Tom Biggs

Juveniles with form as good as La Bellota (Ire) (Mehmas {Ire}), a fine winner of a Listed contest at Doncaster less than a week ago, don't come around very often and it was Blandford Bloodstock agent Tom Biggs who landed the gelding for a session-topping 425,000gns on Wednesday at Tattersalls.  Biggs was bidding on behalf of fellow Blandford agent Richard Brown, who, by the time La Bellota went through the ring on Wednesday evening, was halfway across the Atlantic Ocean en route to the Breeders' Cup.  Of course, La Bellota...

Respected point-to-point handler and ex-jumps jockey Charlie Poste says that he is "absolutely loving" his first endeavours into the breeze-up business and looks forward to consigning his first draft at the upcoming Tattersalls Craven Breeze-Up and Goffs UK Doncaster Breeze-Up sales.  Poste trained over 100 winners between the flags in Britain, including talented chaser Third Time Lucki, but explained how the broad international market for breeze-up horses compared to the parochial feel to the point-to-point game made it a no-brainer to try his hand at the former.  The early indications...

ASCOT, UK--Some of us get slower as we get older. Bradsell (GB) is getting faster. So much so that, instead of treading the more obvious three-year-old sprinter route to the Commonwealth Cup, trainer Archie Watson talked the colt's owner Shaikh Nasser Bin Hamad Al Khalifa into supplementing him for the King's Stand S., and what an inspired move that turned out to be. It takes a good horse to win at Royal Ascot once, but a proper horse to return triumphant, dropped back in trip to the minimum and with...

NEWMARKET, UK -- "Trickledown" felt rather too contentious, given what was meanwhile happening to its proponents out there in the real world. In this environment, after all, the original label of "horse-and-sparrow economics" would always have conveyed the theory rather more intelligibly. Some alternative word was required on Friday, then, to describe how a rampant market at the front end of the Tattersalls October Sale was filtering somewhat more quietly into the base of the pyramid. In the end, the second half of Book 3--in which momentum reliably ebbs relative...

In ordinary times, this week would mark the revving up of the European bloodstock charabanc: standing room only, destination Deauville. As the threat of a second quarantine hangs over visitors or returnees from France to the UK like the Sword of Damocles, it's probably just as well that the traditional start to the yearling season has been delayed. This coming weekend, there will be no short shuffle between racecourse and sales ground for the Prix Jacques Le Marois and other delights ahead of a frenetic evening of activity in the...