The Jungle Holds No Fears for Burns

[Wandering Eyes]

That voice. So rich and deep, you could listen to it for hours—and, such is his easy, discursive way, quite possibly you will. Maurice Burns is at his kitchen table, expounding the challenges facing the commercial stallion master in Ireland.

“Think of Liam Cashman, God rest him,” he says. “He started with Kampala (GB) (Kalamoun {GB}) and Taufan (Stop the Music), just worked his way along with that knack of finding something, time after time; something people mightn’t think much of, originally. But the more people saw what he could do, of course, the more people would go to him. And he ended up with Acclamation (GB) (Royal Applause {GB}).”

Burns is still seeking an Acclamation of his own, the ultimate horse to define his contribution to decades of achievement by a remarkable clan of breeders. But a posse of young guns now at Rathasker Stud is led by Bungle Inthejungle (GB) (Exceed And Excel {Aus}), Europe’s most prolific freshman with 16 winners from 35 starters, who just celebrated his first group winner when Rumble Inthejungle (Ire) emulated his sire with a score in the G3 Molecomb S. on Aug. 1. And, in offering new sources of the kind of speed previously processed here by the likes of Mujadil (Storm Bird), Burns is reiterating a perspicacity as valued—by his own clients—as was that of the late, admired Cashman at Rathbarry.

Bungle Inthejungle himself, after all, fell through the cracks. He failed the vet as a yearling, two sesamoid fractures prompting an unequivocal pronouncement that he would never make the track.

“And when our vet first saw him, he said this horse couldn’t have raced,” Burns says. “I said no, he’d won all these races on all types of ground. And he said he’d never seen anything like it. So now there a lot of babies out there, without his sore legs but with his raw ability, and maybe they can run even faster.”

Certainly the horse’s failure to train on—after winning four of nine juvenile starts, including Group 3 sprints in the Molecomb and Cornwallis—was no reflection on his build. This was no pocket battleship.

Burns remembers going to inspect “Bungle” at Mick Channon’s yard. “He looked like an Australian sprinter,” he says. “Not the biggest walk in the world, but a big horse, 16.2hh, with loads of bone. And a lovely eye. He’s a gentle giant, just lopes around the place, covers his mares and goes and has his dinner. And he seems to produce horses with the same mentality: they just get on with it, don’t worry about things.”

That disposition is evidently complemented by a natural physical aptitude. If one or two more expensive rivals may yet run him down, this autumn, Bungle Inthejungle made a flying start—eight winners by the end of May catapulting him to the forefront of that sector where Rathasker typically operates.

“You won’t see a mile-and-a-half horse here,” Burns shrugs. “Fruits Of Love (Hansel) did okay for us, but we ended up selling to a National Hunt farm. He didn’t suit our mares, or our client base: the Richard Hannons, the Mick Channons, the Richard Faheys. They know we know what they’re looking for, often come to us at the sales and ask: ‘What have you that I’d like?'”

But a roster that reliably produces “trainers’ yearlings” is vulnerable to a market often sieved, nowadays, by agents instead. “At our end of the game you probably only have the first crop’s first season,” Burns says. “With sprinters, with 2-year-old speed, if you don’t produce immediately, your mares very soon dry up. In my father’s time, there wouldn’t have been 20 bloodstock agents, and most trainers went to the sales. But you were only looking at a couple of hundred yearlings. Now there are thousands. So people use agents to whittle down a catalogue. And the agents say, ‘Right, I can only look at 30% of these. So even before we start I’m going to put a line through this, and that, and that.'”

Burns has around 70 mares on the farm, just outside Naas, three-quarters typically supporting the stallions and the rest covered elsewhere in the hope of upgrading a page. And you need only look at the pedigree of the Derby winner to remember that the Burns family knows just how to do that. For while everyone celebrated the fact that Masar (Ire) (New Approach {Ire}) is inbred 4×3 to Urban Sea (Miswaki), fewer observed the equal contribution of Ahonoora (GB) (Lorenzaccio {GB})—responsible for the mothers of both sire and damsire, in Park Express (Ire) and Park Appeal (Ire).

“A Burns is never scared to have a horse in training,” confirms this one. “[Brother] Seamus and [his wife] Patricia had Classic Park (GB) (Robellino), Aidan O’Brien’s first Classic winner. And Park Appeal and Park Express ran in Dad’s colours. Both were covered by Green Desert the same year: one produced Shinko Forest (Ire), who became a stallion down in Rathbarry; and the other, Cape Cross (Ire). And then of course Park Express produced New Approach.”

These rag-to-riches tales—Ahoonora, Acclamation—embolden Burns that someday one of his own, hard-knocking sprint sires might conjure some latent genetic seam of class. “Nobody could have seen that happening with Ahonoora,” he reflects. “And that’s what gives everyone a chance in this business. It was Larry Ryan who wanted him, he was chairman of the Irish National Stud at the time. Others couldn’t see it but Larry just had this thing in his head, that he wanted this horse. Otherwise Ahonoora would probably have gone off to Turkey or somewhere. As it was they got him at small money, stood him at small money, and he covered a nice commercial book. And the rest is history.”

Ahonoora still remained a query when Seamus and their father Paddy bought Park Appeal as a yearling. “But she was such a tall, elegant filly, everything in proportion,” Burns recalls. “She was working very nicely and Jim [Bolger] wanted to run her in the Queen Mary. But Dad was an old stockman, a cattle man, and he looked at her and of course she looked—fit. Very fit. Dad said, ‘That filly needs the May grass. I’m taking her back to the farm.’ Jim was not very pleased. But Dad being Dad, he won. He put her in a paddock and she blossomed. Then he sent her back, she won her maiden in August, and after she won the Cheveley Park [she] was sold to Sheikh Mohammed.”

At the next round of sales, then, every Ahonoora filly was checked out. “They weren’t overfond of most,” Burns says. “But then they found this big plain filly, completely different from Park Appeal—except for these grey flecks on her tail. And that was Park Express.”

Paddy Burns had always been a trader as well as a farmer, touring marts in the south for livestock to sell to neighbours in Ulster. (“I think my mother used to see him once a week, on a Sunday,” Burns recalls.) In time he started buying mares, too, booking blocks of nominations from a young man named John Magnier at Castlehyde. For a long time Burns, Sr. was the record vendor of foals at Ballsbridge.

The family moved south: first to Lodge Park, then adding Rathasker and nearby Newlands, today base of another brother in Patrick. And an inherited eye means the next generation includes nephews Ronan, at Herbertstown, and Paddy, at Loughtown; while Burns and his wife Theresa appreciate the role of their daughter Madeline at Rathasker.

Red God stood at Loughtown and Burns enjoys that his nephew, named after the family patriarch, should be bringing things full circle where the whole story began—Red God being sire not only of Folle Rousse (GB), the family’s first champion in 1968, but also of Red Sunset, the first Rathasker stallion in 1984.

“The horse business in this country is very family oriented,” Burns says. “And it’s all a big family, really. The stallion owner needs the breeder, for his mares; then the pinhooker buys the foal; then he sells to the trainer; and so on until, if they’re very good, they go to be stallions. It all trickles down.”

“Our clients would mostly be fellas with less than five mares, usually just one or two. And when a stallion does well, like Bungle, everyone has a positive experience. The lady who bred his first listed winner, Eileen Farrelly, is a phlebotomist, used to take blood at the Mater Hospital. She sold the foal for five grand, so didn’t make any money. But all of sudden the mare has moved up the ladder hugely, and she’s over the moon. That’s a big kick.”

But much else is afoot, besides, at Rathasker—not forgetting Gregorian (Ire) (Clodovil {Ire}), bred here and 50% syndicated at the National Stud in Newmarket because Burns already had Clodovil (Danehill) (a class act, held back only by fertility) and another son Es Que Love (Ire) standing at home. Gregorian is up to seven winners from his first crop.

“Remember he broke his maiden in the autumn and went on from there,” Burns emphasises. “So I’d be looking at him as a work in progress.”

The cherished Es Que Love won the G2 Lennox S. after being acquired as a horse in training, his dam (herself added to the Rathasker band for just 25,000gns) meanwhile responsible for winners of the G1 Hong Kong Vase and Hunt Cup. Es Que Love has also landed running, with four winners from just nine starters.

Then come the next two turns of the carousel: the first foals of Coulsty (Ire) (Kodiac {GB}) and first yearlings of Anjaal (GB) (Bahamian Bounty {GB}). “Coulsty’s have loads of quality,” Burns says. “All bays, same as Kodiac, good walkers with a bit more size than most by the sire. And Anjaal covered a huge amount of mares, 190 or so, his first year. We didn’t get him until Christmas, but when we started showing him we sold breeding rights to a lot of influential people in the business. He’s producing real Bahamian Bounty types, with plenty of hip and backside.”

But nothing heartens Burns more than brother Patrick’s enthusiasm for “Bungle”, sending mare after mare up the road. “He has a sixth sense for stallions,” Burns says. “He was the same with Mujadil, and has a phenomenal ratio of ordinary mares producing black-type horses.”

In most cases, Burns suspects, a stallion can do little more genetically than keep out of a mare’s way. “But then you get the cheap stallion who makes himself into a Kodiac or Dark Angel,” he marvels. “The ones that start with mares producing 60-rated horses, and get an 80-rated horse. Ahonoora was one of those.”

So we’re back where we started, seeking another Ahonoora, another Acclamation. Of course, you need luck. Burns wistfully recalls his interest in Kodiac. Last year he went to see a horse in France and discovered he was the 10th studmaster to inspect him—that weekend.

“When you consider the amount of stallions out there, it’s very, very hard to find that horse,” he says. “You’re hoping to find your one king and that the other lads do their thing well. Nobody knows where he might come from. But that’s what makes it interesting: it’s a bundle of genes, and your opinion, and you gamble on that.

“That gamble is huge,” he says. “Not just financially—you also gamble your herd of mares. It’ll be five years before you find out if you’ve made a good investment or not. If he covers all your mares, and turns out a flop, it could break you. We’re lucky so far. And that’s the word, lucky, because you’re no smarter than the next fellow.”

“You just get them born; you rear them; they go to their trainers. You watch them running, you give out about the jockey, but you’re totally engrossed, roaring at the television. You can spend a whole morning discussing how to beat the favourite that afternoon. And it’s only a seller. But for that day, it’s the Derby.”

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