‘The Winners Are The Main Thing – It’s What You Put The Long Hours In For’

[Wandering Eyes]

Rigsdale Stud knocked it out of the park last year and Barry Kennedy, who runs the operation alongside his partner Anna Murphy, speaks about his ambitions for the farm

Few breeders navigated their way through last year's yearling sale season with such sniper-like precision as Barry Kennedy and Anna Murphy of Rigsdale Stud.

A homebred Sioux Nation colt kick-started a memorable autumn for the couple when selling to Billy Jackson-Stops on behalf of George Scott for £100,000 at the Premier Yearling Sale at Doncaster. 

Better still was to come for the pair in their early 30s, who marked their debut consigning at Book 1 of the October Yearling Sale at Tattersalls by selling another homebred, this time a Starspangledbanner filly, for a cool 325,000gns to Sam Haggas on behalf of Dash Grange Stud. 

Further profits were recorded with pinhooks by Minzaal and Harry Angel at the Tattersalls Ireland September Yearling Sale and the Goffs Orby Sale respectively to compound a memorable 2025. 

Yet there was one result that towers above all of the others and it wasn't achieved in a sales ring.

“Anna gave birth to our little boy, Sonny, just before Christmas so talk around the kitchen is more about bottles and bed time rather than mating plans lately,” Kennedy says proudly before following up with, “ah, he's a dream.” 

The pair, who first met in Australia and are currently based at Castlehyde Stud in County Cork, have been living out their own fairytale in recent times. Maria Branwell was the first horse to cast the spotlight on the young couple by following up a Listed success with an excellent third in the Queen Mary Stakes at Royal Ascot back in 2022. 

The daughter of James Garfield represented an important first foray into the breeding game for Barry and Anna and her successes on the racecourse paved the way for the pair to be honoured at the Irish Thoroughbred Breeders' Association Awards later that year.  

While Kennedy is quick to attribute the success the Rigsdale team enjoyed with Maria Branwell as nothing short of beginner's luck, there's no fluke about what has followed.

“We keep the mares at Anna's home place and we also rent a couple of places nearby,” Kennedy shares. “The dream is to buy our own farm in time. We've kept the numbers tight and, while it's not straightforward, we've made it work. Maria Branwell was great. Princess Pearl (Teofilo) was the first mare we bought and, when we sent her to James Garfield, that was also our first ever mating. 

“Maria Branwell was the result of it all and so much of this game is just luck because she wasn't accepted for any of the main sales so we went to the Autumn Yearling Sale at Goffs. Joe Foley spotted her there and she ended up going to David O'Meara, where she won her Listed race and finished third in the Queen Mary. It could have easily gone differently for us. We were just lucky.”

He added, “Lexington Belle was the following year and that is a similar story. She was an inexpensive yearling [also sold at the Autumn Yearling sale, this time for €6,000 to BBA Ireland] and she won a barrier trial before selling to Middleham Park Racing. We still have the dams of those fillies at home. Princess Pearl's Starspangledbanner filly made 325,000gns at Book 1 and she's in foal to Sioux Nation while Lexington Belle's dam [Albemarle (King's Best)] is in foal to Henry Longfellow.”

Barry and Anna are a good advertisement for shopping locally. Many of their successes in the sales ring and on the racecourse have been achieved with Castlehyde-based stallions, notably Sioux Nation and Starspangledbanner. Being associated with the Coolmore entity, which Kennedy says has assembled its strongest-ever roster, has served as a distinct advantage but there's no such thing as blind faith either. 

“Look, being based down in Castlehyde is obviously a huge advantage because they're a great help,” Kennedy explained. “To be able to get mares into some of those stallions, especially at the start, there's no doubt that they've been very good to us. We try to go elsewhere as well because you can't just have a draft full of the same stallions and we like to spread the business between Ballyhane Stud and a few other places if we can.”

He added, “But to have a Classic-winning miler like Henri Matisse joining the roster at Castlehyde was a big one. Like, there are a few breeders who will send plenty of mares to Castlehyde this year and they may not even have to venture up to Coolmore because the stallion roster here is so good. It's a serious roster – to have Starspangledbanner, Sioux Nation and Gleneagles, who has the highest-rated horse in the world in Calandagan, it has to be the best roster in Castlehyde's history. Blackbeard has his first two-year-olds this year as well and, while I know it's pretty early in the year, the word seems to be very positive anyway. A few shrewd people have booked mares into him so that's interesting. It's an exciting time for everyone at the stud.”

Rigsdale is one of the few smaller commercial breeding operations that prioritises the yearling sales over the foal market. Such is the enjoyment that the pair are said to derive from overseeing the process from birth to yearling sale prep, they are happy to turn a blind eye to what has been arguably one of the strongest sectors of the entire bloodstock market in recent years. That decision to sidestep the foal sales paid off in spades with their homebred yearlings at Doncaster and Book 1 last year, and Kennedy revealed that the farm will be adopting a, 'if it's not broken, don't fix it,' philosophy with regards to consigning horses in the future. 

He explained, “We changed tack a little last year, purely because we both spent time working at Newsells Park Stud and loved working with the yearlings. It was a conscious decision to run all of our own horses on as yearlings and thankfully it worked out. Prior to last year, we only ever ran one homebred on as a yearling. We enjoyed the whole prepping process so we just said we'd give it a go. We had two homebreds and two pinhooks so there were four in total. Now, it was probably bad management on our behalf because we ended up at four different yearling sales, but I suppose you have to go where you think your horses will perform best. But I can remember when we worked for Newsells, we said that, if we ever had a horse good enough to go to Book 1, we'd give it a go. That was a pretty cool thing to do.”

He added on the success at last year's yearling sale season on the whole, “It means a lot. A lot of work goes into producing a horse for the sales and, when you are working full-time, there are a lot of mornings, lunch times and evenings devoted to it. If anything, it provides you with even more respect for the people who can do this job full-time and have gone on and purchased farms on the strength of their breeding or pinhooking, because it's a seriously difficult business.”

For all that success in the sales ring is imperative to running a business, Kennedy revealed that nothing compares to a homebred winning on the track. Lucky then, because the team has a lot to look forward to on the racecourse this year.

He said, “To have the winners on the track is the main thing. Going to Royal Ascot for Maria Branwell was amazing and, even last year, we were on holidays when Antipodes (Starspangledbanner), who we bred out of Albemarle, won his maiden nicely for Highclere Racing. They are the kind of moments that you put in all of the long hours for. 

“We have four two-year-old homebreds to cheer on this year. There's another Starspangledbanner colt out of Albemarle, who we sold as a foal, and he is in training with Fozzy Stack – he gets a good tune out of Starspangledbanner so hopefully this one will be lucky as well. Karl Burke has the Space Traveller out of What Is Life (Iffraaj), William Haggas has the Starspangledbanner out of Princess Pearl and then George Scott has the Sioux Nation out of Elegant Queen, so we have some brilliant trainers working for us.”

The performances that Rigsdale put in at the yearling sales last year did not go unnoticed for the simple fact they simply did not miss. Off the back of such a bountiful year, you would be forgiven for thinking this ambitious young couple have grand ideas for the future. Not one bit of it. The goal here is a simple one; keep on producing nice horses.

“We love the game – sure it's very enjoyable,” Kennedy said. “This time of year is very busy with the breeding season in full swing so we won't come up for air until around Royal Ascot time. Even after that, we still have a lot of National Hunt clients, so they will keep us busy into June also. We've got Santiago and Maxios – they'd probably be the big ones – but then Los Angeles is also new to the Castlehyde roster and he could be quite exciting. It's funny, Anna and I are contemplating sending him a Flat mare because he was a Group 1-winning two-year-old who went on and won Group 1s at three and four so he could be very exciting.”

He concluded, “We're happy with how things are going and, no matter what was to happen, I think we'd always like to keep numbers tight. Our dream is to find our own farm – at the moment we have a lot of help from Anna's family – but I couldn't ever see us going down the consigning route or anything like that. If we're selling under Rigsdale, we want to be selling our own horses. When you have your own homebreds and pinhooks, you know what you have and you do right by the buyers. If you're going to be in the game long-term, it's nice to get to know the trainers and the agents. We'd like to think that Maria Branwell was lucky for David O'Meara so, if we think we've a nice filly at the yearling sales in the future, it's good to be able to say, 'David, would you mind having a look.' And that's really what it's all about. We want to be around long-term and I'd like to think that, in say 10 years' time, we'll still be breeding nice horses and aiming for the premier yearling sales. That's all you can hope for.”

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