Familiar yellow of Cliveden to be woven back into Epsom fabric

Yellow as English mustard, with a sprinkle of peppercorns, the return of the Cliveden Stud silks to Epsom tomorrow renews a nostalgic taste of days when British owner-breeders were routinely competitive in the Classics. As it is, Golden Horn two years ago was the first homebred Derby winner raced by an indigenous breeder since Reference Point won for Cliveden - owned by the late Louis Freedman - back in 1987. “But in those days 20 or 30 horses were enough to put you in the top ten owners,” remarks Freedman’s son, Philip. “Now it’s barely enough to get you an RCA badge!”

Freedman has preserved the Cliveden Stud banner, even though the farm itself was sold in 2006, and on Friday weaves a familiar yellow back into the Epsom fabric with Horseplay in the Investec Oaks - picking up a thread stretching through Reference Point, via 1974 Oaks winner Polygamy, all the way to I Say, the first horse owned outright by his father.

I Say led the 1965 Derby field round Tattenham Corner, held out for third behind Sea Bird, and returned the following year to win the Coronation Cup. He subsequently sired the 1979 Grand National winner, Rubstic.

During his gap year, Freedman was working in Chantilly and remembers Jean-Michel de Soubersky telling him how he used to watch Sea Bird on the gallops. “Etienne Pollet worked his horses very early and Jean-Michel said that just fitted in for when he’d be coming back from Paris,” Freedman recalls. “But then he also told me at various times that he’d been at Eton, Harrow and Rugby...”

Reference Point: bright yellow silks stand out as the colt kicks on in the 1987 DerbyCredit: A@ (Cranhamphoto.com)

As it happens, there are one or two flavours of French mustard to this patriotic tale. It was in Deauville, for instance, that Freedman’s father first found himself involved in a thoroughbred. Accompanying Isidore Kerman to the sales in 1962, he saw his friend buy a filly. “Now Louis,” Kerman said. “If I have anyone with me when I buy a horse, I always assume they’ll take a half.

“My mother had a fit when she heard,” Freedman recalls. “But when my father went back to Isidore and told him, he said: ‘Dear boy, of course you don’t have to - I’ll just charge you the usual ten per cent getting-out fee.’ So my parents decided half a horse for 50 per cent would be better than no horse for 10 per cent.”

From small acorns . . .

Within five years his father had bought Cliveden Stud in Berkshire from the Astors - but only the site, which he then set about stocking. Two foundation investments were 1967 yearlings Lucyrowe and Seventh Bride, who respectively won the Coronation (by 12 lengths) and Princess Royal Stakes. There was only a short head between them, however, when Seventh Bride was deployed as pacemaker for Lucyrowe in the Nassau. When Frank Durr dismounted Seventh Bride, he winked and said: “I think we made sure the right one won…”

But it was Seventh Bride who would make the greater contribution to Cliveden. True, poor Freedman was stuck playing cricket for his prep school second XI when her daughter Polygamy won the Oaks. Perhaps his masters should have recognised the cerebral stimulation available on the Turf, as attested by the naming of his father’s horses: Polygamy herself was by Reform out of Seventh Bride, though even that was surpassed by her sister One Over Parr, winner of the Cheshire and Lancashire Oaks.

Home On The Range was another splendid contrivance, by Habitat out of Great Guns. The 1981 Sun Chariot winner’s son Reference Point was Derby favourite even before his debut, and a champion juvenile, but dashed his owner’s Triple Crown dream when requiring sinus surgery in the spring. As it was, he made all at Epsom, outclassed a small field in the St Leger, and in the meantime won the King George as well. “When he won the Derby, Peter Stanley organised a dinner back in London,” Freedman recalls. “In the days before mobiles, he had to do it all using Dickie Gaskell’s phone on his rails pitch.”

As ever, each triumph had its twin disaster. Polygamy died before she could deliver a foal, of a twisted gut. That loss prompted the retention of her sister, One Over Parr. “And then absolutely nothing happened in the family for about 30 years, until Camelot came along,” says Freedman. One Over Parr is the 2012 Derby winner’s fourth dam. “When someone asked me whether I was breeding to Camelot, I said no - I knew the family rather too well!”

The morning after Reference Point won the Dante, equally, his sister was killed on the gallops. Their dam had left only one other daughter. “She never ran, though rather bizarrely Henry [Cecil] at one point was talking about running her first time out in the Coronation Stakes,” Freedman recalls. “It seems she was very good but not very sound.

Anyway she produced absolutely nothing. She was given every chance, even went to Storm Cat, but proved a complete disaster. We kept one filly, though, probably for sentimental reasons. And while she couldn’t win, either, she did produce Independence - who won the Sun Chariot and is the dam of Mount Nelson.”

A tale of two countries

Horseplay’s own meandering tale takes us back across the Channel. After Legend Of France produced Madame Dubois, a Group 2 winner foaled the year of Reference Point’s Derby, Freedman’s father was keen to send him another mare. Freedman, who started supervising the stud around that time, was chary of sending a mare overseas for the equivalent of a £2,500 covering. So they leased a local mare from Robert Acton.

The result was Francfurter, whose daughter Fraulein was a Grade 1 winner. “Even that was slightly by accident,” Freedman admits. “Fraulein was Listed rather than Group class, over here, but there was a Grade 3 at Belmont on October that tended to be relatively soft. The idea was to run in one of the smart races basically as a prep. But under an inspired ride from Kevin Darley, she got first run and won the EP Taylor.”

Fraulein’s daughter by Lemon Drop Kid, Mischief Making, managed to win a Listed race and, covered by Cape Cross, produced a filly Freedman named Horseplay. “Nothing from the family is early,” he cautioned Andrew Balding last spring. “Well,” the trainer replied. “She looks like she might be early enough for the May Hill...”

In the event a setback after her debut meant she could not break her maiden until the backend, which she duly did by 13 lengths. Whatever happens tomorrow, she is a precious commodity after her reappearance success in the Pretty Polly - not least given the sale, either side of her foaling, of both Fraulein and Mischief Making.

Striking the right balance

Like so many breeders, Freedman must constantly strike a balance between maintaining quality and cashing assets in order to do so. Certainly the landscape has shifted since his father’s day, when Cliveden yellow so often shared the Warren Place palette with Howard De Walden apricot or Joel black.

These days most Cliveden mares board with Freedman’s neighbours at Watership Down. Warren Place itself, of course, is now subsumed into the Maktoum empire. “Almost the hardest thing now is to get your mare to the right stallion,” Freedman says. “It should have become easier, in theory, because they’re covering 200 mares. But if you went back 30 or 40 years, a serious breeder would generally have bought a share in most horses going to stud. At that time I suppose the difference is that stallion owners were commercial breeders, whereas now they’re also the biggest owners on the racecourse.”

Neutrals will be rooting for Horseplay: some, in the hope of posthumous icing on the Epsom cake for Cape Cross; many more, in recognition of the public service consecutively rendered by Freedman and his father. The latter was awarded a CBE for his work on the Race Relations Board, was president of the ROA and deputy senior steward of the Jockey Club; Freedman has served as chairman of the TBA and now of the Horsemen’s Group.

“Of course people have been ringing up trying to buy her,” he says. “And there have been many times I’ve said no after a filly has won a maiden, only to find six months later that it’s clear she won’t ever do anything more than win a maiden. But once you’ve taken the risk of getting through a winter, and established a value by winning a race like that - well, she’s simply not for sale.”

There is more at stake, after all, than money. It is about heritage, symbolism, memories. Having no fixed abode, Cliveden aptly represents the modern drift of the British owner-breeder. How splendid, then, if Horseplay should still prove capable of cutting the mustard.

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