The Art of Simplicity Key to Kildaragh's Success

“Their welfare was our livelihood.” Peter Kavanagh could easily be talking about the mares and foals out in the paddocks at Kildaragh Stud. In fact he is casting his mind back to childhood days on his family's cattle farm. 

Though racing and breeding are increasingly observed through the prism of the data supplied by technology, a back-to-basics approach would stand any aspiring breeder in good stead, as would an hour spent listening to Kavanagh.

There's a touch of the John Cleese about him: long legs which could easily propel him straight into Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks sketch, and an uproarious sense of humour to boot. But don't let that lupine grin fool you into thinking that Kavanagh doesn't take this business very seriously indeed.

“I think that gave me an appreciation of stock and an appraisal of stock,” he continues. “That's where a lot of the basics stem from. That you can care for them, and you're all the time working in close association with them and their needs. My father was a cattle dealer predominantly, so a lot of stock used to come out to the farm and then every three weeks or month he'd sell them off. We would end up driving them on the roads for 10 miles on occasions, either supplying to farms or racecourses at the time. So you had your chores to do before school and when you came home in the evenings, cattle to be fed.”

No silver spoon, then, but an ingrained work ethic which would prepare him for a lifetime of work with similar discipline once his attention switched from bovine to equine. 

“Work was sort of second nature,” he says. “My father didn't call it work, just what was to be done. We didn't question it. I was always keen on horses. He didn't particularly like horses but I couldn't live without them. There was a couple of people who kept horses around and about, so I used to go to visit those, break them with some of the people and just get to know and be around horses. And then my father reluctantly allowed me to have a pony, on one condition that I could herd the cattle in the summer. I put a trap behind and fed them in the winter. So he was happy and I was happy.”

The sales ring has become nearly more important than the racecourse and people mate their mares nearly accordingly, which is wrong too.

There were no broodmares at the family farm, but Kavanagh eventually found himself on the Irish National Stud course. An early job in the local quarry had focused his mind on the fact he really must pursue his dream of working with horses. From his studies he went on to work at Moyglare Stud followed by the sales in Deauville.

“I always wanted to learn French. I originally went to France for six months. I was supposed to do three months in Logis when it was owned by the Bozos, and three months at Mézeray, but I ended up staying three and a half years,” he says. 

“I just love France and it's been very good to me subsequently because of my contacts there. We sent fillies to be trained in France. With Richard Gibson in particular we had great success. There were a lot of owner-breeders there and I'd say French racing back then was the best in the world. The Bunker Hunt era, the Boussac era. There were a lot of owner-breeders which have since dwindled down to very few. The Wildensteins were a very big operation then, and the Wertheimers. They had beautiful farms and great tradition, and unfortunately we're losing that very quickly. There seems to be a dispersal every year with nobody really coming in on a serious level to take their place.”

The modern move away from the traditional owner-breeder operations to those driven with a more commercial bent has brought a vastly altered complexion to thoroughbred breeding, which is now very much an industry. There is a necessity to this, up to a point, and change must be accepted, if not embraced, but it is an adjustment which has taken its toll on the sport.

“The sales ring has become nearly more important than the racecourse and people mate their mares nearly accordingly, which is wrong too,” says Kavanagh.

“The main focus is trading. That's fine. But back in the day, the sales ring was only for disposing of excess horses, whereas now it's become a total way of life. Finding people to race the horses now is becoming more and more difficult. Individuals seem to be becoming more and more rare.”

He continues, “Every year you look at the Derby field, at least a third of them don't stay, same with the Oaks. Whereas the great owner-breeders bred horses specifically for those races. Now it's almost by accident a horse ends up in the Derby. And you see the three very good horses [Adayar, Hukum and Westover] being exported to Japan, and Pyledriver becoming a National Hunt stallion without having a chance on the Flat. That wouldn't have happened before.

“You don't know where these horses are going to come from, these good stallions. Into Mischief, they couldn't raffle him initially when he went to stud. Every time they did a big promotion on him, people nearly went into reverse. But he had to do it the hard way and now he's an exceptional stallion. And there have been cases in point all through the years, and horses like this can get passed over very easily if you don't get some sort of an opportunity.

“I think we need to be a little more longsighted with regard to the future.”

Kavanagh's own education was honed working at Kildangan Stud in the days of its founder, the trainer and breeder Roderic More O'Ferrall, who sold the Co Kildare farm to Sheikh Mohammed in 1986. The mares owned by Gerry Oldham of Citadel Stud had been based there and were eventually split between nearby Kildaragh Stud, which was bought by Kavanagh and his wife Antoinette in 1984, and Knocktoran Stud. The example set by those two Classic-winning breeders made a deep impression. 

“We bought into and picked up some of the Citadel mares along the way,” says Kavanagh. “I suppose when you've worked with families for 20, 30 years, you get a bit of a feeling for them and you tend to realise what suits them best. And you're more passionate about them because you've been with them for so long. Mr Oldham was a remarkable man and he was very keen on his racing. He was a very easy man to work with and he had enormous success from a very selective broodmare band.”

Top of that hill of success was Oldham's treble Gold Cup winner Sagaro (Ire), with 2,000 Guineas winner Zino (GB), Irish Derby-winning half-brothers Talgo (Ire) and Fidalgo (Ire), and St Leger winner Intermezzo (GB) being the key members of a significant supporting cast.

The Kavanaghs benefited themselves from their investment in some of Oldham's lines through their purchase of Malaspina (Ire) (Whipper), later the dam of G3 Nell Gwyn S. winner Daban (Ire) (Acclamation {GB}), and Zivania (Ire) (Shernazar {GB}), who produced seven black-type horses including the 1,000 Guineas third Hathrah (Ire) (Linamix {Fr}). Her line has been continued successfully by Shadwell, who bred from her the Listed winner Hadaatha (Ire) (Sea the Stars {Ire}), who is perhaps now better known as the dam of this season's G1 Nassau S. winner Al Husn (Ire) (Dubawi {Ire}).

“He had no interest in the sales ring, just the racetrack,” says Kavanagh of Oldham. “That was always interesting, and Mr More O'Ferralll was equally interested in producing horses to run. In the eight years we were at Kildangan, from '78 to '86, we bred three Classic winners there with relatively old mares. It was a remarkable farm.

The biggest part of our game as a breeder, as a producer of stock, is observation.
It's not technology. It's not rocket science.

“It's only when you reflect back that you realise what we have lost. Someone like Gerald Leigh. Some of those families will have vanished forever.”

A family which is unlikely to disappear from the scene anytime soon is Kavanagh's own. His and Antoinette's three children Roderic, Alice and Sophie are all very much involved in different aspects of the business, with the former having been one of the breeze-up consignors behind this year's star juvenile Vandeek (GB) (Havana Grey {GB}), who was sold through his Glending Stables. 

“They're all equally passionate,” says their father. “There's two at home on the farm full time. Alice looks after the broodmares and she does her own foal consigning with AK Thoroughbreds, and that dovetails into the activities on the farm. And Roderic has his breeze-up horses. He was fortunate to pick up Vandeek and he's turned out to be a champion. Those sort of things just bring the whole game to another level.”

He continues, “We actually sent them away to school just to show them there was another life out there. Every time they were always late going back because they were watching a mare that was about to foal, or there was something else. 

“That sort of energy, it's needed to keep an operation going. It's a bit of a relay race, really. There needs to be somebody there to take up the slack and carry it on.”

With his unconventional, though arguably more valuable, education having been started at home on the farm, just as his children's was, Kavanagh is well positioned to be able to offer a few pointers to those coming through, eager to learn.

“I think you just have to gravitate towards clever people and people that are well-informed and you've got to be a good listener, just keeping your head down and focusing on what needs to be done,” he says of the business he still finds as enjoyable as it has been rewarding.

“In particular, I love just seeing the foals. There's always that element of magic to it. You can never take things for granted. I do most of the feeding of the yearlings and the weanlings and just seeing them on a daily basis and how they develop, I think that gives great satisfaction. And then I suppose the ultimate satisfaction is when you produce a good racehorse.”

He continues, “You don't hear stockmanship mentioned too often now, but good people that breed any animal, they're passionate about it and they spend a lot of time at it. They're not doing it remotely. Animals need careful attention nearly 24/7.

“One of my passions is land and pasture. We graze a lot of cattle on the farm. We run sheep on it in the winter. We're just trying to create the most favourable possible environment to raise stock on, and that's a passion in itself, just maintaining it. Paddocks can either be overgrazed or undergrazed, so they've got to be appraised on a weekly basis, really. You don't just turn the horses out there and look over the gate every two or three weeks. If you get the land right, you can see it in your horses. You just see. The product becomes what you want it to be: good-boned horses, healthy coats, good feet. And one without the other, it just won't work.”

There is no doubt that technology in varying forms has made our lives easier in some respects, but when it comes to rearing racehorses, Kavanagh holds on to the belief that the cleverest approach is also the simplest. It is bearing fruit, because on his farm's well tended acres have been raised the Group 1 winners G Force (Ire), Jukebox Jury (Ire), Frozen Fire (Ger) and Glencadam Gold (Ire) to name but a handful of the stakes horses to have graduated from Kildaragh.

He adds, “The biggest part of our game as a breeder, as a producer of stock, is observation. It's not technology. It's not rocket science. You watch how the horses move towards you at feeding time, whether they're outside or inside. Then you watch how they eat and how they interact with the others. And then when you've finished everything, you walk backwards towards the gate still observing.

“It's about keeping everything simple and practical, and learning to see what works best for the horse.”