Jeffrey Hobby’s most important memento of a week which might very well end up feeling like a dream is the one that nearly stares him in the face each day.
Makarova, the first homebred Group 1 winner from Brightwalton Stud after her victory in the Prix de l’Abbaye in early October, has just recently travelled the handful of miles back home from Ed Walker’s Lambourn stable.
“By the house we have a ha-ha and she’s right by it, pride of place,” Hobby explains. “It’s lovely, I can sit eating my breakfast and look at her, or walk my dogs last thing at night and she’s in the field there next to me.”
The daughter of Acclamation was pretty much retired on the spot as a five-time winner, including the Group 3 Coral Charge at Sandown. Hobby explains that a quality which should serve her well in her new career as a broodmare was not always her strongest asset on the track.
“She’s a sweetie, just very chilled and I think you can see that from when she was racing,” he says. “She’d be very relaxed in the parade ring and used to sometimes lose her races because she wouldn’t get going quick enough, it was only later we managed to get her a bit more wound up.
“If you’re trailing out the back at the end of two furlongs, it’s a big ask to get back to the front over five. She’d work at home like a 90-horse but Ed got her engaged and sharpened.”
The story of Hobby and wife Phoebe’s development of Brightwalton from an old dairy farm over the last 15 years was documented in the November issue of Owner Breeder.
Hobby had liked the Cheveley Park family of Makarova’s dam, Vesnina, and bought her for 68,000gns at the Tattersalls July Sale in 2015.
While a broodmare band of around 15 is operated along commercial lines, the family clearly get a great enjoyment out of racing their fillies.
His reflections of the hours following the Abbaye provide the perfect flavour of what it meant.
“The day itself was hysterical, just madness,” Hobby says.
“I ran around in circles screaming for a bit very excited. When you breed a Group 1 winner, having built the farm from scratch, it’s what you dream of, and we’re not that far in really.”
He continues: “We got taken off to interviews and after having some champagne, the lovely thing in France is you can just go into the stable yard so I ended up standing outside the box having a chat with her.
“I had to go back to Newmarket that night as Book 1 was starting and we went to The Three Blackbirds for dinner. It wasn’t that late when we got back but Ed had to go and look at horses in the morning.
“My wife had gone home with the kids and I sat there in my room, just buzzing. I asked for a whisky then thought, ‘This is too sad, I can’t sit on my own in my bedroom after winning a Group 1’.
“Willie Carson was next door, so I banged on his door. I think he was sitting in bed watching Match Of The Day but I barged in and sat there talking to him for a while. It was quite surreal really.”
The following week at Tattersalls would see another Brightwalton Stud graduate, a Lope de Vega colt, make 750,000gns while Fernando, the first foal out of Makarova’s useful half-sister Nina Bailarina, also reached the winner’s enclosure.
At some stage soon, Hobby hopes to arrange a party for both the Brightwalton staff and those at Walker’s so that special memories can be shared.
“Ed’s team has been a huge part of it,” he explains. “I’ve had a few horses with him and I go there a lot. We’re all Lambourn locals and it’s a real Lambourn story; she was bred just outside there, trained in Lambourn and is coming back to the same farm. It’s all pretty cool.”
Hobby reports that he has been asked many times about Makarova’s likely first cover and he is continuing to bid his time.
“Everyone’s chasing me but it’s not only her, it’s her mum, a sister and a few other nice mares. Sea Of Thieves [the Prix Maurice Zilber winner] is also coming back from France. There are lots of nice plans and decisions to make.”