Q & A With Cormac Breathnach

On August 1, after a longtime stint at Adena Springs, Cormac Breathnach took up a role in stallion nominations at Airdrie Stud. Breathnac's arrival is not the only change at the dynamic farm, which has acquired at least one new stallion to stand at stud in each of the past four years, recently adding American Freedom (who covers his first mares in 2018), Upstart (2017), Summer Front (2016), Cairo Prince and Mark Valeski (2015) to their existing roster of Include, Majesticperfection and Creative Cause. When they announced stud fees last week, Cairo Prince, the #2 first-crop yearling sire in 2017, saw his fee rise to $25,000, and the farm is waiting until after the Breeders' Cup to announce Creative Cause's fee. The second-crop sire, who has eight black type winners to tie Union Rags atop the list, has three Breeders' Cup hopefuls, Significant Form (Juvenile Fillies Turf), Pavel (Classic) and My Boy Jack (Juvenile Turf). The TDN's Sue Finley caught up with the 42-year-old Irish native and University of Kentucky Gluck Research PhD. graduate last week to talk about how the new job was going, Airdrie's young roster, and the upcoming sales.

TDN: You spent eight years at Adena Springs. What's different about this job?

CB: It has been a privilege to be involved with two of North America's perennial leading breeders. There are differences in the way they've gone about achieving their success. Frank (Stronach) typically bred and sold a lot of mares to get the product out to different clients and has been very successful getting business that way. The focus here has been more on commercial sales and building female families.

TDN: Has your commute gotten better or worse?

CB: Better! It's about 15 minutes shorter, and coming to work in the morning, I drive on one of the most beautiful roads I've ever been on, Old Frankfort Pike. I couldn't complain about that.

TDN: When Cairo Prince retired to Airdrie, Sid Fernando wrote, “For as long as it's been around since the early 1970s, Governor and Mrs. Brereton C. Jones's Airdrie, in Midway, Ky., has made a name for itself with moderately priced stallions, but common threads were race records and physiques first. It's a formula that's worked for Airdrie.” As a new member of the marketing team, I'd like you to comment on that.

CB: I think the focus is on giving breeders the opportunity to be successful, not just in the marketplace, but also in breeding horses to race. That's the goal with the stallions we've recruited: to get horses who are attractive and well-bred and well-performing enough to be appealing to the commercial breeders as well as end users. The other thing that they've done so well over such a long time is that they've supported the stallions with large numbers of quality homebred mares, so Governor Jones is about female families as much as any breeder around. By building those families, you get to know what those families need, what they do and what they produce and you can use them then strategically to enhance the chance of a young stallion.

TDN: How many mares do the Joneses own, and how many are on the farm?

CB: They have a little over 150 mares. It's a big broodmare band, and what I've enjoyed so much in coming here is to see that there are several generations here. Some of the mares we have now are third, fourth generation or more, tracing back to the mares that he started with. I think when you look at the really top breeders in the world, that's a common thread, and developing families helps you control a lot of the variables that exist in the breeding game. We don't board but for a few close associates, so there aren't really a lot of outside mares. There might be 170 mares on the entire farm.

TDN: Who are some of those families you've come across that have struck you?

CB: Governor Jones bred Lucy Sims, named after his and Libby's daughter. She has produced Don't Trick Her, who produced GI winners Include Me Out and Check the Label, and Listed winner On The Menu, and Kittery Point, the dam of GI winner Sam's Sister and the $900,000 Cairo Prince yearling we sold at Keeneland September, as well as Another Vegetarian, the dam of Grade I winner Sweet Talker.

He claimed Pacific Spell and her second foal was Grade I Kentucky Oaks winner Proud Spell. Pacific Spell is also the dam of the Graded stakes-placed Proud Pearl and the stakes-winning No Distortion. In turn, Proud Spell is the dam of Indian Spell, whose first foal is the undefeated 2-year-old stakes winner Dak Attack, and just had a nice Creative Cause winner last weekend in Japan for her new connections.

He also bought Witness Post and bred the Graded stakes winner Hello Liberty and the stakes-winning Pious Ashley out of her. He still owns her other daughters Churchbythesea, the dam of Significant Form, who won the Grade III Miss Grillo and who has a big shot in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf, as well as the Graded stakes-winning Hay Dakota, and Incarnate Memories, whose Cairo Prince yearling sold for $400,000 in September.

So when something good happens in a pedigree, you see the effect in a lot of other daughters and sisters and nieces, and that really helps.

TDN: Is there more of a focus on end users at Airdrie, as opposed to commercial breeders?

CB: I wouldn't say there's more of a focus, per se. We really try to balance both aspects. Governor Jones himself is a big-time end user. Winning races is what it's all about here. The industry depends on a lot of small or medium-sized breeders who need commercial returns to stay in the game. We really try to strike that balance. It's a difficult thing to do but it's important to try.

TDN: Has the farm been more aggressive acquiring new stallions recently?

CB: There has been one new horse a year for the last few years. Airdrie stood and developed really good established stallions like Indian Charlie and Harlan's Holiday that were longtime, very successful racehorse sires that we lost too soon. At the same time, there has always been a focus on bringing something in that is commercially viable and has the race record and the ability that we look for. So there has been a push and the way the chips have fallen, we currently happen to have a young roster.

Creative Cause is doing so well, and looks like he could be our next big horse. He has four 2-year-old stakes winners this year, which is tied with Into Mischief among active U.S. stallions, so hopefully he's going to carry us forward as a young rising stallion. Creative Cause's fee is still to be determined for next year. He just keeps coming up with these really nice horses, and has three live chances in the Breeders' Cup. And with horses like Cairo Prince, Summer Front, Upstart and American Freedom following year-on-year after him, we are very optimistic about the future. They all fit the mold of what the focus is here. They are very attractive, had real genuine talent and have been very well supported internally and externally so far. They all started at the $10,000 price point and have represented real value. Hopefully they'll be around a long time.

TDN: How does Cairo Prince fit into that Airdrie mold?

CB: He is what you hope and dream for. I know that the team of the Governor, Bret, Tim and Ben worked really hard to get him here and it was a very exciting day when they entered into the partnership with Darley. And now we can all see why. He's an extremely classy horse with size, scope and a beautiful walk, and he passes on those attributes. His progeny have his free-moving, athletic walk and they have such good minds. They take to the sales environment very well. They don't turn a hair, they're very classy, and as a result they've been extremely well received. He was an excellent two-year-old, and it's fair to expect some precocity in his progeny, but to me he still looks like a Classic two-turn three-year-old type. A lot of his yearlings have that scope and stretch and will hopefully be fast early and train on.

TDN: In what figures to be a very competitive first-foals year, with the first foals of American Pharoah, Constitution, Honor Code, Liam's Map and Tonalist coming to market, among others, Airdrie offers the first foals of Summer Front.

CB: I'm optimistic he can take the commercial torch from Cairo Prince. We have quite a few on the farm and we'll have a nice group at the November sales. They're very attractive, with leg and scope, good-moving foals-just what the market should want.

TDN: He's the farm's first son of War Front, and was a turf horse. Is it a different sell?

CB: It's always a different sell for a turf horse, but the industry is getting more responsive to them. You've got new turf courses going in at Aqueduct and Woodbine, turf racing generates a lot of handle, the public likes it, and they often generate competitive full fields which are appealing to watch. Summer Front was very talented and had a blistering turn of foot. He was an undefeated dual stakes winner at 2, and won Graded races as a 3, 4 and 5 year old, and was just touched off in a Grade I at 6. Mike Ryan bred him, and he's out of an El Prado mare who also produced (G1 winner) Laragh, and his deeper family is predominantly dirt. We think there is every chance that he will throw some quality dirt horses. Physically he's all of 16.1 and very attractive. He's a bigger, scopier type of War Front and he has right at 100 registered foals in his first crop. I'm hopefully not jumping the gun, and there are a lot of prestigious first-crop stallions in this class, but I think his foals are going to make people take notice.

TDN: You have a PhD from UK's Gluck Equine Research Center. Do you use it in your work?

CB: I primarily studied the EHV-1 virus (equine herpesvirus) and vaccine development during my PhD. It provided me a strong background in genetics which I think is something that really comes into play in the breeding industry. Beyond that, PhD degrees help develop critical thinking skills which might be the most valuable thing, in my opinion.