Bailey’s Grand Horizons

Everything about Ed Bailey’s Herefordshire home has a sense of size.

Big skies, large barns and looseboxes with giant doors, a vast farmyard, huge farm vehicles, and horses with deep pedigrees or notable price tags. Bailey’s career as a bloodstock agent and a raiser and grazer of young horses is still at an early stage, but the foundations of his business have been carefully pieced together. Many of his ideas were spawned during a gap year with Paul Nicholls and then a university placement with David Redvers at Tweenhills Stud.

He says: “I was so green when I joined Paul, but everyone was very good to me and helped me out. They let me ride very good horses, Clifford Baker [head groom] was great and I shared  accommodation with Stan Sheppard, who was a conditional jockey at the time, and Harry Derham, who was assistant trainer.” Ah, that explains the association which led to Bailey and Derham forging a buying association and purchasing the top two lots at the Tattersalls Cheltenham Festival Sale – for a combined sum of £720,000.

I wanted to build up a state-of-the-art facility that can produce the best horses.

Of his time at Tweenhills he says: “I was really inspired by how David took on an old farm and has turned it into the most beautiful estate imaginable. I wanted to do the same and try and build up a state-of-the-art facility that can produce the best horses.”

Bailey therefore offers a bloodstock buying service – he made 28 trips to Ireland alone last year to visit yards and sales rings to assess or buy young horses, not to mention trips across the Channel – and also accommodation for horses at various stages of their careers. They include foals and young stores, plus older horses who need a bit of downtime or recuperation. Cristal D’Estruval and Clondaw Park, the four-year-old Irish point-to-point winners who headed the Festival Sale, went straight from the ring to Bailey’s Upton Court Stables for a holiday before joining Derham’s string.

In addition to buying young horses he offers a consignment service for three-year-olds heading to the ring, plus a breaking-in option for end-users who want to put their young horse into training. If an owner opts to go down the point-to-point route, one which has become so popular in Ireland, his association with Chris Barber, who trains nearby, opens that door. Bailey says of the process: “We want to give our clients’ young horses a good education and the best possible start in life, whether they are eventually for sale or to go into a trainer’s yard.”

Current resident yearlings include a daughter of Golden Horn and the Arkle Trophy and Queen Mother Champion Chase heroine Put The Kettle On. The filly is owned by OLBG, the online betting guide which sponsors Derham’s yard and backs the Mares’ Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival. She was bought as a foal at Goffs UK for £62,000 by Bailey and the OLBG Racing Club, a combination which at Tattersalls Ireland’s recent November Foal Sale picked up a daughter of Jeu St Eloi for €85,000. She is a half-sister to five winners of which four boast black-type and are headed by Grade 1 hurdles winner A Wave Of The Sea.

Bailey will be keeping a close on a Willie Mullins-trained four-year-old called Fou De Toi – who finished third on debut at Auteuil when trained in France – because he has a yearling filly out of a full-sister to that horse. The yearling is by Magic Dream, an eight-year-old stallion standing at Haras De Castillon and whose oldest progeny are three. Bailey says: “Magic Dream is a son of Saint Des Saints. Goliath De Berlais is also by Saint Des Saints and he hit the ground running, so I was trying to get ahead of the curve with the next sire son. I saw this filly in a field and liked the pedigree so it was a no-brainer.”

It’s easy to dream

Stores who Bailey traded at midsummer auctions included a €29,000 Jack Hobbs gelding out of smart mare Atlanta Ablaze – whose 2024 filly foal by Nathaniel topped the TBA’s Goffs Showcase Sale at Doncaster last year when selling for £70,000 – and a daughter of Mekhtaal who he bought for €4,000 as a foal and traded at the Derby Sale for €50,000. She was out of a sister to the dam  of Matnie, a queen among broodmares whose string of successful foals include the graded winners Caldwell Potter, Mighty Potter, French Dynamite, Brighterdaysahead and Indiana Jones.

During the lengthy, sun-blessed summer of 2025, Bailey was in his element once work finished and he could wander the paddocks and peruse the residents. He says: “I’m completely obsessed with that. I can wander around fields of horses for hours, looking at youngstock and thinking what they could be. It’s easy to dream.”

Asked which side of his business gives him the most satisfaction he says: “Winners. It’s all about winners. You don’t want to be famous for buying an expensive flop – you want to be known for the winners you buy.

“Big price-tags come with pressure, but the real kick is buying a winner who looks like it can go on to bigger things. That and seeing horses who have come through the farm and go on to win. An  example would be Sweet Caryline, who I bought with Chris Barber and who won the Paul and Richard Barber Memorial hurdle for Joe Tizzard at Wincanton [in early November]. Richard was Chris’s grandfather. That was just a lovely story.”

The buying side of his business is at a relatively early stage, but with clients that include Derham, Henry Daly and the partnership of Kim Bailey and Mat Nicholls he is sure to be involved with  plenty of winners in the years ahead. Successes to date include the recent JCB Triumph Trial Juvenile Hurdle winner One Horse Town, who he bought privately as a two-year-old for Derham out of Joseph O’Brien’s yard. He says:

“One Horse Town became Harry’s first winner on the Flat and has now won four races over hurdles. Winning at Cheltenham’s November meeting was a real thrill. The horse has been a super star.”

Other Bailey purchases include Good Land, a Grade 1-winning hurdler for Barry Connell, Daly’s Listed hurdle-winning mare Wye Not and the Chris Barber-trained Aintree Foxhunters’ Chase  winner Famous Clermont. Waiting in the wings are some enviable young horses who have been bought in the past year.

 

Cattle out, horses in

At the farm which his parents Patrick and Sarah bought 40 years ago before raising four children and a prized herd of Simmental cattle, Bailey Jr is making his own mark with his family’s backing.

Arable production remains an important element, one that he works on in summer when jump racing is quiet, but the cattle have gone, horses have moved in and barns have been built or restyled to suit equine rather than bovine residents.

With an eye on the future, a network of solar panels have been installed to power the farm, with surplus being sold back to the national grid. Bailey says: “During Covid food became short on the  shelves but that was due to a logistics issue, not a supply issue. I just felt that in a crisis gas and electricity supplies could become a problem. Electricity prices went up three times during Covid which was a big thing for arable farms and it went up again when Putin got busy. I don’t want that risk in the future.”

His journey to this point began at school, not that bloodstock buying and selling was on a list offered by the careers’ advisor. He says: “I was at school with Stan Sheppard and when I went to his house with nothing planned but to mess about I was soon told to get on a horse and ride out. I was very lucky to have a lot of help from Stan’s parents, Matt and Nicky, along the way. If I hadn’t been friends with Stan I wouldn’t be talking to you now.”

I really got the bug by going racing and point-to-pointing

On Royal Riviera, who was owned by his father and trained by Nicky Sheppard, Bailey tried his hand at point-to-pointing, unseating on three of his first four rides before gaining places and then a debut win on the same horse. Over four seasons he became reasonably proficient and absorbed a knowledge of jump racing that can only be understood by those who have ridden over a fence, while inwardly acknowledging he would never follow his mate into the weighing room.

He says: “I spent a lot of time at the Sheppards’ house growing up and I really got the bug from them by going racing and point-to-pointing. Stan started riding in point-to-points and I wanted to  do the same, but I wasn’t quite as good as him. I really enjoyed riding in races, but I knew it wasn’t to be, and in my second year at university I realised I was committing too much time to the sport and it wasn’t going to work.

“If I do something I want to give it 100 per cent and I didn’t think I was making the most of my time at university. I went to Cirencester to study agricultural land management, but when I arrived I  discovered there was a bloodstock course, so quickly changed onto that.

“The course involved a range of topics including nutrition, equine science, genetics, racing as a business and economics. It wasn’t too testing, and for my final exam I went straight from Doncaster sales to the exam hall having not looked at a book for three weeks. I guess you could call the sales ‘homework’.”

In his final year at Cirencester Bailey began working on the early stages of his planned career by purchasing young horses and attracting older horses to his family home. He says it never crossed  his mind to apply for jobs at well-known seats of learning, although the year spent at Ditcheat with Nicholls and the placement at Tweenhills were important stepping stones.

You have to be out and about and meeting people

“While I was at university we had a few horses for Matt Sheppard that came here for box rest and summer grazing, and that made me think about expanding that side of the business, and I also  bought a couple of young horses that went point-to-pointing with Chris Barber. The first two we bought both won.”

He says: “You’re never going to achieve anything staying at home. You have to be out and about and meeting people.”

That policy has opened doors, although a little family association is always handy and, when starting out as a bloodstock agent, enabled him to buy some horses for Kim Bailey and Mat Nicholls.

He says: “I’m not related to Kim, but he is my godfather. He’s been very good to me, and some of the young horses we bought together have been running well lately. Five-year-old White Noise has won two hurdles recently, and four-year-old Marsiac won at Aintree in October.”

More recently he has teamed up with the ascendant Derham, the pair making a notable point when securing Cristal D’Estruval and Clondaw Park for notable sums at the Festival Sale in March,  before putting £120,000 down to buy another four-year-old Irish pointer, Lasko Des Obeaux, at the following month’s Goffs Aintree Sale.

He says: “I go over to Ireland every other week when it’s busy, and once a month at other times of year. It’s good fun – you always learn something. Five or six times a year I just go around yards  and look at horses who are about to run. They are hard-working trips looking at loads of horses. I also try to get over there for schooling races and on one occasion took Richard Patrick along to  ride in schooling races on horses we hoped to buy. He rode Stick To The Board, who we became underbidders on when he sold for £215,000 [to Highflyer/Paul Nicholls] at the recent Cheltenham November Sale.

“Having that level of background information is so useful. You really couldn’t do a better job of looking under the bonnet than to have someone you trust riding a potential purchase in a schooling race. If I see a horse at a yard that I would like to buy I’ll go and see it run in its point-to-point. It’s better than just watching a video – you get to hear their wind as they cross the line and get a general feel for how they behave on the day. You also get a better idea about the depth of the race.”