest of shocks; but he was only 68, and full of plans for the future. What a guy he had been: awarded two Bronze Stars during the war in France, he had turned over an inspiring new leaf after the collapse of the family's Wall Street firm in 1970.

And though Hanley's own career has meandered a good deal more than his many friends in the Bluegrass may realize–other, that is, than in sheer consistency of accomplishment–he doesn't hesitate in identifying his first meeting with McDonnell as the turning point.

Hanley had returned to his homeland, after stints in Holland and Germany, to assemble his own team of show jumpers and also to assist his original mentor, Iris Kellett. She had supervised his evolution from talented adolescent to international show jumper and eventer, and now wanted his help with the instruction of the next generation. When Hanley found himself needing to rent more boxes, somebody took him to knock the door of this little American who had a farm up the road in County Kildare. They had a cup of tea and next morning McDonnell drove across and asked to see Hanley's horses. Was there one, perhaps, that he might ride during his stay?

“I said, 'Sure, why don't you come and ride out with me?'” recalls Hanley. “If I had said, 'No, I really don't have anything,' I would probably never have got into Thoroughbreds.”

Quite a thought, for the general manager of one of the world's premier stud farms, WinStar. Especially when you consider the sheer diversity of the achievements with bloodstock that qualified this reflective, temperate County Mayo man for the role.

“So we went hacking around the farm,” Hanley resumes. “Murray was already in his sixties, a little frail, but he arrived every day and we went riding together. I didn't have any idea who he was. [Or, for that matter, that McDonnell had married into the Anheuser-Busch family.] All the time he'd be asking, 'Tell me about this horse. What are his shortcomings? What makes this one good?' At the end of the two weeks his wife came to pick him up and said, 'You have no idea how much fun he's had.'”

Every time McDonnell came back for his fortnight in Ireland, twice a year, it would be the same: they'd ride out together every day. And then eventually McDonnell asked: “Did you ever think of doing anything with Thoroughbreds? I think with your horse knowledge, you'd do really well. Why don't you run my farm, come and manage my mares?”

So, just as a sideline at first, Hanley started to prep the yearlings, breed the handful of mares; started to adapt the equine expertise he had been developing since boyhood. His father had trained the odd point-to-pointer, and had honed Hanley's eye with annual visits to the Dublin Horse Show. (And not just his eye: he was competing in the pony classes by the age of eight.)

McDonnell was so convinced that Hanley's skills were transferable that he even convinced him to train a couple of youngsters that had been spelled at the farm. One of them promptly won first time out at the Curragh, by four and a half lengths; the other one also won. McDonnell played up the winnings, and bought five yearlings for Hanley to train.

“All five won as 2-year-olds, and three were stakes-placed,” remembers Hanley. “I remember John Oxx called at the end of the year and said, 'I have a client who wants to buy a couple of 2-year olds rated above 100. Well, I see you've got three. I've only got one!'”

Things evolved from there. The next year he had 13 horses: all the 2-year-olds won again, and there were also big handicap wins at the Curragh and Galway. All this, just through playing on hills at the farm and vanning the workers to the Curragh.

Hanley's intuition, it would seem, was serving him better than the conventional Turf grounding of other trainers. Yes, he learned plenty from Brian Nolan, who had ridden for Jim Bolger and would meet him at the Curragh to work the horses. And Hanley had previously borrowed Ted Walsh's gallops to pre-train a couple of bumper horses for a client: no doubt he had kept his eyes and ears open, in that very special environment. But only an innate talent would have identified and maximised the potential of Lidanna (GB).

She came along a couple of years after McDonnell's death, just around the time Hanley moved on to a yard on the Curragh. He bought her for two distant cousins, both priests, and their nephews: together they had 10 grand for a foal. (Some collection plate, that Christmas!) Hanley couldn't find anything he liked for that money, at the foal sales, but then he went to the one-day yearling sale at Tattersalls in December and fell for a filly by a hardy Danzig sprinter named Nicholas.

“We broke the budget for her: 13,000 guineas,” Hanley recalls with a smile. “So I had to take a leg. I brought her back to Ireland, broke her, and started training her. She was third first time out at the Curragh, and was then a tick off the track record at Tipperary, eased down. One of the priests said: 'They bet the hell out of her!'”

Hanley bounced her out a week later to finish second in a Group race at the Curragh, and put her away.

“When she came out in the spring she won a Listed race at Tipperary despite a terrible trip,” he recalls. “Missed the break, stumbled, and still got up and won. I mean, she was a tiger. Then I ran her in the [G3] Greenland S., against the colts. Mick Kinane sat her at the back the whole way, she relaxed beautifully, and bolted in by three lengths. So she was the breakthrough filly for me.”

Surely Hanley must have wondered what he had brought into the Thoroughbred game that other trainers were missing?

“Well, we had just a small bunch of horses and there was me and one other guy,” he says with a shrug. “I knew how they went to the feed tub, how much they were leaving, how they were carrying their weight. We were watching their legs, and keeping them happy out for a pick of grass in the afternoon.”

But it was never quite the same after the loss of McDonnell. He had called Hanley every evening from his 19th floor office on Fifth Avenue, and they'd go through the horses, one by one. He brought him out to see how American sales and farms went about things. In Ireland, too, he could introduce Hanley to new influences: he was a good friend of Dermot O'Brien, Vincent's brother and for a long time his right-hand man. They went to see the gallops at Ballydoyle, and lunched round Vincent's table.

Not that McDonnell himself really knew much about horses.

“I had a retired show jumper that I used to keep in the field as a pet for the mares,” recalls Hanley. “One day we're out there with a man from the bank. We're looking at this old gelding and he's explaining to the banker what a good mare he was. I don't know how much he borrowed against that 12-year-old gelding, but the banker thought he was a broodmare and so did Murray. But he really was a wonderful guy. It was terrible that he passed when he did. He was loving it, putting together partnerships, planning to put more and more into the whole thing.”

But one legacy, as we know, was already assured: McDonnell had recognized the ultimate vocation of this exceptional horseman. And another was secured when his widow offered Hanley the option to buy the Irish farm, Whitechurch. And that brand was gratefully retained, when Hanley moved to America a few years later.

In the meantime, he had outgrown his improvised training facilities and moved to Maddenstown Lodge on the Curragh. But then one spring the horses all got terribly sick: they were bleeding even if only breezed. Within the same 12 months, moreover, he lost both his parents. Then there were the bad payers, requiring Hanley to become as much of a trader as a trainer.

In 2001, however, there was at least the final flourish of Golden Apples (Ire) (Pivotal {GB}). Co-bred with James Egan, she won her maiden by eight lengths and, after an eye-catching third in Group company, was bought by Gary Tanaka to run in the GI Del Mar Oaks.

“She left my yard on the Monday, shipped to California, got out of quarantine, jogged two days, and bolted up in the Grade I in the name of Ben Cecil!” says Hanley with a smile. “He had only seen her the day before. In fairness, he then developed her into an Eclipse Award winner. And they did send me the trainer's percentage!”

But Hanley would soon be following her over the ocean. He had developed a knack for pinhooking, first with a McDonnell syndicate and subsequently with partners of his own. GI Acorn S. winner Forest Secrets (Forest Wildcat) had been turned from a $150,000 weanling to a $425,000 yearling; and Hanley also had a leg in Chief Seattle (Seattle Slew), eventually sold to Sheikh Mohammed after finishing second in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile; while in the European market, together with James Egan, he had spotted elite producer Cassandra Go (Ire) (Indian Ridge {Ire}) and Group 1 winner Rebelline (Ire) (Robellino) as weanlings.

Now some American partners were embarked on a venture so much more ambitious that Hanley emigrated to Kentucky. And while the new farm did not last, he was here for good: with

45 acres on Iron Works Pike, he started over with seven or eight pinhooks a year.

Once again, he landed running. “We topped the [Fasig-Tipton] July Sale two years in a row [in 2007 and 2008], with foals I'd bought for $85,000 and $100,000,” he recalls. “Then I brought three to Saratoga, and sold one for $875,000, one for $725,000, and the other for $250,000.”

It didn't seem to matter what he turned his hand to: his equestrian education appeared to have given Hanley a usefully different prism through which to view Thoroughbreds. First and foremost, he emphasizes, he was privileged to be raised by a horseman as discerning as his father.

“But yes, while show jumpers can come in all shapes and sizes, all the good ones have to be balanced,” he reflects. “So you do get a feel from the way a horse moves and carries himself, how they push off their hocks.”

Similarly, moreover, with their mentality. Hanley perceives a common margin between all the different brands of horsemanship he has observed or cultivated.

“In show jumping, for example, if you know you're going to have to jump seven foot, you would never ask them to do so in training,” he explains. “You practise over smaller obstacles, you build his confidence until he feels he's the best. When you ride into that arena, you're going to ask that horse to do something that pushes him to the limit. If there's any chink in his armour, if he's not confident he can do it, he won't.

“And I felt the same with training [Thoroughbreds]. You obviously have to challenge them. But you never want to push them so hard that they feel defeated. Of course there are many ways to train, but I believe Vincent would always have a lead for his good horses, so that they always finished their work on top. They didn't know what it was to be beaten. And I think when it feels good, when they're doing it with flair, they get better and stronger.”

Though it is only six years since his arrival at WinStar, Hanley has in that time already been instrumental in identifying the apogee among Thoroughbreds: an undefeated Triple Crown winner, found at the Keeneland September Sale in 2016.

WinStar were partnering with China Horse Club and SF Bloodstock, whose representatives were naturally involved too. Farm president and CEO Elliott Walden asked Hanley to take a look at a son of Scat Daddy he'd seen in the Glenwood consignment.

“And what I saw was, well, an exceptional physical,” Hanley recalls. “He was very big, but when he went to move! The way he stepped off his hind end and reached for the ground, the way he carried his head. It was just like, wow, what have we got here? This immature, massive horse moved like he was 15.2 hands. His balance, for such a big horse, was incredible: he was so light on his feet.

“We were just talking about the horse with confidence; the horse that thinks he's the best. Well, I remember watching Justify come off the track the day before the Belmont and thinking, 'I'd hate to be running against him tomorrow.' He just walked off there like, 'I'm the man.' And Bob Baffert was part of his magic. I mean, yes, he trains these horses hard. But if you watch, he always sets his works up for the good horse. They always finish in front, and gallop out in front like a monster.”

Hanley had already been integral to the discovery of a Classic winner in Creator (Tapit), while the following year GI Florida Derby winner Audible (Into Mischief)–now himself on the WinStar roster–was picked out at Fasig's Gulfstream 2-year-old auction.

“It's been an incredible run for three or four years,” says Hanley, before adding wryly: “Came up dry this year, completely. But that's the way it goes. You can't win every year.”

Modest as he is, there's clearly some kind of equine Midas touch at work in Hanley: from his equestrian career, which must be condensed here simply as world-class (he had a cracker of a ride lined up for Moscow, when shortlisted for the boycotted Olympics); to finding a 13,000gns champion sprinter; to a key role in the story of Justify.

And what is striking, now, is how Hanley is again adapting to a radically different task. In terms of scale, coming to WinStar was rather like asking a Swiss watchmaker to tune Big Ben. From having a dozen or so Whitechurch pinhooks to manage, he is now holding an umbrella over 400-500 head of horse.

“It's been quite an education, and at times a challenge,” he admits. “The volume of work here is quite enormous. We work 10 sales a year, probably, and it just keeps going and going. But it's something I love to do. I mean, I'm a horseman. I love being around the horses. I love that we've got the training here, that I can go and watch the young horses develop, watch their soundness. I'm not a great office guy, or organizer. But here it's about the horses.

“And we have great staff. Every division, I've a connection with each of those guys and know what's going on. I can just slip in wherever: foals, yearlings, stallions, training, breaking, buying. You have to delegate, but you can oversee the picture. If something's not going right, you can pretty much zoom in and see what needs to be done.”

As someone who already knew the species backwards, Hanley has been fascinated to learn about horses in a fresh dimension–and, above all, to learn new business perspectives from farm owner Kenny Troutt.

Still learning, then, after all these years. Nobody, after all, will ever wholly master the unpredictability of Thoroughbreds. But that same unpredictability is perhaps one of their gifts to horsemen, attuning them the wider hazards of fortune. Just look what has happened to our business, since this conversation just a little while ago. Or, above all, consider the cruel fate that has in recent years pitched Hanley's wife Ann into a battle with Parkinson's Disease.

The warmth with which their adopted community has embraced the couple, and the generosity with which it has backed Ann's research charity, is a human boon that complements the gratification Hanley has always found in the company of horses.

“People have been incredible,” he says. “She's amazing, how she has dealt with it all; and how she's got involved in research, and fundraising, and helping other people with the disease. It has been so humbling for me to observe the work Ann has been doing over the last five or six years, improving the quality of life for many people with Parkinson's, through her funding and support of patients at U.K. The letters of gratitude that come to her from these people are heart-warming. And we feel really honoured by the way that the horse community has got behind us. You get challenges in your life, but I really admire her positive attitude. I'm sure I wouldn't be able to do it.”

And unpredictability cuts both ways. It gives as much as it takes away–above all with horses.

“I often wonder how it would have panned out, if I had stayed training,” Hanley muses. “But life is full of twists and turns. It was only knocking on that American stranger's door, to see if I could rent some stalls, that got me here today.”

At McDonnell's Memorial Mass, one of his sons read the Prayer of a Confederate Soldier. He'd found on a yellowing piece of paper in his father's briefcase. It concludes: “I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I hoped for.” Perhaps, then, we can all learn from Hanley, one of the most remarkable horsemen in our midst–and always keep knocking at new doors.