Dual Role Makes Pim Best Supporting Actor

[Wandering Eyes]

Jacket stretched across his square, rugby flanker’s shoulders, he stands ramrod at the rostrum and extends those long hands, one clasping the head of the gavel as though a mere pipe, in a gesture that somehow combines scorn and supplication.

“In fairness,” Alastair Pim says. “We’re not selling chickens.”

A bid duly coaxed, he spins round to the rival protagonist.

“Last of the big spenders,” he mutters. Then up goes the singsong exclamation: “Goodness gracious me lads, a ridiculous price…”

In the moments of the highest theatre–when seven-figure bids strain across ever more agonised intervals, and the Tattersalls ring is both at its most crowded and most silent–Pim waves the gavel as Toscanini did his baton. But that flair, that sense of timing, that blend of authority and mischief: if anything, all these Pim flourishes are still more valuable at the other end of the market. And if that is true even for the bored bystander, then how much more so for the small breeder or pinhooker to whom every extra guinea is precious.

“To be honest I get a bigger kick out of getting three grand for a horse that’s worth 300 [gns] than out of getting three million for a horse,” Pim admits. “The other one’s going to make three million anyway. Anybody can sell a good horse. And the guy who gets the three grand will be the more grateful. I remember when Ollie Fowlston first came over to sell in Fairyhouse, he couldn’t believe the farmers coming up after getting their two or three grand and saying: ‘Thanks very much, you did a great job.’ He was flabbergasted. But I think that’s where the work comes in–and the buzz, too, for me.”

But then Pim knows just where those people are coming from. Now that another selling year at Tattersalls has drawn to a close, Pim has returned to Anngrove Stud–which he runs with wife Gillian–to resume his own daily battle with the challenges, exasperations and joys of the bloodstock business. The family farm at Mountmellick in Co Laois is home to four stallions, largely oriented to National Hunt but with plenty of dual-purpose eligibility, extending a history that extends from winners of the Queen Mary to the Cheltenham Festival Bumper.

Nor is it just the traffic of mares through the farm, year in and year out, that makes Pim even better known and trusted among Irish horsemen than in his sporadic public turns as a Tattersalls auctioneer. Because here is a living, breathing validation of the horsebreeding community’s faith in heredity.

Pim’s late father David was, of course, for many years an equally cherished performer at the Tattersalls rostrum. And, from the time Pim first appeared there himself, the voice and mannerisms were uncannily familiar.

“He never coached me at all,” Pim says with a shrug, pouring a pot of tea in the charming old kitchen at Anngrove. “I stood up in Fairyhouse one afternoon with Edmond Mahony for an hour and that was it. It’s just in the genes, I suppose. I didn’t set out to be like him but people come round here and say: ‘Jeez you’re the image of your father, and you speak just like him too.’

“Dad did a lot of musicals in Portlaoise, so he was a man for the stage. He had a very good singing voice. He used to sit in the bath with the old cassette tape recorder, and a little microphone, practising his auctioneering.”

Whereas his father had been a relatively late starter at the rostrum, young Pim was soon immersed in the environment at the old Ballsbridge sales–moving lots after selling, or twisting his tongue round the arcane conditions listed on vets’ certificates.

Eventually he was given a chance selling the “end-of-days” at Fairyhouse: unsold horses brought back in, without reserve, meaning that there was no need to get vendors “on the right step.” After soaking in the Park Paddocks environment as a spotter for a couple of years, he made his debut there at the Horses-in-Training sale where, similarly, reserves were infrequent.

If Pim is now himself, at a youthful 52, a timeless presence in one of the crucibles of the game, he is hardly going to get carried away any time soon. “Glorified bingo callers, a friend of Ollie called us,” he says. “But I must say I get a good kick out of it now. When you walk up the back of the rostrum there in Book 1, or December, and see every seat’s taken and the stairs too, you do get a few butterflies. You know what they’re there for. Or usually you do. Occasionally I’ve walked in and didn’t even know I had a good horse coming up, and thought: ‘What the hell are all these people doing here?’ But once you get going, you’re grand. You’re selling a horse for a few quid more, and that’s it.”

And that’s because an auctioneer makes no pretence of sharing the wider neutrality of the sales company, which must serve as an impartial broker between purchaser and vendor. Once you are actually up there and inviting bids, your allegiance is unequivocal. “You have to be fair to everybody but my one and only job is to look after the vendor,” Pim emphasises.

That said, some bidders can make themselves more equal than others. “I’d always look after the guy who’s looked after me,” he says. “The guy who’s been in from the start, who puts them on [the market] when you need someone to put them on. If he needs to make up his mind, or has someone on the phone, you’d be giving him a bit more time than a guy who has jumped in with one bid.”

Pim’s other great genetic legacy was on the rugby field. He only made the bench for Leinster himself, but his father played for the province (albeit disgusted to be dropped the week before they played the All Blacks), as did his brother Chris–for two years as captain–while son Josh has played at senior level for Connacht.

Josh is also a dual European eventing gold medallist, while daughters Hannah and Sophie competed nationally. But while Pim views himself as “born and reared to the game”, the fact is that his family had never made horses their business before his father trained a few point-to-pointers, and then brought Lucifer over from the U.S. in 1970. Before that Anngrove had a very long history as a centre of Quaker entrepreneurship, ranging from candles and textiles to brewing and malting.

But the farm has since included Monksfield, Welsh Term and Alderbrook on a roster that now comprises Vendangeur (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}), Tobougg (Ire) (Barathea {Ire}), Aiken (GB) (Selkirk) and Famous Name (GB) (Dansili {GB}) (the latter hosted for the Irish National Stud).

“Look, it’s a small, family-run operation,” Pim says. “It’s not easy, and probably getting more difficult, to compete with the big lads. These days in National Hunt we nearly need to stand a Group 1 horse. If I stood one that won a Group 3 over a mile and a quarter, you might get a couple of half-bred mares, but that’d be it.

“I was having dinner with an English breeder recently and he was saying that his father would turn in his grave, to see the kind of horses people are breeding to now. All they want is speed, and early 2-year-olds.

“There’s absolutely no reason why Famous Name, for instance, shouldn’t produce good Flat horses for an end-user. Commercially, it’s like flicking off a light switch once a Flat horse starts covering National Hunt mares; and, again, once a National Hunt horse starts covering half-breds. People have such tunnel vision.”

Famous Name could certainly cope with bigger books, being the most efficient and fertile mating machine the family has ever had. “All he wants is 300 mares,” Pim grins. “That’s all! That wouldn’t be a bother to him. I think he covered 70 last year. He’s a tough, hardy little horse now. Remember he ran as a 2-year-old and finished at seven. He won 21 races. They used to call him ‘the cash machine’ at Dermot [Weld]’s because every time you took him out you brought back money. I’d say you just couldn’t get to the bottom of him. He was sound, his legs are absolutely unbelievable.”

The horse’s first big advertisement was the listed success of juvenile hurdler Famous Milly (Ire), but she promptly disappeared after injury on her next start. Similarly Vendangeur had a Grade 1 jumps winner in his first crop, who dropped dead three weeks later.

“He’s by Galileo out of an Alysheba mare, the Wildensteins bred him,” Pim says. “As a stamp of a National Hunt horse, he’s just what you want: size, substance, wonderful step to him, and we’re delighted with his foals.

“But Cheltenham makes all the difference. It’s a bit like the Oscars. Just to have a runner is like getting a nomination, and a winner is like getting best actor. It can make the difference of 100-plus mares.”

Persevere long enough, mind you, and your time will come. Rudimentary covered 310 in his first season here; and Robin Du Pres, 280. And, in a game of such patient cycles, you never know what a horse might yet achieve–as Pim well knows, having in his youth broken in a grey Henbit yearling who, as Kribensis (GB), eventually won fame as a champion hurdler.

“Take Monksfield, he didn’t get a lot on the track but ended up being a very good broodmare sire,” Pim notes. “He was the most incredible horse. We had him up at the main yard, in the middle of the mares. You could tease mares outside his box and he’d never bat an eyelid. But when you threw the shank at the door he knew it was him.”

Character has never been in short supply at Anngrove. The first thing you notice when you pull up is a sign that cautions: “Stay in the car and beep the horn.” But there is neither bark nor bite to one of the most engaging personalities on the Irish Turf, one whose whole nature follows the deep grain of honesty and empathy into which he was born.

“My father always used to say that the less money was involved, the nicer the people,” he reflects. “But if you go from selling million-guinea yearlings in Newmarket to €100 ponies up in Cavan, you keep your feet on the ground.

“You’re dealing with a very different man there. But it’s amazing how the blood still gets up. We’ve all been there. With some people, the agents on the phone, they shake their head and you know that’s the end of it. But the ordinary Joe Soap who’s coming up to buy a mare, the excitement takes over: ‘I’ll have another one, I might just get her.’

“But I always say the auctioneer makes very little difference. You might get an extra couple of bids but look, the one thing you’ll do is work hard for the vendor–whether they’re getting 300 or three million.”

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