Bloodstock industry offers nominations to superstar stallions to support Ukraine, Turkey and Syria

The bloodstock industry will have the opportunity to provide significant support for two major humanitarian crises through an online charity sale of stallion nominations hosted by Tattersalls on Monday.

It was an idea suggested by Stephen Byrne, a well-known equine osteopath and former horse transporter who has undertaken a number of missions bringing supplies to war-torn Ukraine, and proceeds will be split between the Giving To Ukraine charity that Byrne has been involved with and the Disasters Emergency Committee’s Turkey-Syria Earthquake Appeal.

Bloodstock agent Oliver St Lawrence has made it a reality and has already received more than 75 one-off nominations to leading stallions including Sea The Moon, Sottsass, Showcasing, Kodiac, Hello Youmzain, Nathaniel, Kameko, Time Test and Dandy Man, and many more for lower budgets.

St Lawrence estimates the total of advertised fees to be around £700,000 and was still receiving more on Thursday, through donations from stallion farms and private individuals across Britain, Ireland and France.

"It was all Stephen’s idea, I just picked it up and ran with it, it’s the easy bit compared to what he does," said St Lawrence. "I do quite a lot of stallion nominations for my clients and help shareholders and breeding rights holders to sell those they don’t want to use for a year, so I was a good fit to help on this task.

"I badgered stallion masters, who have been very generous, and I have a large mailing list, who I emailed across Europe. People have really come and helped donating, it’s been a group response from the bloodstock industry across Europe.

Nathaniel: one of Europe's leading sires with a one-off nomination at the auctionCredit: Edward Whitaker

"Some are bigger names than others but every little helps, some of the far less pricey stallions are equally attractive and hopefully will get a bid or two."

Byrne himself will begin the journey towards the Ukraine border on Friday in what is the charity’s fourth convoy, consisting of five lorries.

His first-hand experiences have been affecting.

"I kind of got involved in this as the 11th-hour man," he said. "I’d done transport and driven trucks all over the continent and was asked by one of my clients if I might drive their truck out to the border with the first load of aid when the war was about two weeks old.

"What we were met with when we got there...none of us I think were prepared for it. There were refugee centres with hundreds of women and children who had lost everything. It was a huge eye-opener; one of the things that will stay with me forever is seeing a little girl with a bag of Lego and a phone number written on her arm, that’s all she had, her mother had left her there and gone back to fight.

"It was very raw, people in the centres were living on toast and water. We spent £30,000, went to a cash and carry, bought a load of food in Poland and delivered it back to the refugee centres."

Stephen Byrne (right): "What we were met with when we got there - none of us I think were prepared for it."

It had begun as a group of people around the equestrian world using their horse boxes and operating as Ukraine Equestrian Relief, but the name was changed to Giving To Ukraine due to a bit of confusion as to what they were doing, which was delivering medical and humanitarian supplies. 

"We’ve brought about 30,000 body bags out there, which is the grim side of it that people don’t see," continued Byrne. "We’ve got wheelchairs, bandages, all sorts of medical supplies that people have donated, mobile phones, blankets; a company donated about 60,000 of new hoodies and jackets.

"The volunteer medics that are out there don’t get supplied with bullet proof vests, they’re given to the soldiers, but I’ve a load of armoured plates that go into bullet proof vests. Everything that they need and have requested.

"We deliver it to Air Med in Warsaw, which is a bit like the St John Ambulance here I suppose, and we deal with Caritas, which is a bit like the Polish Red Cross. They run the refugee centres in places like Poznan, where they’re still feeding up to 1,000 people a day."

Byrne says that racing’s contribution will be invaluable. 

"It’s 1,400 miles from off the ferry in Rotterdam to get to the Ukraine border, it really is so close to home.

"I think we’ve raised around £130,000 so far, we’ve spent every penny on food, essentials and delivering directly, there’s no middle man, so this will mean so much."

Bidding opens at noon on Monday and closes 24 hours later, with nominations sold with no VAT and no fees taken. Full details of the lots will be catalogued by Tattersalls shortly in what has been a complicated administrative project for both Katherine Sheridan of the auction house’s online platform and St Lawrence himself. The principle is that the buyer pays for the nomination now, and if there is no live foal they get a free return to the stallion in 2024. 

"I thought we might have a chance of raising a couple of hundred thousand but hopefully, if we can get the buyers in there, we’d be on course to raise a fair bit more," said St Lawrence. 

"I'd been talking to Stephen about Ukraine but it seemed a fairly obvious thing to support Syria and Turkey as well, with the heart-breaking images we’ve seen there.

"There’s never enough money to go round but hopefully it might encourage a few more people if they want to help. We’ve got the donors in, now we need to get people bidding."

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