In The Hot Seat: Harry Dutfield

[Wandering Eyes]

He chose stud work over a modelling contract and now Harry Dutfield, the canny pinhooker, breeder and owner of Saint Ann Stud in Garboldisham, faces the TDN question master.

TDN: How did you become involved in bloodstock in the first place?

HD: I was introduced to the sport when I was very young by my parents, who had shares in various horses. They would occasionally take my twin brother and me racing and my interest started from there. I hated the itchy trousers, matching suit jackets and strangulating ties they made us wear and the car journeys were beyond boring but, once there, I was in my happy place.

As my parents' involvement in the sport developed so too did my own and I started attending the yearling sales with my mother [the late trainer, Nerys Dutfield]. In 2000, we were attending the Goffs Autumn Yearling Sale and in Barn T Box 14 we viewed lot 341, the property of Tony Marsh, a bay filly from Danehill Dancer's first crop. We viewed the filly and as soon as we turned and walked away, I looked at my parents and said, “I absolutely love that filly, we must try and buy her, I really want to take her home.” Whether they were averse to an argument or simply intrigued by my blind faith, they bought her on my insistence for IR£2,000. My parents gave her to my twin and me instead of financing our first car as a special birthday present. We named her Lady Dominatrix. She was my first hands-on purchase in bloodstock and she turned out to be special.

TDN: What's your proudest moment to date?

HD: As my virgin purchase, Lady Dominatrix will always have a special place in my soul. She won four races including a Listed and Group 3 and was beaten a whisker in the G2 (now G1) Flying Five Stakes in Ireland. She took a pair of young naive twins around Europe, to Royal Ascot and raced at the top level in the Nunthorpe Stakes. When she retired to the paddocks I followed like a loyal disciple and started stud work. She is a stakes-producing broodmare and grandmother to champion European two-year-old, Campanelle. I will always be proud of her

Although I only purchase three to five foals a year, I've been fortunate to pinhook Group 2 winners Kool Kompany (€8,000), Night Colours (€26,000) and Azure Blue (€19,000) and although Kool Kompany hit the crossbar in a Group 1, perhaps it is Azure Blue that has given me my finest moment to date when winning the Duke Of York Stakes. I considered her Group 1 class but niggling feet problems prevented her from lifting that hex. It is of great personal disappointment that I have yet to land a Group 1 winner.

TDN: And the biggest mistake you've made in this business?

HD: In 2017, I purchased a bay filly from Night Of Thunder's first crop from Grenane House Stud for €26,000. She was the most expensive foal I'd ever bought and I joint-owned her with Tommy and Paul Radley from Cork. I told them (with youthful confidence) that she'd be the “best filly they'd ever own”. But as a yearling she only just scraped above her £34,000 reserve and we sold for £38,000 to Richard Knight. Named Night Colours, she went on to win a Group 2 at two. My faith in her was validated but I somewhat rued the missed opportunity of how close we came to retaining her. The mare's next foal was dual Group 1 and Classic winner Mother Earth. Imagine her value now – it still makes my head spin!

 

The retired Lady Dominatrix turns 27 in a few days | Harry Dutfield

 

TDN: What was your defining memory of 2025? 

HD: Realising that after three quick years I have already fully outgrown my farm. I can't nurture a business by turning business away, but equally, I don't think I could afford a bigger place at the moment. Leaves me in a quandary.

TDN: Tell us something people don't know about you…

HD: In my late teens/early twenties, my twin brother entered us for a competition and we were offered a modelling contract for fashion brand Dsquared.  I said no, but I wonder what life would be now if I'd agreed.

TDN: What keeps you awake at night?

HD: Worrying about horses! If I know a horse is slightly lame or a big day is coming up (such as shipping yearlings to the sales), I have this brutal habit of having very lucid dreams that the horse is nearly dead or everything goes disastrously. I will wake up pumping with sweat and fully convinced the worst has happened.

TDN: Any regrets?

HD: No, not really. My parents died, too young, about a decade ago and my seven siblings wouldn't have a clue what I do, so I have no one to embarrass or make proud other than myself. If you make a mistake, as long as you learn from it, then it's not something to regret.

TDN: What motivates you?

HD: Success both on the track and in the ring, plus other people's expectations.

TDN: Give us an underrated sire to keep the right side of next year…

HD: I'm afraid I can't. From the stallions about to have their first runners, no one stallion stood out enough for me to put their name forward. In previous years, Havana Grey's first crop were all over my short list and this year, Chaldean's foals were too. I tried my best to buy one but failed, so I will try to breed one instead.

TDN: Your favourite sale/place and why?

HD: I cut my teeth consigning at the Doncaster Premier Yearling Sale and Tattersalls October Book 3. They are like trainers' sales, where trade is real and represent a genuine guide to the industry's health. If you start here and can make a success out of it you have what it takes to succeed. Doncaster's sale ground can get quite dusty, so Tattersalls wins on preferred location.

TDN: What's your go-to karaoke song?

HD: Take me away from the Thoroughbred industry and my confidence deteriorates, so I've never tried karaoke, but if the gun went to my head I'd pick Florence And The Machine's Dog Days Are Over. It takes me back to working in Kentucky, belting up the freeway, ciggy in hand, with no air conditioning in a bright red Pontiac Grand Am that was older than me, had no brakes, and had to be parked facing downhill just in case it rained (the footwells would flood). She had seventies-inspired brown corduroy decor. I think the carefree, positivity of those memories attached to that song would give me the confidence to belt it out (with a little help from a pint or three).

TDN: Who inspires you?

HD: I consider inspiration to be the motivation to do something initiated by someone's else's actions or achievements. Therefore, I'd rather be honest and say no one has inspired me (shaking my head but laughing to myself). Not even my parents inspired me – they never came to parents' days, sports days or encouraged me into a course of action, and they even forgot to pick me up from hospital after surgery one day, so definitely not them.

Admiration is quite close in that you appreciate someone's achievements but without the spark for self change/creation. So here are three people who I admire:

1. Mark Walker, my mother's former Head Lad: a stressed, knowledgeable and experienced man who made a continuous effort to impart knowledge without being asked. Everything he said back then makes sense to me now and I am a better person for working with him.

2. Mathilde Texier, sales vet. As essentially a one-woman operation, the odds of success are against her, yet she is at the top of her field, respected and admired on a global level, and that achieved (in the early years) in spite of adversity.

3.) David Hegarty: fellow consignor and pinhooker. I scan around at the foal and yearling sales, looking for people like myself who have done years of graft at the coal face and slowly climbed upwards. The occasional face emerges but doesn't stick around for long. David's does, and I know how hard it has been for me.

 

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