My bittersweet phone call after loss of triple Group 1 winner Rio De La Plata

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Here he talks to Con Marnane about Rio De La Plata - subscribers can get more great insight from Martin every Monday to Friday.

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I enjoyed a touchingly bittersweet phone conversation with breeze-up maestro Con Marnane yesterday as he shared his memories of Rio De La Plata, one of the best horses to have ever passed through his Bansha House Stables in County Tipperary, a week after his death at Haras du Logis in Normandy at the age of 17.

It was, co-incidentally, on the first day of the Newmarket July meeting 15 years ago that the Saeed Bin Suroor-trained son of Rahy first announced himself as a great talent, by making all under Frankie Dettori to win the maiden on the card by five lengths.

He took the Vintage Stakes at Glorious Goodwood in impressive fashion on his next start, before finding only New Approach too good in the National Stakes at the Curragh and then storming to a wide-margin success in the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere at Longchamp.

Rio De La Plata (pictured below) finished placed in the Poule d’Essai des Poulains and Prix Jean Prat at three, and after suffering from a few setbacks at four came back better than ever five, when he scored in the Strensall Stakes and a pair of Italian Group 1 contests.

He didn’t win at six, but finished second in the Prix du Moulin and Premio Roma and ran third behind Frankel and Canford Cliffs in their famous ‘duel on the Downs’ in the Sussex Stakes that season, before later joining the Darley roster at Haras du Logis.

Rio De La Plata’s distinguished service in Europe began when he was purchased for $75,000 at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale in Kentucky in 2006.

Rio De La Plata: 'He’s been a fantastic broodmare sire from few chances.'Credit: Mark Cranham

“There’s a story about when we bought him,” said Con with a hint of mischief in his voice, as he spoke looking at a treasured picture of himself and the horse flanked by Dettori and Bin Suroor in the Longchamp winner’s enclosure that hangs in his kitchen.

“Theresa bought him in the ring but Eddie O’Leary had been the underbidder, and so we’d both stopped bidding and tossed a coin for the horse outside afterwards. I won, and Eddie wasn't happy at all.”

He adds with a chuckle: “I met Eddie at the Curragh two weeks later and he was still crying about it, so I said ‘if you really want half of him, work away’, and so the two of us were stuck in him together.”

Con was forced to work hard to make his half-share in Rio De La Plata realise its value, as the colt proved a handful during his breeze-up preparation at Bansha House.

“He did the same thing every morning when you put the jockey up on him: he’d look at you sideways and do his best to get the jockey off his back,” Con remembered. “It was all play with him though, you know. He was just a real happy, funny horse, though he could try your patience with it.”

Persistence paid off as Rio De La Plata was signed for by John Ferguson on behalf of Sheikh Mohammed at the Tattersalls Craven Breeze-Up Sale for the handsome price of 170,000gns.

“David Loder selected him and – make sure you put this down in the article – he nearly had me in a headlock in the corner trying to find out how good the horse was,” laughed Con. “Give him a bit of a rub as he’s always asking me an awful lot of questions.”

Rio De La Plata showed again that he could be a loveable rogue when getting loose just after exiting the ring and enjoying a run around Park Paddocks.

“And didn’t he go and do the same thing down below in Dubai,” said Con with a note of amused exasperation. “Sheikh Mohammed and his entourage went down to look at him and he got loose again, running around with the shank hanging down. Then he went to stud in France and he used to continually kick the railings in his paddock. I was told he’d break a piece of fence every day.

“He was one of the best characters you could ever hope to have in your stable, though, and most of all he was an absolutely brilliant racehorse, and tough as nails. He won eight races, three Group 1s and over a million euro in prize-money.”

Con and Theresa are best known as expert pinhookers but they are very accomplished breeders, too, having produced the likes of German 2,000 Guineas winner Fox Champion and Commonwealth Cup runner-up Forever In Dreams in recent years. Naturally, they couldn’t resist supporting their old friend in his stud career.

“We sent some mares down to him and bred a few nice winners,” said Con. “We also got his son Settle For Bay out in Germany and he won the Royal Hunt Cup at Royal Ascot for my brother David very impressively.

“We also bought Aiming For Rio, a very good filly who won two Listed races, also Rioticism, who won a Listed race for us. We put her in foal to Churchill and sold her, and the result of the mating is Johnny Murtagh’s good filly Ladies Church.

“He’s been a fantastic broodmare sire from few chances – I don't think he gets the credit he deserves, really. He puts fantastic talent and temperament into them.”

Con told me he didn’t mind that Rio De La Plata had an entirely Argentinian page that risked looked a little too exotic to European buyers – “his mother was a great mare and she didn’t know where she raced,” he reasoned not unfairly – and he ran through some of his exciting recent breeze-up graduates such as the promising Windsor Castle Stakes sixth Bolt Action and last week's Tipperary Listed runner-up Ardad’s Great.

The topic of conversation returned to the much missed Rio De La Plata before we rang off, though. “Poor old Rio, he was a real old favourite,” said Con with a discernible crack in his voice. “I was sad to hear it when Julian Ince from Haras du Logis rang last week to tell me he’d passed away. I was always his biggest fan.”

I sometimes get the impression that people underestimate how emotionally invested traders become with horses, even when they have them in their care for only a matter of months.

But I’m pleased to say that in my experience of speaking to pinhookers, the overwhelming majority are like Con, and see these wonderful animals as far more than just a commodity.

Pedigree pick

Arguably the most intriguing race of the day is the seven-furlong two-year-old fillies’ maiden at Leopardstown (5.30), which features two Ballydoyle bombshells – Dame Kiri, by Triple Crown hero Justify out of Alice Springs’ Group 3-placed full-sister Hence; and Maybe Just Maybe, a daughter of Japanese champion Lord Kanaloa out of Maybe’s Group 3-winning full-sister Promise To Be True.

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