‘What A Game This Is’: Marine Nationale’s Breeder Hails Moving Victory

[Wandering Eyes]

Even before Marine Nationale (Ire) (French Navy {Ire}) won the G1 Supreme Novices' Hurdle two years ago, John B O'Connor was already a Cheltenham Festival-winning breeder courtesy of the smart Paul Webber-trained mare Indefatigable (Ire) (Schiaparelli {Ger}). On Wednesday, the impressive record of O'Connor's Ballykelly Stud was enhanced further when Marine Nationale completed an emotional double for trainer Barry Connell to win the G1 Queen Mother Champion Chase.

O'Connor had been observing a dry January and February but admitted to a “damp March” at his Tipperary home after toasting the horse's success with a couple of glasses of champagne – and rightly so. The breeder is an avowed fan of dual-purpose horses and says that his initial aim is to breed bumper winners. Marine Nationale checked that box – twice – before becoming a Grade 1 winner over hurdles then fences, and now O'Connor has another wish for him.

“I set out to breed a bumper winner that would turn out to be a dual-purpose horse and I'm hoping that Barry is going to prove me correct by winning the Irish Cesarewitch in September, if he doesn't mind doing that,” he says. 

“Marine Nationale's dam should have won the Cesarewitch at the Curragh. Paul Townend was claiming at the time and riding on the Flat, and she was cruising turning in and he let her go at the corner. It's a long way home, and she opened up five or six lengths and then got caught and finished fourth. She really stayed and was rated about 96 on the Flat – she was one of the top-rated Flat mares by Definite Article.”

That mare, Power Of Future (Ger), was originally trained by Henry Cecil and was bought by O'Connor as a four-year-old. She came very close to continuing a long-held wish for O'Connor to run and win at the Galway Festival when finishing second to another of Definite Article's runners, Majestic Concorde (Ire), back in 2007.

“A lot of people look forward to Royal Ascot but my ideal is to have a horse that's good enough to run in the amateur handicap at Galway on the Monday night and then to run again on the Thursday after hurdles,” says O'Connor, whose family hails from Galway, where he was born, before moving to England as a young child with his parents. 

“That's my ideal horse; I love that kind of horse and essentially that's what I try to breed. I do try to breed a little bit commercially but for the ones I race myself that's what I look for.”

O'Connor still has a member of Marine Nationale's family in a daughter of his half-sister Ballinderry Moth (Ire) (Yeats {Ire}). Named Arnemviden (Ire), the unraced six-year-old is also by the former Darley stallion French Navy, in whom the breeder had a staunch belief. 

“I think it was a terrible mistake to let French Navy go to India,” he says. “I love those hard-knocking horses. I can't afford to buy the expensive mares or for them to go to expensive stallions but my ambition is Rocky Marciano's brother marries Helen Mirren's sister, so you've got that bit of a hard nut on the stallion's side and a bit of quality on the dam's side. And to that end, my new French Navy, who I have used a few times, is Tosen Stardom.”

O'Connor added of the son of Deep Impact (Jpn), who is standing in Ireland at Zenith Stallion Station, “He's the horse I'm using to try to breed those bumper winners. He's that ideal, well-bred, tough horse.”

Arnemviden has so far had difficulty getting in foal and holding a pregnancy but a Plan B for her may now have been put on the back burner.

O'Connor says, “We just couldn't get her in foal last year and we have a scheme with a rehoming organisation which turns them into dressage horses or show jumpers and she was nearly on the bus with her lunch packed to become an eventer or something. But I think after yesterday I am going to have to try again to find some way to get her in foal and to hang on to her.”

Among the purely Flat mares the breeder keeps at Ballykelly is Catwalk (Ire), a Pivotal (GB) half-sister to Sir Prancealot (Ire), and Young And Fun (GB), by Lope De Vega (Ire) out of Crimson Rosette (Ire) (Teofilo {Ire}) from Hascombe and Valiant Studs' good family which includes the Ascot Gold Cup winner Courage Mon Ami (GB) (Frankel {GB}). She has been covered this year by Dark Angel (Ire).

The Grade 2-winning hurdler Indefatigable, who is owned by the Rocher family, briefly returned to board at Ballykelly to be covered for the first time by Walk In The Park (Ire).

 

Indefatigable wins at the Cheltenham Festival  | Racingfotos

 

“I am hoping that they will keep her colt as an entire. All he has to do is win any kind of race and a French stud would find a home for him,” O'Connor says. 

“John Magnier has given me a big hand as he has sent five Walk In The Park colts to be trained in France to try to find a successor to daddy.”

He adds, “I am out of Indefatigable now but I still have her dam Spin The Wheel and she has a yearling by Jet Away and is back in foal to him. She also has a couple of Blue Bresils to run for her.”

It was from Magnier that O'Connor bought Ballykelly Stud, just outside Cashel, several decades ago. “What he has done for the economy sound here is just incredible,” he says. “A rising tide lifts all boats around here and it's a lovely part of the world.

“I have outsourced the foaling and getting the mares in foal to other nearby boarding farms but we keep the young horses here. We winter them out and feed them hard.”

We can expect to see more of the farm's graduates “going down the Marine Nationale route”, as O'Connor puts it, as she has some young fillies by Old Persian (GB) and Fascinating Rock (Ire) currently in pre-training with a specific emphasis on teaching them to jump early, in the French mode. 

“I think these three-year-old hurdle races being brought in by HRI [Horse Racing Ireland] at the end of the year are a really good idea,” he says. “I don't think French horses are genetically superior to British or Irish horses, I just think they have been reared differently.”

But for now he can bask in the success of his farm's most famous representative, who played his part in the ongoing commemoration of the late Michael O'Sullivan. The young jockey rode Marine Nationale in his first eight starts. 

“It was such an emotional day. A lot of people might have gone there as atheists or agnostics and come away as believers, particularly with the next horse [Jazzy Matty] going in as well,” he says. 

“I lost my way a little bit with racing and was feeling kind of flat about it, but when I saw Queen Camilla throw her arms around [O'Sullivan's girlfriend] Charlotte [Giles] I just thought to myself, 'what a game this is'. In what other sport would you see that?

“For me, it was great to watch the race and it was a proud moment to breed a championship-winning horse, but my takeaway from it would be that moment.”

 

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