First Yorkshire, then the world.
Pocklington man Reg Bond, who rolled £350 compensation for an industrial accident into a multi-million-pound tyre distribution business, was a mainstay of the northern racing scene in the early years of the millennium.
Bond’s first horse, Bond Boy, scored in the Stewards’ Cup at Glorious Goodwood, while his distinctive black and yellow silks were also carried with distinction by the likes of Captain Gerrard, Misu Bond and Monsieur Bond. Bond gradually got into bloodstock too. He stood Monsieur Bond as a stallion, first in partnership with Whitsbury Manor Stud and later on his own at Norton Grove Stud, breeding numerous smart performers from the son of Danehill Dancer.
Two of those homebreds by Monsieur Bond were particularly meaningful. Ladies Are Forever, out of Bond’s fabulous broodmare Forever Bond, won the Summer Stakes at York on three occasions, once when the owner-breeder sponsored the race, while Move In Time, co-owned with John Blackburn and Andrew Turton, fulfilled Bond’s long-held dream of owning a Group 1 winner when he took the Prix de l’Abbaye in 2014.
When Bond died in 2021 his son Charlie pledged to continue his father’s legacy in racing and breeding. Truth be told, the newly rebranded Bond Thoroughbreds got off to a bit of a sticky start, but it is now back in the big time thanks to this year’s Prix de la Foret hero Maranoa Charlie and Weld Park Stakes winner Black Caviar Gold.
It has taken a concerted effort to get there, though.
“Scott Christian, the CFO of the tyre business, sat me down one day a few years ago and said we need to start running the horses along similar lines as the tyre business,” says Bond. “He insisted we need to start investing proper money into it and treating it like a business rather than a hobby.
“So that’s what we decided to do, and everyone has seen the investments we’ve made and the hard work we’ve put into getting a return on them. We’d made a ten-year plan, but we got back to having Group winners in quite a short space of time, much quicker than we forecast, which is excellent.”
Bond Thoroughbreds first showed it meant business, both figuratively and literally, when it splashed out more than €1 million on three blue-blooded fillies at the Arqana August Yearling Sale in 2023. It also paid €130,000 at the Goffs Orby Yearling Sale that year for a Mehmas colt who became this year’s smart handicapper Big Leader, trained by Reg’s long-time accomplice Geoff Oldroyd.
Bond Thoroughbreds also stepped forward to purchase privately several of the pricey horses that had to be re-offered for sale when Saleh Al Homaizi defaulted on payment for them after they had been knocked down to Richard Knight in 2022. They included Go Big Or Go Home, a Lope De Vega half-sister to sprint ace Battaash. Many of those gleaming purchases went into training with Paddy Twomey in Ireland.
Yet it wasn’t a thoughtless spending spree. The newly methodical and money-conscious operation relied on the appliance of science for its decision-making.
“When we put our heads together and thought about how we could push forward with Bond Thoroughbreds, we decided we needed to use statistics more,” says Bond. “In the tyre business it’s all about careful budgeting and KPIs and with horses it had to be about strike-rates – whether that was trainers, sires or pedigrees.
“Paddy [Twomey] has excellent strike-rates of winners, so we approached him, and after our first conversation I knew it was going to be a good relationship, as he gets what we want to achieve. He’s also great at communication, and that’s important to Bond Thoroughbreds and especially to me.
“It doesn’t matter where we’re doing business around the world, I always know how the horses are performing thanks to all the videos and information coming through.
“We’ve gone from strength to strength with Paddy. He gave us our exciting Group 3 winner Black Caviar Gold this year and we reinvested at the yearling sales with him. He’s got some very nice horses for us next year again.”
Bond Thoroughbreds made heads turn this year when it swooped for two high-class three-year-old colts. The team bought Maranoa Charlie, a son of the late Wootton Bassett trained by Christopher Head, after he had won the Prix Paul de Moussac at Longchamp in June, and Marvelman, a son of Invincible Spirit with Andrew Balding, after he had bolted up in the Park Stakes at
Doncaster in September.
Maranoa Charlie subsequently finished second in the Prix Jean Prat and third in the City of York Stakes before making just about all in the Prix de la Foret, while Marvelman ran down the field in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes.
“Me and Jason, my right-hand man in bloodstock, take a close look at all the form and pedigrees and we identified Maranoa Charlie as a sire prospect to target,” explains Bond. “He made sense on every level: he was a high-class horse and his sire Wootton Bassett was absolutely flying. Fortunately, we found that Christopher [Head] is also a great communicator, and his owner Peter Maher in Australia was very fair to deal with, so we got the purchase made.
“Christopher told us he’s the best horse he’s trained and showed us all sorts of data like stride patterns and sectional timings to prove it. Christopher is massively into stats and technology and has taken it to new levels in his training career, measuring all the data from the horses on the gallops and at the races, and that’s of huge interest and use to us, and really encouraged us to get more
involved with him. We bought three yearlings to go to him at the sales this year on the back of that.”
Maranoa Charlie was retired after his Longchamp exploits and has taken up stallion duty at Tally-Ho Stud, with Bond Thoroughbreds retaining part-ownership.
“The deal speaks for itself, really,” says Bond. “It was right for us and it was right for the horse. Tally-Ho is the best stud out there for making stallions, so when they come knocking on your door you can’t ignore them.
“Maranoa Charlie is a fantastic-looking horse by Wootton Bassett, who was obviously a serious influence, and out of a daughter of Galileo and Tiggy Wiggy, so his pedigree is class on speed. That was clear from what he did in the Prix de la Foret. He had an incredibly high cruising speed – he put the race to bed in just a matter of strides thanks to a burst of acceleration.”
Bond Thoroughbreds will be sending at least 16 mares to Maranoa Charlie, including some of those beautifully bred acquisitions from a few years ago.
“We started with a plan to be active in buying fillies with top-class pedigrees in order to build a strong broodmare band in preparation for getting our own stallion, but that happened sooner that we thought with Maranoa Charlie getting his Group 1 victory within three runs of us buying him,” says Bond.
“It’s a shame that he’s not racing on as a four-year-old, as I think he would have taken a lot of beating, but at the end of day it made sense as a business decision to crack on with him as a stallion. Tally-Ho Stud tell me he’s been very popular and there’s massive demand already.
“We’ll send him Go Big Or Go Home, as well as Margaret Elizabeth, a three-parts sister to Perfect Power and half-sister to Wise Approach, and Magic Ring, a daughter of Dubawi and Minding we bought at the Tattersalls December Mares Sale recently [for 950,000gns].
“Maranoa Charlie will also cover Ladies Are Forever, who’s a really important mare as she meant so much to Dad.”
Bond Thoroughbreds will also likely be a buyer of Maranoa Charlie’s youngstock at the sales.
“He’s a stunning horse and we’ve seen from Christopher’s stride data that he could do things that few other horses can do,” adds Bond. “He’ll likely be the best horse we ever own, so from that point of view, yes, of course we’ll be following everything by him at the sales.”
Bond Thoroughbreds could have a second stallion in service this time next year, as Marvelman is expected to progress during his four-year-old season in the year ahead.
“He was very impressive when he won the Park Stakes at Doncaster,” says Bond. “After we bought him, we wanted to find out if he got a mile on British Champions Day. It was always questionable when he has so much speed, and indeed it did turn out that he isn’t a miler, so we’ll drop him back to six furlongs, maybe seven. I think he’s got some big races in him.
“Again, Andrew [Balding] has great strike-rates, which is so important for us. He was the top trainer at York this year, and that was in spite of his horses getting chinned in photographs three times, so we backed him with a couple of yearlings this year too.”
Bond Thoroughbreds might have horses stationed in Ireland, France and now the south of England, but it hasn’t forsaken its Yorkshire roots. It is supporting Oldroyd, who presides over the operation’s Yapham Grange just outside Pocklington, more than ever – and the trainer is repaying the faith.
“Geoff has done fantastically well,” says Bond. “In fact, this year was the first time we’ve supported him with purchases as well as homebreds. We’ve sent him some nice, sharp two-year-olds for next year as he’s had such a good time of it.
“We’ve retained PJ McDonald as our jockey, and he’s now a big part of the team, working closely with Geoff. We also took on Gemma Dransfield as our own vet. She sees the horses every day and so knows them inside out and will immediately see if anything is wrong with them. I think she’s made a big difference, as Geoff is running at a 24 percent strike-rate for us this year.”
On the other side of the hill from Oldroyd’s base is Yapham Mill Stud, which was founded by Reg and was once home to Forever Bond, an extraordinarily consistent mare who produced eight
winners from as many runners, all talented, and none more so than Hoof It, who humped 10st to victory in the Stewards’ Cup and finished third in two editions of the Haydock Sprint Cup for Chubby Chandler and Lee Westwood.
“Karen Daddy is the main influence there and she’s got a fantastic team,” says Bond.
“She’s seen a lot of investment go into the stud in recent years, and now she has the best facilities and a lot of land. When the horses are injured, they go back to her for rehab, and she does a great job with them.
“Karen knows a lot of the horses from when they were born, to yearlings, to runners – she knows every hair on their head and takes great care of them. She started with Dad and is a big supporter of mine, and I’m very grateful for that.”
Everything seems to be going swimmingly for Bond Thoroughbreds, so are the moneyman Christian and the other bigwigs at Bond International happy with the direction of travel?
“We have a board meeting once a month for the tyres and then we stay afterwards to discuss the horses,” says Bond. “That part of the meeting used to take one hour and it’s more like two hours now, as the business has grown and people have become more interested in it. It started with three or four of the 14 members of the board staying to talk about it and now there’s well over half, as everyone’s getting more into it.
“It’s really interesting hearing other perspectives on racing and breeding. Some of the board members don’t know an awful lot about horses, but they ask good questions of me and Scott that make us stop and think about how we could improve things.”
Bond isn’t getting carried away with the success, though. He has his feet firmly on the ground when it comes to what Bond Thoroughbreds can achieve in the medium to long term and is betting the bank on technology keeping it competitive.
“I don’t think that at our level of investment we’ll be able to compete with some of the top owners – that’s not being negative, just realistic,” he reasons. “But with our team of people – the trainers, PJ, Gemma and all the stats guys – we can punch above our weight and operate consistently at a high level.
“We’re working on an AI system that will analyse how the horses look, walk, trot and gallop, and measure it all against results. Hopefully that system can take us where we want to be. How good that system is will probably determine how far we can go.
“We’ve already seen how AI can help develop the tyre business, and I’m keen to see if it can also be applied to horses. It’s a case of ‘watch this space’. But I think as long as people we invest in are on board and see that vision, we’ll have a great future.”
You have to wonder what Reg would have made of all the newfangled computer science.
“My Dad and I were very similar when it comes to IT: clueless ourselves, but we embrace any technology that improves how we work, and will pay good people to do it for us,” says Bond.
“To be honest, I know what a good tyre looks like, and how it will perform, but I can’t judge horses as well as people who were brought up with them, like I was brought up with tyres. That’s why I need to invest in horse people and AI that can tell me what I need to know – and get me up to that level.”
It should be said that for all the talk of profit and loss, performance indicators and programming, the original purpose of Bond Thoroughbreds – continuing Reg’s fine achievements in the sport – has not been lost.
“Dad was so passionate about racing and he had massive success with these colours in the past, and so the whole point was to get them back in the winner’s enclosure after the best races,” says Bond. “I’m thrilled that we’ve done that for him.
“I’m convinced he’s watching these horses and pushing them home from upstairs, as the results this year have been incredible.”
