An act of remembrance - Michelle Motherway on the meaning of TDM Bloodstock

This yearling sales season has seen the launch of TDM Bloodstock, with every detail of the business, from the carefully designed logo to the door cards and the impeccably prepared horses lovingly overseen by Michelle Motherway.

She wanted to create a bespoke yearling consignment of homebreds and pinhooks as a family business, and the initials are those of her and husband Paul's two sons Tadhg and Donnacha. A family business with the hope of creating a legacy for the next generation, it's also an act of remembrance for Tadhg, who was stillborn in May 2019.

"Tadhg will always be part of us and our family," she says. "I'm very open and will always speak about it. I don't shy away from it. If you're really having a bad day, it can really lift you if somebody asks."

By including Tadhg in the business and speaking about his loss, she is also hoping to offer support to others experiencing similar pain.

"If we can help somebody who's on this crappy road – because it is a bad road, but there is definitely light at the end of the tunnel – it might take a while, and you're never over your grief but you learn how to deal with it. 

"There's always a rainbow after a storm, I really believe that."

There is a reticence to speak about grief and loss in Irish culture, a hesitation to get involved in a conversation about bereavement. The standard, 'I'm sorry for your troubles' echoes around funeral parlours, wake houses and churches when offering condolences to grieving loved ones, a gentle way of avoiding speaking about loss and death.

There are circles of bereavement and for those who get to utter the phrase of consolation, they also get to put distance between themselves and that loss. Even though they may feel the absence in their own lives, they are not in the inner circle of pain, so life resumes its normal path quickly.

When that loss is of a child, the anguish is immense, and the confusion at how the world can continue revolving on its axis when your world feels like it has spun off its orbit is bewildering.

She says: "It seems for everyone else life keeps on going, but you are at home and your whole world has fallen apart. Grief is like learning how to surf; it's up and down and in and out. It was hard to grasp that life does go on because, for you, in your grief life stands still but you learn to be a pro-surfer."

The business is particularly important in that horses provided her with a lifeline when learning to surf those initial waves of grief.

"The horses kept me going," she says. "When you're having a day where you feel like you can't get out of bed, you have to get up to take care of them. I had Feileacain and Mummy Bear that summer to prep for the yearling sales and they're the only reason I'm sitting here now, talking to you, they got me out of bed at that raw stage."

Yearling prep is her bloodstock passion and in readying those fillies during that horrendous summer and this year, the first five yearlings to be sold by TDM Bloodstock, the veterinary nurse employed the training and techniques she learned under the tutelage of Gay O'Callaghan during her time at Yeomanstown Stud.

Mummy Bear, a Kodi Bear half-sister to Group 2 Kilboy Estate Stakes and Grade 3 Matchmaker Stakes winner Lemista and to Sakheer, who won last season's Mill Reef Stakes, was sold at Doncaster and went on to win twice for Richard Hannon. 

Motherway's bond with Feileacain, which is the Irish word for butterfly and the name of the Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Association of Ireland, the charity which supported Michelle and Paul following Tadhg's stillbirth, was such that the filly was retained.

Sent to Paddy Twomey, who trains at Athassel House Stud, where Michelle's father Jimmy Lowry was manager for two decades, Feileacain displayed talent in her homework but setbacks prevented her from making it to the track, and the decision was made to breed from her instead.

Joanne McGuire, Paul and Michelle Motherway after selling their Kodi Bear filly at Orby Book 2Credit: Sophie Webber Photography/Goffs

Donnacha Motherway, who turned two in May, also has a special connection with Feileacain and it was fitting the first yearling sold by the consigning business which bears his and his brother's initials was Feileacain's first foal. The Dark Angel colt brought €100,000 at Goffs Orby Book 1 from Richard Ryan, and will be trained by Charlie Hills.

"I'm business-oriented but it's more about the pride in the horses and the people here – it's not about topping the sales for me, as long as I sell racehorses and they go to a good home and they both have," she had said after selling a Kodi Bear filly to Razza Latina at Orby Book 2. It was an important week for a team that is also a family and of which Joanne McGuire and Dana Jones are integral members.

In the ordinary meaning of the word regarding racehorses, Feileacain was bred to be special. By the Irish 2,000 Guineas winner Awtaad, she is a half-sister to Group 3 Desmond Stakes winner Alexios Komnenos, by Choisir. Their dam Alexiade is from the first crop of the champion Montjeu and out of Aptostar, a Fappiano mare who won the Grade 1 Acorn Stakes and whose daughter founded a dynasty for Moyglare Stud. 

So great a broodmare was In Anticipation, there is room only for two dams on the page of Feileacain's Invincible Army half-sister who sells as Lot 1464 at Tattersalls next week.

TDM's pinhooks are consigned in Book 2, where they offer a second-crop Waldgeist (1001) half-brother to the dams of Persian Force and Garrus from the family of Danehill Dancer. Although the catalogue describes him as brown/grey, he presents as a magnificent black, gleaming in the autumn light.

Their New Bay filly (1173) is the first foal of In My Life, a War Front full-sister to Listed Belgrave Stakes winner Fleet Review, who was also placed in the July Cup and Middle Park Stakes. Their dam, A Star Is Born, is a Galileo full-sister to triple Group 1 winner Rip Van Winkle.

The rainbow at the end of a very dark storm.

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