‘A Moment That Will Live With Me For The Rest Of My Life’: Sam Sangster on Diego Velazquez

[Wandering Eyes]

A mistake made by the organisers of the Racing League was to underestimate just how much certain racing colours resonate with those watching the action. All of us who have followed racing over the years will have owners and trainers we like to get behind. Even when scanning down a race card in the paper each morning, certain sets of silks act as an automatic signpost as to the potential quality of the races to come.  

It is very clear the regard in which Robert Sangster was held during his glorious run as an owner-breeder from the 1970s until his death in 2004. Such fondness for the man himself extended to those green and blue silks and the tremendous horses who carried them to glory: Sadler's Wells, The Minstrel, Golden Fleece, Alleged, El Gran Senor, Beldale Ball, Las Meninas – the list goes on.

The colours have continued to be in circulation in the intervening decades on horses connected to various Sangster family members, but it is Robert's son Sam who has really helped to restore them in the public eye, first through his Manton Thoroughbreds syndicate and recently in his shrewd purchase of Diego Velazquez from Coolmore. No sooner had the deal been announced, with the ultimate intention of standing the son of Frankel at the National Stud upon retirement, than the colt galloped his way to Group 1 glory in the Prix Jacques Le Marois on one of the most prestigious days of Deauville's summer calendar.

“The timing of the announcement was literally when we were arriving to start looking at yearlings [at Arqana], so for me it was a really good gauge as to whether or not it was the right or wrong decision,” Sangster recalls.

“The lead up to [the race] was very nerve-wracking, that's for sure. Trying to concentrate on the job of the yearling sales with Brian [Meehan], and also the fact that we had a chance in one of the biggest Group 1s in France on the Sunday.

“Could I have imagined what happened on the day was going to happen before that? No. I'd written it in my head many a time and I'd had a conversation with a few of the team at Coolmore, including MV [Magnier], and they said he'd been working very well. And the stars aligned: Christophe [Soumillon] gave him a hell of a ride, kept it very straightforward, and we didn't even see [runner-up] Notable Speech, because he wasn't on the screen when they hit the line.

“It was quite something and a moment that will live with me for the rest of my life, that's for sure.”

Sangster had been approached by National Stud chairman Teddy Grimthorpe to join the board three years ago, and this too now looks to have been a shrewd decision to enhance what was already a young and vibrant team in place at the Jockey Club-owned stud in Newmarket. 

“I was really quite blown away, and honoured,” he says of his appointment to the board. “Everybody tells me I'm not young anymore, but I still think I'm quite young in terms of this industry and I'm learning every day. I don't do things in half measures and what I really felt that I could bring to the table was my experience in syndication. What I really wanted to try and do is identify a horse that with the team here we could try and syndicate and still have a bit of racing upside.

“We weren't reinventing the wheel here – it's been done for many a year, but what I wanted to build was the excitement around a horse like that and hopefully attract some new people into the industry as well. And working with Joe [Bradley], Anna [Kerr], Teddy, Nancy [Sexton], and everybody else on the board, they've got a really exciting team here, and a really exciting team of stallions. What we really want to do is keep adding to that. We've set a benchmark, we've got a champion in Stradivarius and we've got lovely horses on the roster already. We've added a stunning horse in Diego and we're hopefully going to keep going.”

 

Diego Velazquez at the National Stud | Emma Berry

 

Not since Mill Reef's achievements in 1978 and 1987 has the National Stud stood a champion sire. There is a mountain to climb to repeat that feat when in competition with the likes of Godolphin, Juddmonte, and indeed Coolmore, who had bought Diego Velazquez as a yearling from his breeder Denis Brosnan of Croom House Stud for 2.4 million gns at Tattersalls. That price alone points to a young horse who was not only a looker but well related: his half-brothers Broome and Point Lonsdale, by another son of Galileo in the Derby winner Australia, have amassed 12 Group wins between them, including Broome's victory in the G1 Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud and runner-up finish in the G1 Breeders' Cup Turf.

Diego Velazquez plainly has much going for him, and has already fulfilled phase one of Sangster's ambitious plan by becoming a Group 1 winner himself. Phase two begins next month when the covering season starts, and much groundwork has already been laid in preparation.   

“There's been a really good response,” says Sangster of the support pledged by breeders. “First and foremost, I want to thank the shareholders because, gosh, they got behind him at the sales. I wasn't expecting them to do what they did. A few of them have gone from having a couple of horses in training to now owning four or five mares. I think that really just shows from the outset to everybody what the shareholders are going to do for the horse. The quality alone, I think there were 22 mares bought across all the partners – mares like Miss Justice, a couple of stakes-winning mares that Joe and I have just gone through with really fantastic pedigrees. They're providing the bolster of quality just to start with, and the mares that have been booked in are very exciting. I'm very grateful to all of those who have shown support for him so far.”

Just ahead of the season kicking off, Diego Velazquez will join the stallion parade at Tattersalls on February 5. 

“We're just incredibly excited about the whole project,” Sangster adds. “I didn't think he was going to be a hard sell, and it's proving that he's not a hard sell. What I'm really blown away by is that high bar of quality that is going to give him every chance with his first crop.”

What was particularly noteworthy on the day of Diego Velazquez's triumph in Deauville was the genuine sense of joy from many in the industry on Sangster's behalf, not least from the Coolmore gang, from whom he had effectively just pinched a Group 1 winner. Of course, they are not short of stallion prospects and indeed the ties between the Sangster and the Magnier families run deep, right the way back to the formation of Coolmore half a century ago.

“I've known MV my whole life and the whole family, they're incredibly special friends to me,” says Sangster. “John has been an amazing supporter of mine. When I first joined the board here at the National Stud, I spoke with John and he gave me some really sound advice of what I should try and bring to the table. And I suppose when [Diego Velzaquez] won the Minstrel Stakes he became top of our target list, and I approached MV with what I would like to do and the proposal that I wanted to bring to them. They were very straightforward to deal with – all the partners were great – and they were only delighted when he won on the day. I saw John at the sales afterwards and he was delighted as well.”

 

MV Magnier and Sam Sangster in Deauville | Emma Berry

 

Even five months on, the raw emotion of that sunny afternoon in Normandy still resurfaces as Sangster remembers the response to that victory in those famous colours. “It was incredible. The connection I have with them, the horse winning in Dad's colours, a race like the Marois – even the fact he's by Frankel and that you can go back to Sadler's Wells and Northern Dancer. It's why there were so many pockets of emotion that all bubbled up when he hit the line, and they still bubble up now when I think about it.”

He continues, “I've always known the weight that those colours carry. I was 16 when my father passed away, and I wasn't even alive when the glory days were around, with the horses that were trained out of Ballydoyle by Vincent O'Brien, and what the team achieved then. But since doing the Manton Thoroughbreds partnership with Brian, the first horse really that came out of that was a horse called Barraquero, and he won the Richmond. I got a really lovely vibe when he came into the the winner's enclosure there and a lot of people came to me and said how wonderful it was to see the colours back in the enclosure for a race like that.

“Then the race that blew me away was when Rashabar won [the Coventry] at Royal Ascot. The amount of support and messages and love from within the industry, but also from outside of the industry, was just incredible.”

It is worth noting at this stage that, despite Sangster's obvious connections to some of the most celebrated names in the business, he has earned his popular standing in the bloodstock world in his own right. The aforementioned Barraquero and Rashabar were selected by him as yearlings for £30,000 and €120,000 respectively, and there have been others, too. The filly Kathmandu, who was beaten a head when second to Rouhiya in the G1 Poule d'Essai des Pouliches in 2024, was bought for 50,000gns and followed on 12 months after another agonising near miss in a French Classic for Isaac Shelby, a £92,000 yearling. Together, Meehan and Sangster have formed a successful partnership in syndicating and racing horses which did not cost a fortune to recruit. And you know what they say, success tends to breed success. 

“We're so lucky in this industry, in that the people within, they really do want you to do well. I know it's incredibly competitive, but everybody wants everybody to do well, and I really felt that with Rashabar. Then when Diego won in France, the fact that it was during the sales and everybody was there, even the night before in the Drakkar, there was so much love, and I'm so incredibly grateful to all those people because I felt two inches taller walking around the sales the next day. To have Diego in those colours and to win a Group 1, and for me to be attached to achieving that, it was a very proud moment.”

 

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