From the Iroquois to an Eclipse Award, a legendary owner-breeder's magic journey

During all the years he spent galloping over hundreds of forbidding fences and exhausting miles, the wind screeching past his ears as clods of dirt kicked up by rivals struck him in the face, George Strawbridge jnr gained insights not available to most owners and breeders.

Riding his own horses to victories including four editions of America’s prestigious Iroquois Steeplechase, Strawbridge could, from his fingers on the reins to his toes in the stirrups, sense the qualities that made top equine competitors.

Still drawing on that advanced education in the saddle as well as more than half a century as master of a cavalry of elite runners, often homebreds, with champions in Europe and America and on the Flat as well as over jumps, Strawbridge, at the age of 82, has just scaled one of the sport’s highest peaks.

As the breeder of American Horse of the Year Bricks And Mortar, Strawbridge was recently celebrated with the Eclipse Award as the continent’s outstanding breeder for 2019.

"I was absolutely thrilled, it was seventh heaven," Strawbridge reflects on the award, which crowns a career of superlative breeding feats highlighted by more than 100 Graded/Group winners and 275 black-type winners since 1991.

In a style befitting his upper-crust heritage as a scion of the Campbell Soup Co. fortune established by his grandfather, Dr John Thompson Dorrance, the inventor of condensed soup, Strawbridge deflected glory to others involved with Bricks And Mortar.

In his acceptance speech, he spent more time praising owners Seth Klarman and William H Lawrence and trainer Chad Brown than he spoke about his breeding enterprise that had produced the son of Giant’s Causeway, downplaying his award as almost a flukish “David and Goliath type of thing”.

Later, reminiscing on all the horses and decades that brought him to that moment, Strawbridge indicated the achievement stems from his earliest days, beginning with his youthful riding that led to him becoming the third generation of his family to steer steeplechase winners.

"My involvement with fox hunters and timber racing is where it all started," he recalls. "I had a wonderful time riding in races. Winning the Iroquois four times is an enormous highlight for me. It’s just such an adrenaline rush to win a race, and I was way too big to ride in Flat races.

Strawbridge, right, en route to winning the 1978 Iroquois Steeplechase aboard his New Zealand-bred gelding Owhata Chief

"It gives you a little bit more insight to racing and breeding because you have a wider understanding of what it takes to win a race. And you don’t immediately dismiss stamina, which some have been doing in Europe, going for sprinters, and in America, where the name of the game is speed. To have a long-distance horse is really an anachronism.

"When I won the [2007] St Leger with Lucarno, I think the papers in England said, 'He’s the only one who breeds to win the St Leger.' But it’s from my steeplechase background," Strawbridge says, chuckling while recalling how trainer John Gosden, one of his principal advisers and a close friend, enjoys ribbing him about the danger of producing plodders.

"Gosden likes to say, 'Oh, my God - I think we’ve got another steeplechase horse for you.' I’ll say, 'I’m trying to breed speed horses.' And he’ll say, 'Well, you’re not very good at that.'

"And I’ll ask, 'Are all my two-year-olds going to be jumpers, John?' He’ll reply, 'Most of them are; maybe one or two we can save for shorter races'."

Of course, this dialogue is mostly just for amusement. Runners Gosden has developed for Strawbridge include his homebred 2008 European champion juvenile filly Rainbow View, a daughter of Dynaformer, who also sired Gosden-trained Lucarno.

While Strawbridge concedes that speed is the main priority in any breeding programme, he prizes those horses that can stay, no matter how gruelling the test.

"I don’t find it an offence if they can go three miles," he declares. "They absolutely have courage."

Strawbridge himself has shared qualities of endurance, for despite his success he has suffered a correspondingly large portion of disappointments, including the 2018 loss during a difficult foaling of Rainbow View and the Uncle Mo foal she had been carrying. He has told the story that his very first runner at a major track incurred bowed tendons in 1966 while carrying his white and green Augustin Stable silks.

Even after that disastrous debut, he loyally stuck with trainer Jonathan Sheppard, appreciating his candid confession that the setback was likely caused by galloping boots used on the horse.

More than 40 years later, their collaboration yielded American champion turf female and 2008 Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf winner Forever Together, long after they had already trailblazed records for Augustin as America’s all-time steeplechase leader by earnings.

The following season, Strawbridge and Sheppard enjoyed multiple Grade 1 winner Informed Decision, who captured the Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint to become America’s champion female sprinter.

Strawbridge’s longtime friend Arthur B Hancock III, owner of Stone Farm in Kentucky, where Augustin’s American mares are boarded, said the owner’s understanding of the demands of the sport is extraordinary.

"Think about what he learned about horses while being on them and from the ground level up," says Hancock.

"He’s a very courageous guy. I went to school at Vanderbilt University and I’d go out to the Iroquois Steeplechase every year," he recalls of the event conducted at Tennessee’s Percy Warner Park, not far from the Nashville campus, that spans three miles and 18 fences, each over four-feet tall.

"He would go over those big jumps and come in all muddy and sweaty, and I remember thinking, 'He’s got a lot of courage. I damn sure wouldn’t do that'.

"George wouldn’t tell you this because he’s very modest, but he knows more about horses than most people have forgotten."

What Strawbridge will discuss, however, are the details of his breeding programme and his hopes for the future, while also speaking out passionately against the use of drugs in racing. Without hesitation, he confirms he prefers European racing to the American sport.

His current favourite topic is Bricks And Mortar, even when asked about his decision to sell the colt as a yearling and the disappointing $200,000 he received for the bay at the 2015 Keeneland September yearling sale.

"That’s a very good question," Strawbridge says, laughing, about why he opted to sell the eventual earner of more than $7 million.

"I had two Giant’s Causeways that year and he was out of the Ocean Crest mare Beyond The Waves, who had produced some very nice stakes horses, so I sat down with Arthur and we said this is the Giant’s Causeway we should sell because we could get much more money for him.

"I was thinking major money. On the other hand, I don’t believe in offering a horse just to get it appraised, so we had a very reasonable reserve on him.

“I was flabbergasted that he actually sold for $200,000 because I thought he would sell for twice that."

However, in considering that the colt was going to Brown under the ownership of Klarman and Lawrence, he adds: "I was happy with knowing that these very top professionals, who usually make the right decisions, were going to manage him."

During his brief acceptance of the Eclipse Award, Strawbridge pointed out "what a terrific job they did" while giving the talented colt, who was a Grade 2 winner at three, more than a year off after surgery to correct a neuro-muscular condition in his right hind leg.

In only his second start back, in January 2019, Bricks And Mortar thundered out of a rainstorm to prevail in the inaugural $7 million Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational Stakes at Gulfstream Park.

Bricks And Mortar winning the Breeders' Cup Turf to cap his Horse of the Year campaignCredit: Michele MacDonald

That victory marked the first triumph of Bricks And Mortar’s undefeated seasonal campaign that featured five Grade 1 wins and one Grade 2. Yet it was his final start before departing for stud duty at the Shadai Stallion Station in Japan that truly defined Bricks And Mortar as a champion.

Asked to go a mile and a half for the first time in the Breeders’ Cup Turf, he unleashed a massive effort, his ears pinned and his body stretched low to the ground, to defeat rivals including Coolmore’s Epsom Derby victor Anthony Van Dyck and Godolphin’s Dubai Sheema Classic hero Old Persian.

"It was a real champion’s performance, I was so proud of him," says Strawbridge.

Strawbridge co-bred Bricks And Mortar’s dam and she began her racing career in France, annexing the Listed Prix des Tourelles over a mile and a half at Chantilly and placing in four Group events for him and trainer Jonathan Pease, prior to also placing in a Graded event in America.

Beyond The Waves has produced four stakes winners. While Strawbridge said the mare lost the Uncle Mo foal she was carrying for 2020, she has a Runhappy yearling colt and is slated to be bred to multiple Grade 1 winner Oscar Performance, a young Mill Ridge Farm stallion in whom Strawbridge has invested and whose stud career is overseen by Strawbridge’s other primary American adviser, Headley Bell.

"I’m going to keep the Runhappy colt and hopefully I can manage him as well as Bricks And Mortar was managed," says Strawbridge. "And I hope that he is half the horse that Bricks And Mortar is. If he is, he’ll be excellent."

Currently, Strawbridge said he maintains 15 broodmares at Stone Farm and 12 in the UK divided between Brian O’Rourke at Copgrove Hall Stud in North Yorkshire and Whatton Manor Stud in Nottinghamshire.

His mares are headlined by his homebred 2013 European champion Moonlight Cloud, a daughter of Invincible Spirit from the family of Derby winner Generous and Oaks heroine Imagine. A five-time Group 1 winner trained by Freddy Head, Moonlight Cloud has a yearling Dubawi colt, a two-year-old Galileo filly named Moony and a three-year-old Dubawi filly named Cloudy.

Strawbridge described Moonlight Cloud’s back-to-back Group 1 victories over males in the 61/2f Prix Maurice de Gheest and the one-mile Prix Jacques le Marois a week later as "unbelievable", with the then five-year-old defeating the likes of Olympic Glory, Intello, Declaration Of War and Dawn Approach in the latter.

New to Strawbridge’s European broodmare band is Group 1 winner Thistle Bird, a 750,000gns acquisition sold in foal to Kingman from the dispersal of the late Lady Rothschild’s bloodstock at Tattersalls. The 12-year-old mare is by Selkirk, the European champion Strawbridge bred and raced.

Over the years, Strawbridge has trimmed his breeding and racing numbers to keep expenses manageable, and he now has around 20 horses in training in Europe with Gosden, Head and Andrew Balding, and 18 in America with Jonathan Thomas, Graham Motion and Michael Matz. His other 2019 successes included homebred Grade 2 winner Varenka and Group 3 winner Wissahickon.

Strawbridge's white and green silks - carried here by Wissahickon - are among the most recognisable in Flat racingCredit: Mark Cranham (racingpost.com/photos)

Noting the hazards of the business, he confides: "I do get lectures from some of my family members, who say, 'Can’t you get into another enterprise that involves less risk?'

"I must have a sickness that compels me to do this," he adds with a laugh. "And they all agree, saying, 'You do have a sickness'."

Looking ahead, some of Strawbridge’s potential young stars include To Nathaniel, a 2020 Derby-nominated colt by Nathaniel out of champion Finsceal Beo’s Sea The Stars daughter Too The Stars; juvenile Frankel filly Shining Gift, who is closely related to his homebred Group 1 winner Call The Wind; a yearling colt by Invincible Spirit out of 2016 British Champions Fillies & Mares Stakes winner Journey, by Dubawi; and 2021 Derby nominee Diverge, a son of Frankel out of Group 1-placed Sparkling Beam.

His American-breds include juveniles Be Here, a Ghostzapper colt out of Informed Decision, and Ski Patrol, a Pioneerof The Nile colt out of Forever Together.

While his roots clearly are in America - where son Stewart became the fourth generation of the family to ride steeplechase winners and cousin Charlotte Weber breeds and races under her Live Oak Plantation banner - Strawbridge minces no words about his preference for European racing.

“When you win a race in Europe, it’s celebrated because everybody recognises, even if they didn’t bet on it, a great performance," he says. "There really is an enormous appreciation for the horse and not just numbers."

As a co-founder of the Water Hay Oats Alliance that advocates drug-free racing and other reforms in America, Strawbridge declares: “It’s just shocking the amount of doping that goes on in this country.

“And that is not good for the horse. It’s destructive. They are treating the horse not as an animal but as an object to cheat with. It’s appalling.

“I’m not optimistic about the future because the status quo is so entrenched."

One of only a few individuals to have held memberships in multiple Jockey Clubs, with his name on the lists in America, Canada and as an honorary member in Britain, Strawbridge has also been an investor in professional ice hockey and soccer teams in the United States.

He earned a doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania while studying politics and Latin American history, and served as an adjunct professor at Widener University. In addition to work with the Campbell Soup empire, his varied business pursuits have included banking.

But none has been closer to his heart than his Augustin Stable.

His relationship with winning horses soared with Waya, America’s champion older female of 1979, the same year Strawbridge rode his Owhata Chief to the gelding’s second Iroquois victory. Later inducted into the American Racing Hall of Fame, Waya earned Grade 1 victories on dirt and turf for Strawbridge and Peter Brant.

Strawbridge’s Café Prince, a $17,000 yearling purchase who became American champion steeplechaser in 1977 and 1978, was also inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Other famed Strawbridge homebreds have included Irish and French St Leger winner Turgeon, multiple Grade 1 winner With Anticipation, and the Group 1-winning Dansili sisters We Are and With You.

Yet with so much history behind him and now the prized Eclipse Award in his possession, Strawbridge is just like any other owner and breeder in one regard - he continues to fervently search for the next big horse, one that will infuse him with a sense of joy like nothing else can.

“I want to try to breed the best horse I possibly can,” he affirms. “It gives me a feeling of elation - that’s the one word I can think of that is most appropriate.”

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