Tara Stud’s ‘Proper Mare’ Dettoria Sold to Tony Bloom and Ian McAleavy

[Wandering Eyes]

Tara Stud might be yet to find a buyer, but there has been a significant sale to report among the equine inhabitants of the historic farm, with Derek Iceton confirming on Thursday that star producer Dettoria has been sold to Brighton and Hove Albion owner/chairman Tony Bloom and Ian McAleavy.

Already the dam of the G3 Prix Fille de l'Air winner Higher Leaves (Golden Horn) and GIII Honeymoon Stakes heroine Selenaia (Sea The Moon), Dettoria has come good again this year with the two-year-old Do Or Do Not.

Though yet to win a race from four starts, the son of Space Blues showed a smart level of ability when finishing second in the G2 Coventry Stakes at Royal Ascot, before filling the same position in last week's G2 July Stakes at Newmarket.

Dettoria's yearling filly, also by Space Blues, was another to make headlines when fetching €150,000 at the Goffs February Sale, shortly after which time some big players came calling.

“An offer came in and it was a proper offer,” says Iceton, who added Dettoria to the Tara Stud ranks when she was picked up for just 12,000gns at the 2018 Tattersalls December Mares Sale. “At the end of the day, I'm a commercial breeder and commercial breeders have to do the commercial thing. I was very sorry to see her leave, because those mares don't come around too often. She's a proper mare and a very nice person as well, if that makes sense. I was really, really sorry to see her go – my wife hasn't forgiven me, I can tell you! But I'll go and do my best to replace her.”

Whilst it clearly pained him to part with Dettoria, who has done so much to keep the respected Tara Stud name in lights in recent years, Iceton is at peace with the decision in the knowledge that he's giving the mare the best possible chance of achieving further success. Of course, the injection of cash was very difficult to turn down, too, certainly in the current economic climate where many breeders will be all too familiar with the “struggle” Iceton depicts.

He continues, “You can't keep them all and I have to stay in business. She [Dettoria] needed to go to a proper stallion and the cost of those stallions has got prohibitive for a regular breeder. And there's a level of risk subsequent to that, with horses going off the boil as quickly as they've come on to the boil. You're getting into very deep water when you have a proper mare like that.

“As a small breeder, it's just not quite so simple at the moment. You certainly get the feeling that some small breeders don't get the rub of the green with the sales companies and are put into the lesser sales. It's a struggle. I hope I have the next Dettoria coming along, but I'm struggling this year to get a yearling into a proper sale. Then I guarantee you I'll look at catalogues in October and I'll see the progeny of 12- or 13-year-old mares who haven't produced a winner.

“I'm just glad she was bought by somebody who was going to cover her properly,” he adds of Dettoria's new owners, who have already celebrated a lucrative windfall with a member of this family, having won last year's A$10-million Golden Eagle with the mare's half-brother, Lake Forest (No Nay Never).

“I believe she's in foal to Lope De Vega. I know her progeny will go to the best of trainers and good luck to them all. There was nobody jumping up and down more than me when I saw the Space Blues colt [Do Or Do Not] doing so well in those good races. I enjoyed it as much as if I still owned the mare.”

Not quite so enjoyable for Iceton was the experience of watching Do Or Do Not go through the sales ring. Having failed to find a buyer at 65,000gns when offered at the Tattersalls December Foal Sale, he again proved not to everybody's taste when Whatton Manor Stud brought him back to Park Paddocks for Book 2 of the October Yearling Sale, much to Iceton's dismay.

“We struggled to get 75,000gns for him and that was with everything going well,” Iceton recalls. “He vetted absolutely perfectly and Higher Leaves, his sister, had done well. At the time she looked like she could be a Group 1 filly – and she might be yet.

“[Whatton Manor's] Ed Player, who I have great time and respect for, told me, 'We're not going too well here.' I couldn't believe it. Thankfully, Ed Sackville bought him, but walking into the sale that day in Newmarket, I was a very lonely seller.

“People just didn't play on him and he was bought for little more than the reserve. Anything much less than that, I would have put him in training myself.”

It was an altogether different story when Do Or Do Not's year-younger sibling went under the hammer at Goffs back in February. Never one to follow the crowd, owner Clive Washbourn shocked everyone by instructing Oghill House Stud's John Hyland to get the bidding underway at €100,000.

“Jesus, I'll tell you one thing, I thought that was going to be it,” says Iceton. “But he knew what the reserve was, that's what my reserve was at the time, and he bid me fairly. I'm just damn glad somebody else went toe to toe with him for a while. I got a decent price on the day and I was delighted with who bought her. I don't know him, but I admire him from afar. He's a very colourful man and I wish him nothing but the very best of luck as well.”

He adds, “I knew the colt [Do Or Do Not] was with a proper trainer [Ed Walker] and they were very happy with him. He was only a youngster, but he had the right attitude and they liked him. That's why I wasn't going to give the filly away, either. A 100,000 grand reserve on a 12 grand cover is not something I would normally do, but it all worked out, anyway.”

It all worked out in more ways than one, with a twist of fate ensuring that Iceton headed to Goffs earlier this year with another exciting youngster by Space Blues out of Dettoria in tow. A return visit to the Darley stallion hadn't been the original plan, Iceton reports, but circumstances dictated that Dettoria was on her way to Kildangan Stud at short notice.

“To tell you the truth, the mare was to be covered by something in England, but when she was due for covering, the stallion had been kicked or something,” Iceton explains. “The mare was to leave at sort of 6 o'clock in the evening, but then I got the phone call to say the stallion was off games the next day.

“The mare needed covering, so I rang Darley. I quite liked the foal I had, and Space Blues was available, so I ended up going back. Normally, I would never have done that, but the mare was in season and I didn't want to be waiting another three weeks to go to England when the stallion had hopefully recovered. We had to do a quick runaround and that's what happened – sometimes these things are for luck.”

With Dettoria having been barren last year, Iceton's direct involvement with the mare and her progeny is now at an end, but he'll always count himself lucky to have had the daughter of Declaration Of War come into his life, following a moment of inspiration when she appeared at Tattersalls as an unraced three-year-old nearly seven years ago.

“It's quite incredible, when you compare the pedigree when we bought her and the pedigree today,” Iceton continues. “Various people had half-sisters and they were breeding them to good stallions. I like buying fillies from good breeders and some of them stick, some of them don't. Another one of my other mares [Nurse Nightingale] is a half-sister to four black-type horses. She was a filly who I bought from the Gredleys for 15,000gns.

“I liked Dettoria a lot, but something has to give when you're buying these fillies. You can't have performance, pedigree, looks and everything. When you're in the commercial world, you have to give on something. But over the last number of years, I've been very lucky in what I've bred – most years we breed a Group 1 performer.”

Iceton clearly has no intention of letting that impressive record slide, but it remains to be seen how long Tara Stud itself will be a part of that vision. The operation will move to Skryne Castle Farm on the same site if and when a sale is completed, after the Tara farm went on the market in September last year.

Iceton, whose family have been at the helm of Tara Stud for 80 years, adds, “There's quite a high reserve on it, but we've had a lot of interest. It's a proper farm and, like I say, nearly every year we produce a Group 1 horse. Not many farms can say that. It's one big lump of proper land, so it's not something that's going to be good for everybody, but when someone comes along who wants to breed good horses on good land, it'll be there waiting for them.”

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