A winner on his first start as a two-year-old and his final race aged 12, Not So Sleepy provided his owner-breeders Lord and Lady Blyth with a decade of excitement on the racecourse under both codes before his retirement in September.
Trained throughout his career by Hughie Morrison, Not So Sleepy was an exuberant, high-class Flat stayer who proved equally talented over obstacles, taking two renewals of the Grade 1 Fighting Fifth Hurdle at different tracks.
His final appearance, a gritty success in the Dubai Duty Free Autumn Cup Handicap at Newbury on his beloved heavy ground, showed the gelding retains plenty of enthusiasm despite approaching his teenage years – so why call time now?
“He’s getting older,” explains Lady Blyth. “He’s always been very sound, and we were just concerned that sooner or later something was going to happen, especially if we kept on hurdling with him. We decided to stop while he was completely sound.
“When he came home and was being unloaded from the box, the first thing he did was stand on his hind legs and then scream his head off!
“It does make me sad to think he won’t be running again. I watched the Cesarewitch, which he’d run in for years, and it really brought it home that he wouldn’t be running again.”
Lady Blyth had grown up around horses in Warwickshire – her husband James, a titan of the corporate world who was Chairman of Diageo and Chief Executive of Boots, did not – and her mother had left her two jumps broodmares that produced little of note.
With Lord Blyth deciding it was better to focus on the Flat – Snowstorm was an early success story, finishing second in the King Edward VII Stakes at Royal Ascot before his sale to Hong Kong – the new path was set.
Lady Blyth says: “James decided it was a waste of time breeding jumpers. He’s much sooner breed Flat horses. He said jumpers were forever having something wrong with them and it’s perfectly true.
“The mares we’ve bred from tended to be the ones we bought for racing and for various reasons didn’t go on, like Sleepy’s mother, Papillon De Bronze.
“We bought her through Luke Lillingston, and she was in training with Michael Bell. However, she was unsound, so we put her in foal.
“Luke also bought Daffydowndilly. I always wanted an Oasis Dream filly, so James asked him to buy her for me.”
Daffydowndilly, a three-time winner at a modest level, has proven far superior at stud, having produced top-class stayer Quickthorn to her mating with Nathaniel.
Confirmed front-runner Quickthorn, a sensational 14-length winner of the Group 2 Lonsdale Cup in 2022, made his breakthrough at the top level the following year when making every yard of the running in the Goodwood Cup, on both occasions partnered by Tom Marquand.
Yet the Blyths also hit the heights over jumps last year when Not So Sleepy, who dead-heated with Epatante in the 2021 Fighting Fifth Hurdle, won the race outright, this time staged at Sandown.
“We’ve just had a lot of luck,” Lady Blyth says, reflecting on that super run. “We’ve persevered and kept on breeding, hoping to improve as we go along.
“This year hasn’t been anything like as good. Quickthorn hasn’t been completely sound, so he hasn’t run much at all. He’s come home now for a good rest and hopefully we might get another year out of him.”
She continues: “I just love the excitement of breeding. We have them here as babies and we always have them back home for their breaks. We love seeing them in the paddock.
“My husband was a fairly serious businessman, so it was a very good hobby for him to have. It takes you completely out of yourself, doesn’t it?”
The Blyths, whose breeding operation at Leamington Grange in the Cotswolds encompasses some 50 acres, will be looking to point Not So Sleepy, who won 12 races in all and earned over £600,000 in prize-money, towards a new vocation, though exactly what that is remains to be seen.
Lady Blyth says: “We’re not sure what we’re going to do with him. Once he’s settled down, we might do something with Retraining of Racehorses (RoR). But we need to be so careful with him.
“Claire Bonner had him for three months last year when he was having a break and tried all sorts of things with him to see what he was interested in. He did everything for a few days then said no, I’ve had enough! We might go down the show class route at RoR with Sleepy.
We only went jumping with him because he had so much energy!
“He’s a nice-looking horse. Hughie trained him very well and I gather they’re missing him at the stable. Local people turned up when we sent the box to pick him up. He always received lots of fan-mail. People would come up to us at the races to say they’ve won quite a bit on Sleepy!
“He is so much his own person. He just did as he pleased, and you had to go along with it, or too bad! But it’s horses like him that keep the public interested.
“We only went jumping with him because he had so much energy! We thought we’d just see what happened – he tended to run through his hurdles, he wasn’t a fantastic jumper, but he really enjoyed it.”
As for the future, a full-brother to Quickthorn is being broken ahead of his two-year-old, with Daffydowndilly in foal to Ghaiyyath having not taken to Teofilo.
Daffydowndilly’s daughter, six-time sprint winner Belated Breath, and Astragal, a daughter of Shamardal, complete the Leamington Grange broodmare band.
“We don’t have plans to buy any more mares,” relates Lady Blyth, whose daughter, Abigail, also has a couple running in her name in the two-tone blue silks.
“To be honest, we’re not interested in winning at Wolverhampton now. We’re trying to get black type.
“We enjoy stayers because with sprinters it’s all over in a few seconds. If you don’t come out of the stalls well, you haven’t got a chance.”
Asked to pinpoint her most magical moment on a racecourse to date, Lady Blyth plumps for Quickthorn’s Goodwood strike.
“It was just phenomenal the way he won,” she says. “Nobody came near him – it was amazing to watch.
“Tom [Marquand] has ridden him nearly every time. He knows if he can get him into that rhythm he doesn’t stop.
“I was worried about the undulations and bends because he’s a big horse. But as he’s got older, he’s got much better. Tom was so clever – he cut all the corners off and just kept going.”
