Centre stage

Ballyhimikin Stud has celebrated its share of high points over the years but it’s doubtful that James and Charlotte Hanly have ever experienced a year quite like this one at their Tipperary farm.

The winners have flowed throughout  the summer, culminating in a golden York Ebor Festival at which Ombudsman emerged the hero in an extraordinary Juddmonte International and Estrange  did her autumn Group 1 prospects no harm by running second in the Yorkshire Oaks.

Star Of Mehmas, a Listed winner last year, also defied top weight in the fillies sprint handicap while Rock On Thunder and America Queen were second in their respective assignments, the  Gimcrack and Lowther Stakes. An amalgamation of various characters well known in the game can lay claim to be involved in the production of those successful homebreds, but the common thread in each case is Ballyhimikin Stud and its ability to breed and raise good horses.

An exclamation point on that arrived only two weeks on from York when A Bit Of Spirit came out on top in a tight finish to the Solario Stakes at Sandown Park. Seasoned players know full well  never to be complacent when it comes to horses but the emergence of A Bit Of Spirit as one of the season’s better two-year-olds alongside Rock On Thunder, America Queen and fellow stakes juvenile Andab suggests that this golden run could extend well into next year as well.

Few are more aware than the ups and down of this industry than James Hanly. He has been at the coalface for 45 years and as such is very much one not to take anything for-granted, instead  reflecting praise to the team at Ballyhimikin with a nod to the influence of Lady Luck.

We’re always learning

“I’m fortunate that I’m surrounded by good intelligent people and I try to listen,” he says. “I know a lot about very little but I do know what I don’t know.

“We’re always learning, everyday. A lot of it is luck. And having the passion.”

Located near Nenagh in Tippery, Ballyhimikin has been in the hands of the Hanly family for over six decades. Back then, it was primarily a beef cattle farm – cattle and sheep remain a major part of Ballyhimikin today – with horses assuming a minimal but important, as it turned out, role under the eye of Maura Hanly.

“From an early age, it was all Arkle and Lester Piggott,” recalls Hanly. “My mother always had one or two mares and did it all that herself. She bred the 1960 Irish Grand National winner Olympia so I’d hear that talk. And later on she bred Balidar, a champion sprinter, and then Davy Lad, the 1977 Cheltenham Gold Cup winner. So I used to hear all about these famous racehorses.”

Olympia, Davy Lad and Balidar, three very different horses but from the same source. Olympia inadvertently secured her place in history as the first of seven consecutive Irish Grand National  winners for trainer Tom Dreaper, a record that still stands today. As for Balidar, who won the 1970 Prix de l’Abbaye for John Winter, he remains relevant to the breed today in his role as sire of Young Generation, in turn the sire of Cadeaux Genereux.

“I was a good rider when I was a kid,” he says. “My father worked incredibly hard, as did my mother – it was different times.

“We were beef cattle farmers and I spent my childhood hunting,  showjumping, picking stones and making hay and straw. It was a lot of physical work, I grew up very much in a work hard  environment, but it was a very healthy, happy time.

“That hunting, point-to-pointing background is so important – it’s where a lot of our riders and racing people come from. My mother gave her spare time to helping run our local point-to-point and the hunt, and was also responsible for helping to start and run our local hunter trials.

It has to come from the soul

“I remember in 1969 sitting in the car with my mother driving through the Curragh on my way back to school. She turned to me and said ‘next week Blakeney will win the Derby’. So for the next few days I went around the school as a nine-year-old in short pants talking about Blakeney,  and of course he did win the Derby and I became a minor hero for about two days.

“It really was from that that this thing developed and became a passion. Passions can be dangerous….but you have to have it to produce these horses. It has to come from the soul.”

Hanly gained extensive early industry experience with John Hartigan at Cashel Stud in Ocala, Florida, and in Kentucky with Lee Eaton, regarded as a pioneer of the Lexington sales scene in the artof sales consigning.

“I remember being at John Hartigan’s and going out and bandaging 52 yearlings myself on a Christmas day,” recalls Hanly. “It was just pure hardship.

“We did the foaling, riding, mucking out – everything. And in those days, there were no telephones. I went out there and didn’t speak to my parents for months. But we were happy.”

That period in Florida as well as spells working on a ranch in Canada and with trainer Charles Milbank in Chantilly provided the foundations for a return to home and the running of Ballyhimikin.

Ombudsman and Estrange are only the latest in a long line of good horses to have passed through the farm since then.

Queen’s Logic, bred out of the Diesis mare Lagrion (also later the dam of Dylan Thomas for the Coolmore partners), was a champion two-year-old filly. Society Rock, co-bred with Emmanuel and Laura de Seroux, was a Group 1-winning sprinter while Halfway To Heaven, whose three Group 1 wins included the 2008 Irish 1,000 Guineas, and Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf hero Victoria Road were raised on behalf of Trevor Stewart from his famous Cassandra Go family.

Various pinhooks have also flown the flag, notably Godolphin’s globe-trotter Kutub and Taufan’s Melody, who broke fresh ground for Lady Herries when taking the Caulfield Cup back in 1998. That’s to go with the high-class Japanese performer Admire Lapis, Derby third Grand Ducal and Norfolk Stakes winner Radiohead.

“Society Rock (right) was an absolute beauty, a perfect specimen with perfect x-rays and scope, very light on his feet,” recalls Hanly of the near black Rock Of Gibraltar colt. “A great pair of judges bought him, Adrian Nicholl and Barry Hills, from us at Tattersalls. The horse went off to Barry but he then asked me to take him back, which I did.

“Anthony Stroud was instrumental in us sending him to James Fanshawe and he went on to win the Tattersalls Book 1 sales race for us.”

Society Rock ultimately became a top-flight sprinter, winning the Betfair Sprint Cup at Haydock. He later stood at Tally-Ho Stud in Ireland, where he left behind the likes of Unfortunately and A’Ali prior to his early death.

“James Fanshawe is a brilliant trainer, a proper horseman and he did a great job with the horse,” says Hanly. “Society Rock looked like he was going to be a good stallion, and it was sad he died  young.”

At the same time, the Balidar family remains in rude health as showcased by the exploits of last year’s Group 2-placed sprinter Ano Syra, a homebred daughter of Kodiac.

“It’s very satisfying,” says Hanly. “We’ve had them so long and I love them. It’s a speed family and I send them to Kodiac, Mehmas, Blue Point and the likes.”

A wedge of today’s purple patch runs in tandem with the growing prominence of Night Of Thunder, the sire of Ombudsman and Estrange who were bred in the stallion’s final season at €25,000.  He was priced at €75,000 in the year that Rock On Thunder was produced and has since risen to €150,000. It doesn’t take too much imagination to envisage him heading up the ladder again for 2026, especially if he maintains his hold over the British and Irish sires’ championship; he boasted a total of £5.2 million at the time of writing, over a third of which had been secured by Ombudsman and Estrange between them.

Back in 2022, the pair were part of a formidable Tattersalls October yearling sales draft for Ballyhimikin, with Estrange heading to Cheveley Park Stud on a bid of 425,000gns in Book 1 and  Ombudsman among the highlights of Book 2 when sold to Godolphin through Stroud Coleman Bloodstock for 340,000gns.

Both are the products of well-found fillies sourced from Juddmonte.

Hanly takes up the story.

“My son Jack and myself found Ombudsman’s dam Syndicate,” he says. “We’d always look at the Juddmonte draft and try and pick out the best lookers. We sat in the ring, she came in and we bought her on a couple of bids.”

The price was 25,000gns and in return, the stud came into possession of a winning Dansili full-sister to Feilden Stakes winner Stipulate. It is one of Juddmonte’s most productive families that goes back to Lost Virtue via her Group 1-winning daughter All At Sea.

Hanly opted to roll the dice with Syndicate on the track and sent her back into training with John James Feane on the Curragh, who won another race – a Ffos Las handicap – at four.

“John said ‘if you leave her long enough with me, I’ll win a stakes race with her’,” recalls Hanly. “He really liked her. But I wanted to cover her and so off I went with her to Starspangledbanner – you see, she was rising four when I bought her.”

Ombudsman (below), who was co-bred with Jono Mills, is only the second foal out of Syndicate, whose third, a full-sister to Ombudsman, realised 900,000gns to SackvilleDonald at last year’s Tattersalls October Book 1 Sale.

“Anthony Stroud kept telling me to use Night Of Thunder,” says Hanly. “Would I listen? I missed him early on. Anthony also told me to use Wootton Bassett, and I missed him. And then he told  me to use Palace Pier. So I need to listen more!

“You need access to good stallions for a start and then you get an owner like Sheikh Mohammed and a trainer like John Gosden, and they are happy to wait. They give these horses all the time they need – Ombudsman first came out as a three-year-old. It’s a huge part of it all, getting them into places like that.”

It was in partnership with long-term allies Anthony Stroud and Trevor Stewart that Ballyhimikin bred Estrange. Her dam, the Oasis Dream mare Alienate, was sourced out of Juddmonte for  100,000gns in 2017 and there was an almost immediate pedigree update when her half-brother Logician won the St Leger in 2019.

Currently, each of the mare’s foals of racing age are black-type performers, the trio comprising the Group 2-placed Lmay and Listed-placed Basalt in addition to Estrange, whose four wins for  David O’Meara include this year’s Lancashire Oaks and Lester Piggott Stakes.

Remarkably, when she lined up as one of four runners in the Yorkshire Oaks, she came up against a filly in the Ribblesdale Stakes winner Garden Of Eden bred by Hanly’s brother Eoin, his wife Stephanie and their son Mark at their Grange Hill Stud.

“Alienate is from another one of those Juddmonte families,” says Hanly. “She’s a ten out of ten – take her into a show ring and she would get a ten. She’s as good as it gets.

“Trevor Stewart owns the mare with myself and Anthony. Trevor has been a wonderful support. With horses, there are a lot of difficult decisions and sometimes unfortunate things happen, but he takes the good and the bad. Trust is everything in everything, and there is that trust between us.”

Ballyhimikin was the primary custodian of Stewart’s outstanding mare Cassandra Go. Winner of the King’s Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot during her time with Geoff Wragg, she left behind four  black-type runners led by Halfway To Heaven, whose own legacy spawns the likes of Magical, Rhododendron and Auguste Rodin.

Another daughter, Tickled Pink, remains at Ballyhimikin for Stewart and is the dam of Victoria Road in addition to Andab.

“Cassandra Go was the ultimate,” says Hanly. “A champion racehorse and a  champion broodmare. She lived until she was 25 and we now have her final daughter, Chaumet More, on the place, a beautiful mare by Night Of Thunder.”

You can’t take yourself too seriously at this game

Champion Stakes winner Pride is another long-term resident. Now living in retirement, she is a revered part of the group boarding on behalf of Sven and Carina Hanson’s Fair Salinia operation.

“The Hansons are wonderful breeders, and a great support to us,” says Hanly. “Sven has raced some very good horses over a long period of time. Pride still lives with us, aged 27.

“The best part of this game really is the people you meet and from all walks of life. I’ve been at it 45 years and I’ve seen a lot of interesting characters and been in a lot of interesting situations.  There are some phenomenal horse people out there, and also a wonderful sense of humour that prevails around the place – you can’t take yourself too seriously at this game.”

Ballyhimikin, Anthony Stroud and Ed’s Stud, meanwhile, are the partnership behind A Bit Of Spirit. A winner of three races and placed twice in only five starts, the tough colt was tenacious in  victory in the Solario Stakes to add to the bright start at stud made this season by his young sire Palace Pier.

He is the first foal out of Tanaaghom, a Dubawi member of the Fall Aspen clan via the branch responsible for Sheikh Hamdan’s Group 1 winners Mehthaaf and Elnadim.

“Kevin Ross bought him from us at the Tattersalls Somerville Sale,” recalls Hanly.

“Kevin is a great judge and I was delighted when I heard he was going to Clive Cox. If you can get these horses into these places, then you’re starting off in the right direction.

“The mare came from Shadwell. Anthony picked her out. She’s by Dubawi and very, very good-looking – I like them correct. She had a brother, Antarah, who had won his first start at the time and was meant to be very good so there was a dream there with the family.”

He adds: “It’s all about the dream. As Yeats said: “I’m just a poor man, I have only my dreams. Tread softly, you tread on my dreams’. We all have our dreams. “As I’ve said, producing these horses is a passion. We owned Society Rock when he won the sales race, and then we had a filly, Siringas, who won her first start by 13 lengths. Lady O’Reilly later partnered with us on her and she ended up winning the Nassau Stakes in Canada. An accountant would say sell all these, but it’s about the enjoyment of it too.”

As with any successful operation, Ballyhimikin is supported by a strong team network, several of whom have been with the farm for decades.

“I surround myself with good people,” says Hanly. “Never be afraid to employ people who are better than yourself. Helen Jones has been with me for 25 years. Her husband Diarmuid is whipper in to the Black and Tans [Scarteen hounds]. These are horse people through and through.

“We have a lot of cattle and a lot of sheep on the farm, and the horses are mixed in with the whole lot of them. The North Tipperary area produces a lot of good horses, especially considering the  size of the Thoroughbred population. Gordon Lord Byron [bred by Roland Alder] came off it, as did this year’s Ebor winner Ethical Diamond [bred by William Kennedy]. Tiger Roll was bred by our great friend Gerry O’Brien not far from here. We’re trying to breed good, sound horses and good land is so important.”

There’s been nothing wrong with the markets so far this season

Ballyhimikin heads to the Tattersalls October Book 1 Sale with eight yearlings, among them a Blue Point half-brother to Rock On Thunder, a Night Of Thunder grandson of Pride, a Saxon Warrior full-brother to Victoria Road and a Lope De Vega  filly out of Group 3 winner American Bridge who was bought for 260,000gns as a foal.

There are a further 11 yearlings in Book 2 and another five in Book 3, including a St Mark’s Basilica half-brother to A Bit Of Spirit.

“There’s been nothing wrong with the markets so far this season,” says Hanly. “The clearance rate at Doncaster was very good and Saratoga was extremely strong.”

As the Lope De Vega filly illustrates, pinhooking remains a valuable complement to the stud. The current flagbearer in that department is America Queen, a €48,000 Goffs November pinhook who was resold as a breezer through Katie Walsh to Rabbah Bloodstock for €180,000 at Tattersalls Ireland.

“I was determined to buy a good filly foal last year,” says Hanly, “and I bought the Lope De Vega filly off some good breeders in Langton Stud. The mare was rated 105, and this filly is some beauty.

“We love the pinhooking. Johnny McKeever, an old friend, is a great help with helping to select the foals. It’s an essential part of what we do because when you pinhook, you’re pitting your wits against the brightest and most hardworking people in the whole game.

“When you go out there, you’re at the coalface. There is no way of learning other than putting down your own money. And then you’re pitting your wits and your management skills against others, and you get to know the stallions and you get to know what’s going on. If you’re sitting at home, you don’t know.”

The Hanly’s interest now extends to their son Jack, himself a successful breeder and pinhooker. With wife Charlotte also an invaluable cog, it remains a tight knit family operation, but Hanly is extremely cognisant of the outside influences that have helped pave the way – including the importance of a little bit of luck.

“I have been extremely lucky to have had some great people around me,” he says. “I can’t emphasise enough how important Charlotte has been in keeping the ship afloat and the importance of our team, the people minding the horses. Their dedication is the key. This job is 24/7 and they give 24/7.

“Paul Starr, who lives nearby, has also been invaluable when it comes to pedigrees and Michael Andree has been a great support for over 40 years. I’m really a tiny cog in all this – I have just been very lucky.”