Young Guns With Billy Jackson-Stops

Young Guns is a series where we endeavour to find out more about some of the young professionals in the industry. Today we speak with bloodstock consultant Billy Jackson-Stops of Atlas Stallions.

TDN: What was your path into the industry?

BJS: My brother and I were big jumps racing fans, having been brought up opposite Towcester Racecourse, so we started out by riding point-to-pointers. Then when I left school I got some work experience with James Delahooke at Tattersalls and my interests soon changed from jumps to flat racing, and from there I got a job prepping yearlings at Hascombe and Valiant.

TDN: Who has been the biggest influence on your career?

BJS: My time as assistant trainer to Godolphin in Australia was most influential because I spent all of my days one-on-one with John O'Shea. John is a remarkable trainer and had some very alternative views on life. He was lot of fun to work with and we had a huge amount of success together. He was willing to discuss anything and had an in-depth knowledge of pedigrees, which helped open my eyes to what I'm doing now with Spill The Beans.

TDN: What does your role involve?

BJS: The majority of my time is spent managing Spill The Beans, who stands at The National Stud; he's the first son of the sire sensation Snitzel to stand in Europe. I started a small company, Atlas Stallions, so I could lease Spill The Beans from Aquis Farms in Australia to stand him here in the UK because I felt he would fit well into the current commercial and speed-oriented market. Along with Amy Taylor from The National Stud I manage the nominations, finances and marketing for all things Spill The Beans and Atlas Stallions.

Away from that I have a lot of my own bloodstock interests that I manage both here and in Australia. Then I consult on both bloodstock and racing for some private clients here, in the Middle East and in Australia.

TDN: What challenges do you face in your role?

BJS: This year has been incredibly competitive on the stallion marketing front with so many new horses coming onto the market, so the challenge for anyone with a stallion is to get mares booked in. Fortunately Spill The Beans has generated a huge amount of his own interest through being the first son of Snitzel to stand here; he makes life easy by also being very easy on the eye and by having an amazing race record. Promoting him has been a fun challenge to take on.

I'm currently consulting for a trainer in Qatar and trying to improve his operation. A lot of the horses that end up there are the lower tier horses from the UK that have had previous issues and the only training track in Qatar is a hard dirt surface. So it's been a complicated challenge to work out how to train the horses more effectively without breaking them down on the surface; hopefully we'll start seeing some results from there quite soon.

TDN: What advice would you give your 16-year-old self?

BJS: To be completely confident in the decisions you make and then to have the patience to let the effects of those decisions play out in front you rather than trying to constantly interfere.

TDN: What do you think is the biggest challenge facing the industry and how would you solve it?

BJS: It's nothing new, but the biggest challenge at this present moment is the lack of staff across the board here in the UK. This looks like it might only get worse with Brexit. Solving it won't be easy, but it comes by improving wages to attract and keep staff in the game. When prize money improves, more owners will be attracted to the game because their risk/reward of buying horses will be less; this demand from owners means that trainers could increase their rates and therefore pay more to staff. Currently the average keep of a horse in training is around £16,500, and the average prize money earned is £13,060. So it's easy to see why trainers can't justify upping their rates.

With more owners in the game there would also be more competition for horses at sales, so the middle to lower end of the sales market would improve and therefore generate more finances for breeders and their staff.

TDN: What do you think horse racing's perception is for the general public?

BJS: Horse racing still seems to be viewed as elitist by the general public. The work of Middleham Park Racing, Hot To Trot Racing and other syndicates are really helping to shake off this perception though and they're doing to a great job at making racing affordable to everyone.

TDN: How would you attract more young people into the workforce?

BJS: There's a lot of talk about 'working hours' in horse racing, but that can't be changed; horses have to be cared for. So I think to get young people into the game and keep them there then racing must work out a way to pay them more as I mentioned earlier. I overheard someone recently from a stud say 'it's all very well to do it for the love of the horses, but that love doesn't pay the mortgage.'

TDN: Who is your favorite racehorse of all time and why?

BJS: Simple Verse. I was at Olly Stevens's when she arrived there as a yearling, she was the only yearling I was allowed to ride because she was so big. I left Olly's quite soon after to go be assistant to Ralph Beckett, where Simple Verse turned up a year later. I was fortunate enough to have been able to work very closely with her throughout her career and witness firsthand the controversy of the G1 St Leger and then her dominating win in the G1 Fillies and Mares S. on Champions Day.

TDN: Tell us something about yourself that not many people would know.

BJS: I very nearly joined the Army when I left school and got so close that I toured India as part of an official Army Polo Team before James Delahooke set me straight on my first visit to Tattersalls a few months later.

TDN: What would you like to achieve in the next five years?

BJS: The dream would be to have Atlas Stallions going successfully with two to three stallions on the books and for me to have bought my own small stud, but I'm sure reality has different ideas.