There is a sense of a long-term plan running on target for Dave Weston, whose Flintstone Stud is gearing up for a busy end of the year.
Royal Fixation became the first European Group winner that the Wiltshire-based breeder and his partner El Tanner have produced from their small and select band of mares when she claimed the
Group 2 Lowther Stakes at York.
Previously a neck second to the top-class Venetian Sun in the Duchess of Cambridge Stakes, the Ed Walker-trained filly earns Weston the August TBA Breeder of the Month award with her length defeat of America Queen in the Group 2 event.
“It was a big result for us,” Weston says.
“We’ve got a great group of staff and I think they all appreciate that something bigger is happening here.”
Weston’s parents and grandparents had an interest in racing and during his working career developing an electronics business, he had the odd share in a horse. His life changed when he met Tanner, an equine nutritionist and experienced horsewoman, by chance when the feed company she worked for rented out his house on the Badminton Estate during the weekend of the horse trials.
The couple bought the odd mare and have created Flintstone Stud from an old dairy farm outside Marlborough over the last 20 years.
“The first horse who was bred on the farm was called Bedrock Fred, he was by Monsieur Bond and was supposed to be a sprinter but he just grew and grew,” he recalls.
“We couldn’t sell him and so we point-to-pointed him. I wanted to become a trainer, I’d done the courses but the BHA said I couldn’t have a licence because I’d never been an assistant trainer anywhere.
“The only way I could get one would be to train two open point to point winners. Anyway, we ran him at Larkhill under my name and he won with Jack Barber, then two weeks later he won again. I rang the BHA and said I want my licence!”
The stud’s first real success story was Robema, a Cadeaux Genereux mare who bred Pontefract Silver Tankard winner Connect and his Roderic O’Connor brother Atlantic Sun, who was also Listed placed.
Weston explains: “When we first started, with the money we were spending, we couldn’t afford the really good mares or the fancy stallion fees.
“We muddled through, had a good year then a bad one, like most breeders I think, never really made any money. It’s only in the last few years, just before I sold the business, that we decided that we’d start to buy a few better ones.”
Among those bigger purchases was Royal Fixation’s dam Fixette, for €180,000 at Arqana at the end of 2021. The daughter of Kodiac, who was twice placed in Group 3s in France at sprinting distances, would become the dam of Listed Prix la Fleche winner The Fixer after her purchase.
Fixette has rewarded Flintstone Stud with 180,000gns from Opulence Thoroughbreds for Royal Fixation. The mare also has a Havana Grey filly entered at Book 2 of this month’s Tattersalls October Yearling Sale in Newmarket, to be consigned by Aughamore Stud. The mare is now back in foal to Palace Pier.
“We’ve got her to look forward to and we’re also going to Book 1 with a Lope De Vega filly that we bred out of a mare called Dazzling Beauty and a Wootton Bassett half-sister to Facteur Cheval.
“The Wootton Bassett filly is a big pinhook for us [bought for 410,000gns]. I’m more of a risk taker than El but my logic was that if we don’t sell her she’s potentially a really good broodmare for us moving forward.
“We are commercial in that we want to sell but if it’s a filly, we aren’t against keeping them to race.”
Weston has split up his bloodstock investment around the world, with several other mares boarding in Ireland who could return home in time as well as the odd jumper being trained from the farm to provide some fun during the winter. It’s very much a family venture, with Tanner and their children an integral part.
“We also set up something in Australia, we’ve had our first foals out there and got some yearlings going to the sales early next year, but the plan in Australia is straight commercial, whereas this is more of an all-round interest,” he says. “We feel like it’s all coming together now.”
