By Brian Sheerin
At 30 years of age, Hamish McCalmont has already experienced two different worlds. Having spent seven years working in finance in London, and enjoyed the delights that comes with city living, McCalmont made the decision to return home to his family's Norelands Stud in County Kilkenny and immerse himself in the world of bloodstock.
In fairness, he picked a good time to change career path and come home. Norelands was one of three consignments selected by the Niarchos family to offer some select mares at the Goffs November Breeding Stock Sale, including the €6 million Alpha Centauri (Ire) (Mastercraftsman {Ire}), and returned to that sales house earlier this month to sell a €900,000 Sea The Stars colt.
The momentum continued at Book 1 of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale last week with three yearlings selling for almost 1.6 million gns. Even a self-proclaimed rookie like McCalmont was left gobsmacked by that record-breaking trade and the youngster is hoping for more of the same at Book 2 this week.
He said, “We knew we had three very nice fillies but obviously you never know what's going to happen until you get there. Especially with a sale like Book 1, where everyone is always a little bit guarded at the beginning, you don't take anything for granted. The great thing about last week was there seemed to be a floor to the market. The footfall was great and we never went through as many cards than we did last week. A lot of that was down to the American influence at the sale, which helped push up the market, and then obviously we had the massive players Kia [Joorabchian]–who isn't new to the market but never spent as much at a sale before-and Godolphin. Everyone was pleasantly surprised, really.”
Norelands has targeted Book 2 with a nine-strong draft. There are two colts by Sea The Stars (Ire), a filly and a colt by No Nay Never along with fillies by New Bay (GB) and Night Of Thunder (Ire) to get excited about. But McCalmont knows better to be getting ahead of himself at this early juncture.
“I'm relatively new to working full-time in the business but, from what I learned from my Dad, Matt [Gilsenan, farm manager] and lots of other people in the industry, you have to remain cautious. But you have to be optimistic about the fact a lot of people were blown out of the water in Book 1. Hopefully those people who weren't able to fill orders in Book 1 will continue shopping at Book 2.”
He added on the draft, “We're very strong on the sire side of things for Book 2 this year. We're a bit like everyone else in that we wanted to send a lot of our own homebreds to Book 2 because it's a sale that everyone goes to. You're really getting your horse in front of all of the eyes. These matings were planned a long time ago but thankfully all the sires of the horses we have are going extremely well. We don't have a huge number of horses but we're more concentrated on keeping the quality really high and the quantity low. Let's see how they get on.”
The majority of the people working in this industry have had to work from the bottom up. However, McCalmont's trajectory in the industry is a little different. His family may be steeped in racing history, but he has relatively little hands-on experience working with horses. It's only now that he's keen to make up for lost time.
He said, “I've always had an interest in bloodstock but studied finance at university and spent seven or eight years in London working with Hambros. It was about a year ago when I made the difficult decision to leave that job. I was trying to juggle going to the sales whilst working in London but I just found I was missing a lot. I was trying to balance my passion with my job but I couldn't do both. It got to the stage where I wanted to follow my passion. This is very much a game about people as much as it is about horses and you need to be at the sales and you need to be getting involved. I found that I wasn't there when I needed to be and wasn't there when I wanted to be so that's how I made that decision. It wasn't easy but, as I had a bit of money saved up, I went and bought a few fillies and a few broodmares and really immersed myself in it. I'm going to see how that goes and I've already spent the whole foaling season at home and have been heavily involved with the yearling prep as well.”
He added, “I didn't do pony club or anything like this when I was growing up so I really want to get my fingers under it and understand how the whole breeding side of the game works. I just want to understand the horse, really. I could follow the industry from London and read all the stallion stats-and I'm big into that-as I wanted but I couldn't get my eyes on enough horses. That's what I have been trying to do for the past year and I've loved every minute of it.”
To that extent, McCalmont has looked on at Norelands through a unique prism. A fresh set of eyes if you will. While he brings a certain youth and enthusiasm to the operation, there's no angling to fix something that clearly isn't broken.
He explained, “I'm very lucky that I had the support of my parents to go and follow what I thought I wanted to do. But the thing I couldn't wrap my head around for years, the business I was in, people would applaud you if you produced a five per cent return on your investment every year. In this game, if you make five per cent on your pinhook, you're miserable!
“I love the farm, love being home and working alongside my parents so, given it was always the direction that I was going to go, I thought rather than spending all my time working for somebody else, it was probably wise to come back and channel my energies into the family business.”
He added, “But I'm definitely not trying to bring in new tech or new marketing strategies. The farm is a very established name and all of our clients in the past and hopefully in the future come to us purely through word of mouth. Norelands is a boutique operation and we want to keep it that way. If you were to try and change how that works, you could ruin the brand, so we're very mindful of that.”
What McCalmont does bring to the operation is a mathematical brain and strong understanding of statistics. That can come in handy when predicting what the market might want and, while he may lack hands-on experience, he's not afraid to back his own judgment.
A case in point being his purchase of Kingman (GB) filly Rathmore (Ire) at the Tattersalls December Mares Sale last year for 50,000gns. That looks pretty decent value now since the half-sister Idea Generation (Ire) (Dubawi {Ire}) landed the G2 Flower Bowl Stakes at Saratoga for Chad Brown.
“When I was going into the office in London, I used to be on the bus reading TDN sires' lists, the Bill Oppenheim report, the return of mares and things like that,” McCalmont recalled. “My passion is for long-term and middle-distance breeding and I love all of those German, Irish and English Classic-type pedigrees. Even if the market goes a certain way, I like being a contrarian to a certain degree and I'd always be following statistics in the hope of figuring out what the market will be looking for in two years' time. I think every breeder is like that and my Dad has been very receptive to that as well. He was always doing it that way, as was my Mum, so now we just put our heads together on the matings. Obviously the most important thing is to get a nice horse to the sales but, if you don't have the right sires on the door, it's a real problem. We've seen that with the selectivity of the market in recent times so hopefully we're vindicated by our matings during Book 2.”
He added, “All the fears I had when I made the decision haven't come to fruition. Not yet anyway. But this doesn't feel like work to me. Working on stallion statistics on a Sunday morning, or delving into the form late at night, that doesn't feel like work. It's something I really enjoy doing and, because it's the family farm, I feel we are all working towards something together. I do more hours now than when I was working in London but it's very different work and it's really enjoyable. This is not a nine to five job and you don't survive in this business unless you are passionate. I've followed that passion and I'm very happy that I did.”
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