'I sealed the deal for Sir Gino in McDonald's' - catching up with French-based talent scout Toby Jones

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On this occasion, Martin Stevens speaks to Toby Jones about Sir Gino, Auctav and buying and selling in France – subscribers can get more great insight every Monday to Friday.

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A horse can’t act up at Auteuil or cough at Compiegne without Toby Jones knowing about it. The British bloodstock agent is across every detail of French racing in order to source winners for his clients – be they owners, trainers or the sales company Auctav, for whom he works as a consultant. 

Sir Gino, who has cruised to victory in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle and Wayward Lad Novices’ Chase this season to remain unbeaten in five starts for Nicky Henderson, and Lulamba, the talking horse of the four-year-old hurdling division who confirmed his promise with a smooth success on debut last month for the same trainer, are among the recent stars he helped secure. 

Describing how he ended up on the other side of the Channel, he says: “My parents loved France; we’d often go there on holiday when I was a child, and they always said they wanted to move there one day. Eventually they did, and after a while I followed them and settled in too. 

“I worked in a few studs and racing yards to begin with. It was around the time that Kauto Star and Master Minded were breaking through in Britain, and suddenly French racing was becoming bigger than ever, so I thought it might be an opportune time to get into bloodstock.” 

One of the first fruitful relationships that Jones forged was with Tony Martin. His early purchases for the County Meath trainer included Anibale Fly, placed in two Cheltenham Gold Cups and a top-five finisher in two Grand Nationals, and Heartbreak City, winner of the Ebor and a head second to Almandin in the Melbourne Cup. 

Anibale Fly cost €16,000 as an unraced three-year-old at the Arqana Summer Sale and Heartbreak City was claimed for €23,000. Between them they earned around £1.25 million in prize-money for connections. 

Anibale Fly: an early success story for Toby JonesCredit: Caroline Norris

Heartbreak City’s acquisition illustrates particularly starkly how Jones’ deep knowledge of the racing scene in France has kept him several steps ahead of the competition.

“I do a lot of work in claimers, simply because there are so many here,” he says. “In his case he had just broken his maiden in a handicap at Chantilly, but then had been dropped down to a claimer at Deauville. It was a classic situation of the trainer thinking the horse couldn’t win another handicap off a higher mark, and so they took the easier route of a claimer.

"He finished fifth in the claimer, but he was giving a lot of weight away and didn’t receive the best ride. The trainer wasn’t having a fantastic season either, so I thought he might prove to be a bit better in another stable. He just had the profile of a horse who had more to come, and after a couple of seasons in Ireland the penny dropped and he took off.   

“Of course, when we claimed him I could never have imagined that he would nearly win one of the biggest Flat races in the world and earn all that money. I thought he was going to be a fun little dual-purpose horse!”

Heartbreak City is a hard act to follow but Sir Gino might become an even bigger celebrity in time. The five-year-old son of It’s Gino was purchased privately (and hastily) after he won the Prix Wild Monarch, a Listed hurdle for three-year-old colts unraced over obstacles, at Auteuil in the April of 2023. 

Heartbreak City with delighted connections after winning the EborCredit: Mark Cranham (racingpost.com/photos)

“I did the deal with Jerry McGrath, who I know well,” he says. “We’ve worked together quite a bit on French horses, and the association has been working out extremely well. You really need two people to try to buy these top-class horses out of maiden and novice races at Auteuil as there’s so much to take in and assess in a very short space of time. 

 “You have to move incredibly quickly for the most exciting horses. In fact, you have to do most of the legwork before the race has even been run. You really have to work out what you would do if the runners in a race perform as you expect them to perform – how much you’d pay for them, which of your clients they might suit and so on.

“Then you have to throw your hat into the ring as a potential buyer more or less as soon as the horses have come into the unsaddling enclosure. Deals tend to get bashed out between weighing in and later in the evening. The market for those horses is so competitive you have to move seriously quickly.” 

Sir Gino was sent off at the equivalent of more than 20-1 when he won at Auteuil on debut. Nevertheless, he had already appeared on Jones’s radar before the race, so the agent was far from unprepared to cut a deal that day.  

“He was an interesting one,” recalls Jones. “It’s correct to say that he wasn’t overly fancied that day, but that’s probably because he was with Carlos and Yann Lerner, who are very good trainers – they won the Prix du Jockey Club with Look De Vega last year, of course – but weren’t as well known for their jumpers as other connections in the race that day, the likes of David Cottin, Gabriel Leenders, Daniela Mele, Noel George and Amanda Zetterholm, Hector de Lageneste and Guillaume Macaire. 

“He was also ridden by a claiming jockey that day [Tanguy Andrieux]. But I have good contacts in the weighing room in France and was aware that one of the most respected jumps riders here, Bertrand Lestrade, had done all the schooling on the horse and had been meant to partner him, but had to ride for the Papot family instead as they retain him. It was a late jockey change. 

Toby Jones and Jerry McGrath inspect the runners ahead of the Prix Wild RiskCredit: Racing Post/Burton

“Sir Gino isn’t from a family of precocious three-year-olds, either. All of that played into him being sent off a bigger price than he should have been. But I expected him to run well on the basis of what I’d seen and heard before.”

So Sir Gino was known to Jones even before he stepped foot on a racecourse?

“Oh yes,” says the agent. “Generally speaking, from this time of year I’ll be going round yards eyeing up horses, listening out for which ones the trainers like, and putting a few names in the notebook – not just which are the good ones, but the ones that might be on the market in the spring as it's important to find out whether the owners might be sellers, or not.

"However, you still have to wait until the day the horses run to see how good they actually are, and then go back and see how willing the connections are to do a deal.

“That was the case with Sir Gino. It’s one thing to hear that he might be a promising horse but another to actually see it. We certainly saw it on this occasion, because not only was he impressive, but he’s also a very imposing horse, and he looked far from the finished article that day. It was hard not to get excited imagining what he might be able to do in a couple of seasons when he was fully furnished. The raw ability was massive with him.”

Hence, when Sir Gino returned to the winner’s enclosure, his former connections found themselves caught in a pincer movement by Jones and McGrath trying to get a deal done.

Jones and McGrath weren’t the only ones trying to buy him, of course, which resulted in tense conversations. Bloodstock agents have to be brash sometimes.

(from left) Toby Jones with Jerry McGrath, Harold Kirk and Charlie Swan at AuteuilCredit: Racing Post/Burton

“Yeah, it can get pretty tense,” admits Jones. “Jerry made a few phone calls to make sure everyone on his side was up for buying Sir Gino, and then we entered negotiations. The trouble is we weren’t the only ones, there were other parties, so we had to act quickly to get a foot in the door and make sure we weren’t left behind. 

“It can get a bit awkward as there’s a queue to grab connections on their own to have a chat with them. Luckily on that occasion we got the deal done. I was actually in McDonald’s on the way home when it was sealed.”

Jones said it was a similar scenario when he and McGrath secured Lulamba after he scored on debut at Auteuil last October, with the son of Nirvana Du Berlais also now carrying the silks of Marie Donnelly. 

Unsurprisingly, he won’t give away how much was paid for the potential superstars but he does think the general public overestimates the figures involved.

“Don’t get me wrong, the market is still red-hot for all these proven French horses with the right profile, but the estimates I see on social media tend to be extreme and frankly well over the top,” he says. 

“People get carried away with what they think is paid, but I suppose it’s like Chinese whispers: it starts with something resembling the truth but by the end it’s all blown out of proportion.”

Horses like Lulamba and Sir Gino, exciting winners of hotly contested Auteuil races in the ownership of sellers, rarely – if ever – make it into public auctions. They are snapped up long before that could ever happen.

Lulamba: just about the most exciting four-year-old jumper in trainingCredit: Edward Whitaker

But the dynamic young French auction house Auctav has made a name for itself by offering slightly less obvious prospects in its online sales. Two of Venetia Williams’ best horses this season, Djelo and Martator, were sourced from them, as was Willie Mullins’ Grade 3-winning novice chaser Mister Policeman. So too was Adrian McGuinness’s Renaissance Stakes scorer Go Atheltico: the company offers Flat horses as well as National Hunt.

Jones is busy all year round recruiting and inspecting lots for those sales, with his Auctav consultant hat on.

“I’m basically boots on the ground,” he says. “I’ll travel around the country looking at potential profiles for their online auctions, giving them the once over to see how saleable they are. I know the marketplace in France and Britain and Ireland well enough to be able to say whether they’ll have broad appeal.

“That’s really important for Auctav. When I started with the company a few years ago the director Arnaud Angéliaume said what he wanted to do more than anything was to build a brand that people could really trust; that they knew we were putting horses up to them because we believed in them, not just for the sake of making a bit of commission. 

“That’s half the reason we’ve quickly built up a strong list of graduates, I think.”

Djelo and Mister Policeman demonstrate the gap in the horses-in-training market that Auctav identified and exploited.

Mister Policeman: sold for €120,000 at an Auctav online saleCredit: Patrick McCann

“Everyone’s watching the big Paris tracks, but there’s a lot of other racing that takes place around France, and there are decent horses running there too,” says Jones. “We throw light on those less obvious, but still good, horses.

“Mister Policeman scored well at Fontainebleau on his second start, and was sold to Willie for €120,000, and he’s done well for him. Djelo won nicely at Nancy in the east of France and was sold to Guy Petit on behalf of Venetia for €140,000. He’s become a grand horse for connections.”

Salvator Mundi, a further in-form Auctav graduate, shows another string to the company’s bow. The son of No Risk At All was sold to Nicky Bertran de Balanda for €70,000 as an unraced two-year-old at the inaugural physical Auctav National Hunt Sale in August 2022, when it was held at Haras des Rouges Terres. It now takes place at Haras de Bois Roussel in September.

Salvator Mundi entered training with Cottin and finished second to Sir Gino in the Prix Wild Monarch before being sold privately to Mullins. He carried Donnelly’s silks to win the Moscow Flyer Novice Hurdle last month.

“He’s a very well bred horse, being by one of the best sires in France and out of a Saint Des Saints mare who’s a half-sister to L’Unique,” says Jones. “We were initially a bit worried about selling two-year-olds later in the summer, as we thought people might assume they were known to be not very good, but he’s shown you can get a good horse and quickly turn them around. He finished second in the Prix Wild Monarch less than eight months later.

Salvator Mundi: promising prospect is a graduate of Auctav's National Hunt SaleCredit: Patrick McCann

“Auctav has been punching above its weight, especially since it was founded only five years ago. I put that down to our focus on quality over quantity. We home in on horses with profiles we believe in, rather than churning through a load of lots and hoping a few good ones will turn up on the track.

“If Auctav puts a horse forward to the market it’s because we’ve done all the homework to make sure it’s a good one. Once we offer them, we’ve got just as many contacts as any other business to push them to potential buyers.

“I’ve actually bought a lot of horses from Auctav online myself. It works in my favour, as some of my clients need more time to think about spending that sort of money. They’re not going to splash out quickly, so I can show them all the information, pictures and videos on the website.”

Jones concedes it’s not always easy for Auctav being the new kid on the block, though. 

“One problem is if you want to offer a horse with a decent profile you have to compete against private deals first and then other companies who don’t want to share the market too much,” he says. “There can be a bit of a scrum to get your case across, so we’ve had to prove ourselves a bit to get sellers to come on board against more established sales houses. That’s why it’s important we’re having the success we are. It shows we can do it.

“Auctav has made excellent headway in a short space of time, but we know there’s more work to do. I think most people in France know all about us now, but we need to break through a little bit in other countries, so this year and last we’ve done more stable visits in Britain and Ireland. It’s a case of going door to door, face to face, making contacts and building relationships.”

Jones has his fingers in all sorts of pies, or maybe that should be pâtisseries, in France. He and McGrath also made their first foray into stallion ownership last year, by standing Herostar, an unraced Walk In The Park full-brother to brilliant chasers Douvan and Jonbon, at Haras de la Verte Vallée.

Toby Jones, here being congratulated on a sale by Anna Sundstrom: 'It's not quite as expensive to race horses in France'Credit: ZUZANNA LUPA

“The interesting angle with him is that he’s the only entire out of Star Face, who’s been such a brilliant mare,” he says. “We’re supporting him, the stud that stands him is supporting him, and he’s received some nice outside mares. We’ll only know whether he’s good when he has runners, so we’re trying to get as many foals on the ground as possible.”

Herostar covered 42 mares in his first book in 2024: not a huge amount, especially by British or Irish standards, but Jones is undaunted by the task at hand.

“You don’t always need enormous numbers in France,” says Jones. “We don’t cover the same amounts as they do in Ireland. Around 100 mares is a lot for a French sire, although that has changed a little in recent times for the most popular names. But generally there is a more level playing field. Look at Walk In The Park, he got the likes of Douvan and Min and was sold to Coolmore even though his output shrank to nine foals in one season in France. 

“Also, it's not quite as expensive to race horses in France, because of the lower production costs and training fees and the better prize-money. That means you can help get a stallion off the ground by racing his early foals yourself. It’s easier to stand stallions here than in Britain or Ireland.” 

If Herostar makes it as a sire, Jones really can say he has conquered France. He is already looking to expand into new frontiers, although his international ventures are less business, more pleasure. 

“I own a few horses with friends for a bit of fun, and enjoy targeting them at some weird and wonderful international races,” he says. “Flying Chaser, a Masterstroke mare I claimed, won two Grades 1s in Merano last year, and Black Gangster, a son of City Light, won the most valuable race for three-year-old colts in Morocco in November (pictured above). He's another horse I claimed, and so I'm not responsible for his name! 

“It’s all at a very low scale, and I don’t put a lot of money into it, but it’s a nice way to see the world. Merano is one of the most beautiful tracks I’ve been to, and Morocco is 24 degrees in the winter, so that wasn't a bad trip. St Moritz is next on my to-do list next year. I’m just trying to find the right horse for that.” 

Jones’s adventures in claiming horses in France and racing them at home and away are documented in a podcast he participates in called The Claiming Lads. 

Broadcasting too: there really isn’t much he doesn’t do when it comes to French racing and bloodstock.

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