Bryan family's eye for talent continuing with Emmpressive Lady

Willie Bryan has been gradually positioning his Shropshire farm towards the lavish end of the National Hunt market but an eye for a bargain has been exemplified by the feats of Emmpressive Lady.

Sue Gardner’s mare, bound for the Pertemps qualifier at Exeter on Sunday, has won three decent prizes for Barry Greening’s Clear Racing syndicate having cost just €5,500 as a foal at the Tattersalls Ireland November National Hunt Sale.

"Barry and I had done well with buying cheap fillies at the time, like Rons Dream, who we bought for €2,000, Hollies Pearl and Land Of Vic, who went on to be black-type mares, so we said we’d go and have a look and see if we could find a racehorse, not necessarily a pedigree," Bryan explains of his visit to Fairyhouse in 2015.

"We quite liked Jeremy, they’re popular now but no-one was really on them much at the time. I had a limited budget so I had to look for what might make a racehorse with a bit of time, and as a matter of fact she did and it worked out okay."

Bryan saddled the strapping mare himself to finish third in a point-to-point at Bangor aged four and, after coming well clear in a handicap hurdle at Kempton over Christmas for current connections, she is only now starting to look the finished article at seven.

"I wouldn’t call myself a great trainer, we pre-train now, but I could produce a young horse," Bryan says modestly. "Anybody was going to do a little bit better than me.

"She didn’t look like she’d win at four as she’s quite big and rangy, but we thought we had plenty to go to war with and keep improving, which she’s done.

"She doesn’t do much, she’s a typical Jeremy, as all they’d do was eat and sleep and go up the gallops. She was the same, if you sat on her she’d go 1mph, if you wriggled a bit she’d go 5mph, she’s just that sort of mare."

Bryan could not have had a better mentor in spotting horses. His late father Bill was a legend of the showing world who was decorated at the Horse of the Year Show, not to mention being a champion point-to-point trainer.

"Dad was one of the top show people of hunters in the country and was very good at picking foals out of the field, and that’s what we tend to do," he says.

"One of the first foals we ever bought went to the Cheltenham Festival, trained by Lenny Lungo, he was fourth one year and we thought it was easy, but it’s taken a long time to get it better. The early days weren’t so good, but we get it right most of the time.

"My dad would look in the field, you’d see ten mares and foals, and before they’d even come down the field he’d say, 'I’ll have that one, that one, that one and that one'. I’d say, 'Whoah, we haven’t seen them yet!'

Willie Bryan has shown a knack for purchasing reasonably-priced foalsCredit: Shantel Harding/www.inthebag.pro

"His eyesight wasn't even that good, but after we’d had them there and looked them up and down, he still had the same ones. He just knew, and he did that time and time again."

Bryan has found some other inexpensive prospects of late, such as Equus Dreamer, bought for €10,000 and a winner for Kim Bailey, and the €30,000 Equus Dancer, who rattled off a hat-trick last year for his brother-in-law Peter Bowen.

Both of Bryan’s sons, Josh and Peter, are contemporaries in pony racing of Bowen’s star children Sean and James and have gone on to their own riding careers, with the former still attached to the Andrew Balding yard.

Now, though, their father is combining with Greening and a select bunch of other clients to move into buying foals from Grade 1 families and producing them for top store sales or private transfers to trainers.

"I’ve got to an age where, the same with Barry, we didn’t want to go racing with bad horses and I didn’t want to get up every day for feeding, lunging and so on unless the horses were worth doing it for," he says.

"We’ve got a Flemensfirth this year that Barry’s involved with out of Petite Parisienne, who won two Grade 1s, we’ve got the Master Minded family, a half-brother to Paul Nicholls’ Flemenstide out of Walk In The Park, there’s a mare called Saint Bibiana [showed promise at Huntingdon on Friday] who is a full-sister to Lady Adare of Harry Fry, who has run three times and won three, and a yearling by Walk In The Park from that family.

"There’s also a gorgeous Walk In The Park three-year-old out of a sister to Denman, he’s probably the nicest horse I’ve ever had, and he’s due to go into training.

"They’re all at quite a high level. You probably won't hear from us, we’re only in the background, but hopefully you’ll hear more from the horses."

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