A nice problem to have – Ed Harper's dilemma over Havana Grey's 2023 fee

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Here, he speaks to Whitsbury Manor Stud's Ed Harper about a high-class problem. Subscribers can get more great insight from Martin every Monday to Friday.

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It’s a high-class problem, admittedly, but it’s a problem nonetheless. What do you do when you have a stallion that has become a big success on the back of being mated with your loyal clients’ budget mares, and is now being inundated with applications from just about every breeder in the business?

How do you set a fee that maximises revenue and means you don’t have to turn down too many breeders, yet doesn’t alienate existing customers who helped make the stallion? And what about book size? How do you balance pleasing as many people as possible with protecting the value of a nomination and looking after the horse?

Whitsbury Manor Stud’s Ed Harper is wrestling with exactly those questions since the operation’s first-season sire Havana Grey has announced himself as a serious force this year, with 13 individual black-type horses and a seemingly never ending flow of winners.

The son of Havana Gold’s second crop of yearlings, conceived at a fee of just £6,500, have unsurprisingly been selling like hot cakes and only yesterday at Tattersalls he was represented by a colt out of the winning Swiss Spirit mare Dotted Swiss sold to Karl and Kelly Burke for 325,000gns and another colt out of the winning Sidney’s Candy mare Dundunah sold to Stroud Coleman Bloodstock for 220,000gns.

I caught up with Harper at Park Paddocks to see if he would give any clues to Havana Grey’s fee for 2023, but he was keeping shtum. He did, however, shed some light on the dilemma he faces.

“Our business lives and dies with a pool of commercial breeders who use stallions who stand under £10,000," he said. "Without them we would never be able to launch a stallion; we could never do the first four or five years.

“If I keep alienating them every time the stallion is a success, they're not going to be dragged up with it, and we need to keep these smaller commercial breeders in the game. The biggest kick I get is when a small breeder takes a chance on one of our own stallions in their second or third year, putting a bit of faith in us to have got it right, and then making a killing at the sales. That’s what keeps the smaller breeder alive – they need a big win every couple of years.

“Hopefully, if we get his fee right, he’ll still be at a level where breeders can have a big payday down the road. I’ve got to keep looking after the people who use us regularly, so I’ll have a tough job on my hands, but hopefully people will understand where we’re coming from when we make the decisions we do.”

Harper doesn’t need or expect our pity, as he’s in a position many people would kill to be in, but it’s difficult not to empathise with someone who spends most of his time trying to convince breeders to use his stallions now facing having to disappoint people.

Havana Grey: made a sensational start with his first juvenilesCredit: Whitsbury Manor Stud

“It seems we’ll end up having to turn a good few mares down,” he says with a note of sincere regret. “I actually went and bought a green jacket and a baseball cap from the Tattersalls shop the other day so I could walk around a bit more incognito, because I was getting pulled left right and centre by people asking about Havana Grey.

“I know that sounds ungrateful, but I just can’t start promising people things I won’t be able to deliver on. The worst thing I could do is to give people false hope for what they can get, and not deliver on it. I haven’t written a single mare down on my list yet – in fact there is no list, as I don’t want to tie myself in knots.”

This isn’t the first time that Harper has been in this situation, as he also found himself suddenly very popular after Showcasing’s first two-year-olds shone in 2014. One key difference then, though, was that the son of Oasis Dream could only cover a certain number of mares due to an agreement with the New Zealand stud that was a partner in him. Now there’s no limit, theoretically at least.

Harper wouldn’t be drawn on a precise book size for Havana Grey, but did say: “I like to think we have a reputation for covering reasonable numbers with our commercial stallions. That number changes every few years, of course, but we’d always try to be at the lower end. It’s every stallion manager’s choice, of course, but that's just what we do.

“Managing this first step up for a successful stallion is the best but hardest part of the job. This is absolutely what I hoped would happen, but I’m going to have to be at the peak of my diplomatic powers in the next few months, which is probably not what I’m best at; I think I’m better suited to doing the hard selling when times are tough.

"But I’ll just try to listen to people, and be as fair to everyone as I possibly can be.”

It was only at the end of our chat that I thought I’d better double check that it is indeed a fact that Havana Grey will be standing at Whitsbury Manor Stud next year, and that he wasn’t going to be the subject of a takeover bid from another operation.

Rumstar: latest nice winner for Havana Grey in the Cornwallis StakesCredit: Edward Whitaker

“As long as he’s upright he’ll be standing at Whitsbury Manor,” said Harper with no hesitation. “I would never mind another stud asking if they want to do business with us, but equally I hope we come across as an operation that makes, and keeps, stallions.

“I’d like to think we’ve got another 30 years of trading in this business, and I want to be seen as an outfit that’s planning for success, not short-term gain.”

Harper really did give no clues about where he might pitch Havana Grey next year, and I wouldn’t like to guess.

As a form guide, though, it’s worth remembering that among last year’s breakthrough British-based first-season sires, Ardad went from £4,000 to £12,500 and Time Test was increased from £8,500 to £15,000.

I think it’s fair to say Havana Grey has made an even better first impression than that pair, so I wouldn’t be surprised at all if his revised fee was £20,000 or more.

What do you think?

Share your thoughts with other Good Morning Bloodstock readers by emailing gmb@racingpost.com

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Pedigree pick

I wonder which pop music aficionado on the team at Pat O’Kelly’s Kilcarn Stud had the brainwave of giving the operation’s homebred Invincible Spirit gelding out of My Renee the name Save Your Love, after Renee and Renato’s notoriously kitsch 1980s number one?

Surely it can’t have been Nick Nugent, a director of the stud whose Ballinlough Castle in County Westmeath hosts the achingly hip Body & Soul festival (mission statement: “booking an inspiring mix of musical pioneers, legendary artists and scorching hot new talent from Ireland and around the world”) exposing himself as a secret lover of cheesy one-hit-wonders from yesteryear?

Either way, Save Your Love is both well named and well bred. He is a half-brother to six winners including Ribblesdale victress and Irish Oaks runner-up Banimpire and two-time scorer Dream On Buddy, who later became the dam of Melbourne Cup winner Twilight Payment. His third dam is Arc heroine Detroit.

In spite of that splendid pedigree he went unsold at just €38,000 at the breeze-up sales, so he will carry Mrs O’Kelly’s silks when he makes his debut for Johnny Murtagh in the seven-furlong maiden for two-year-olds at the Curragh today (1.25).

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Good Morning Bloodstock is our latest email newsletter. Martin Stevens, a doyen among bloodstock journalists, provides his take and insight on the biggest stories every morning from Monday to Friday