'I had a good teacher' - Cathy Grassick honouring her father with run of success

You might have realised that Cathy Grassick is enjoying a splendid run of success, having helped devise the mating for brilliant Irish 2,000 Guineas winner Phoenix Of Spain and her family's Newtown Stud having sold him as a foal, and claiming bragging rights for buying the beautifully bred Pinnacle Stakes scorer Klassique as a yearling. But you haven't heard the half of it.

Thanks to an encyclopaedic knowledge of pedigrees, a sharply honed familiarity with various equine families and an admirable dedication to her clients, many of them more personal friends than patrons, the shockwaves of those recent results have reverberated through her clients' bloodstock portfolios.

Phoenix Of Spain's dam, the now 15-year-old Key Of Luck mare Lucky Clio, was bought out of the stables of the agent's uncle Michael Grassick to join the broodmare band of the late Cherry Faeste and her husband Arild; but it is Klassique's owner Yvonne Jacques who is breeding from Karisma, the only female offspring of Lucky Clio. Karisma also just happens to have as her first foal a colt by Lope De Vega, the sire of Tuesday's St James's Palace Stakes favourite Phoenix Of Spain.

Grassick untwists the tale by saying: “Originally my father [the widely respected agent Brian Grassick, who died in 2009] purchased Lucky Clio as a yearling for a syndicate, and she went into training with my uncle Michael. At €130,000 she was an expensive yearling for Key Of Luck, which shows how very good looking she is. She didn't win but she was placed, and importantly she's a half-sister to a top-class horse in Special Kaldoun.

“She went back to the sales after racing and it just so happened that Cherry Faeste, who was the mother of one of my best friends, Nina Casey, wanted to upgrade her stock and so asked me to buy her a mare. The first I bought her was Misskinta, a well bred daughter of Desert Sun, privately; she was so pleased with her that she came back the next year and asked if we could buy her something else.”

Grassick learned the art of buying bloodstock at her father's knee, the self-confessed pedigree nerd having joined the Brian Grassick Bloodstock agency at a young age. To purchase that second mare for Faeste, she surprised her father by buying Lucky Clio cheaply from under his nose – although he must secretly have been proud as punch that day at the Tattersalls December sales of 2007 knowing that the student had approached an equal footing with the master.

“I only had a small budget so, using the tools my father had given me, I went off to buy something myself,” Grassick remembers. “Dad always recommended picking the best bloodlines you can for your money, and Lucky Clio was a half-sister to a Group 2 winner, was good-looking and had made plenty as a yearling, and I knew Key Of Luck was a good sire of fillies, which usually makes a good broodmare sire. So I used all those things he taught me, and the mare went on the list and happened to be the filly we could afford.

Phoenix Of Spain: Cathy Grassick bought his dam Lucky Clio for Cherry and Arild FaesteCredit: Patrick McCann (racingpost.com/photos)

“The hammer came down in my favour at 17,000gns. Dad was standing with my uncle in the ring, not knowing who'd bought her as I hadn't told him I was interested. No one was more surprised than him to see it was me. But I was only doing exactly what he had taught me to do.”

Lucky Clio was an immediate success at the Faestes' stud in County Waterford and has continued to be so, clicking with a wide range of sires. Her first foal, Kingsdesire (by King's Best), took third in the Dee Stakes and next came Lucky Beggar (by Verglas), a twice Listed-placed smart sprinter; the winner War Of Art (by Tamayuz); Royal Whip third Central Square (by Azamour); and further winners Karisma (by Lawman) and Game Player (by Dark Angel) before Phoenix Of Spain was born as her seventh foal.

She has a two-year-old colt by Lope De Vega bought as a foal by Grove Stud for €110,000 and an Awtaad yearling colt sold to Tally-Ho Stud for €58,000 last November, and is back in foal to Lope De Vega.

Misskinta, meanwhile, had produced as her second foal a son of Verglas who, in another example of cross-pollination between clients, was bought by Grassick at the Goffs Orby Yearling Sale for €85,000 on behalf of Jacques. He became the multiple stakes winner and Hollywood Derby runner-up Grandeur.

“I don't only buy off my clients,” Grassick laughs. “I did the mating for Grandeur but I loved him as a yearling; again, Dad had told me that when you see a Verglas who can walk, you've got to buy them. I showed him to Yvonne and told her: I'm not saying anything – tell me what you think. And she just fell in love.

“Similarly with Karisma, she had cut herself as a yearling and didn't make it to the sales, and that year Yvonne hadn't bought all the fillies she wanted. Cherry asked me to find someone to buy the filly privately, so I went to Ballylinch where she was based, made sure she was all right and got her vetted, and that's how Yvonne happens to own the only sister to Phoenix Of Spain.”

Karisma was sent to Lope De Vega last year on Grassick's advice as she was so taken by the manner in which Phoenix Of Spain had grown into his frame as a yearling, Newtown Stud having sold him as a foal on behalf of Faeste. After delivering a colt to that mating this year, she was sent to Siyouni.

“It just so happens that there a few times I've managed to find a nice once that my client was selling,” she says, “but it's important to me that just because it's a client's horse, or I've done the mating or had some other involvement, I wouldn't rule out buying it. I would never skip a good horse from another farm; a nice horse is a nice horse.”

One from the archives: Cathy Grassick (left), father Brian (right) and uncle Michael (centre) celebrate Preseli winning at Leopardstown in 2000Credit: Caroline Norris

Indeed, it would be self-defeating to deny clients potential stars to try to prove a point about transparency that can more easily be made simply by being open and honest. “I try to pick the best horse I can for the best person; you can't penalise horses or people for the crossover, but you do have to be upfront about it and disclose any involvement you may have,” Grassick says. “If I have an interest in a horse, I'll always tell the client and advise them to speak to a third party.”

She credits her commitment to clarity to values inherited from her father, who in turn had been bequeathed them by his mentor, renowned BBA man Tom Cooper.

“Attention to detail, being honest, straight and open; I like to think that's passed down," she says. "You can still see Tom Cooper's influence on all of us."

Neither should Grassick's loyalty to familiar equine families be construed as lack of imagination. Rather, those close-to-home purchases are the result of deep understanding of pedigree and sire performance. “Dad used to say his favourite TV programme was the Ceefax racing pages; my favourite book is the Return of Mares,” she jokes.

“You get a feel for certain things in a family, you find out what works,” she goes on to say. “I do a lot of study to form my opinions of why certain things work – I have to, to get a competitive edge. My clients don't have fortunes to spend, a lot of what I do is for smaller but nevertheless very good owner-breeders who are aiming to be commercial, so if I know something about the trajectory of a stallion's career or a mating that might work better, that gives us a way to compete with the big operations.”

Further proof of the profits of this approach, one that necessitated a bold step into different bloodlines, is Klassique, the William Haggas-trained four-year-old filly who ran out a three-length winner of the Pinnacle Stakes carrying Jacques' increasingly recognisable pale blue silks at Haydock on Saturday.

The daughter of Galileo and Matron Stakes heroine Chachamaidee was a 300,000gns Book 1 yearling purchase by Grassick. Before clucking your tongue dismissing the choice of a filly by a multiple champion sire out of a Group 1 winner as rather obvious, bear in mind the now Group 3 winner with more than £100,000 in prize-money earnings, surely worth a seven-figure sum as a broodmare, was acquired for much less than the reputed cost of getting a mare covered by Galileo.

“Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't profess to any genius here,” Grassick says, “but I had a good teacher and one of the things I remember as a gung-ho youngster was charging into a sale catalogue and penalising a whole load of Sadler's Wells and other regally bred horses for being too light or too backward.

“My father soon took me down a peg or two. He said that when you've got a young horse by a top stallion, you have to rein in your judgement a bit, particularly when they're out of a Group-winning mare and you're working on a budget. So you look at the date of birth and the pedigree and read the best into it.

“Chachamaidee was very good but she got better as she got older and Galileos tend to be the same, and Klassique was foaled May 11, so she was a long way from the finished article. She had plenty going for her; she's very correct and already had the attitude of a racehorse, always showing herself to her best even after being pulled out of her box on numerous occasions. She still has that mindset of an athlete. You put her in a paddock and she'll do a lap of the field straight away.”

Klassique: Group 3 winner was bought as a future broodmare for Yvonne JacquesCredit: Grossick Racing

Klassique has fulfilled Jacques' wish to have a Galileo mare to breed from at her burgeoning Carisbrooke Stud in Berkshire, which used to be known as Raffin Stud when run by former owner Lady Whent. It says something about the market that as an untried yearling with the potential to earn on the track, the filly was cheaper than some of the sire's older daughters that Grassick had inspected at the breeding-stock sales who hadn't even won.

Brian Grassick would undoubtedly be proud of the acumen his daughter has shown, and honoured that she has chosen to continue running the agency in his name. But this is not just a father-daughter story, and Cathy Grassick stresses that what she has achieved would be unthinkable without the support of her mother Sheila and sister, ITV Racing presenter Sally Ann, at the family's Newtown Stud in County Kildare.

“I simply wouldn't be able to run the agency if I didn't have the help of my mother and sister keeping the show on the road at the farm, along with an outstanding stud manager in Caroline Hannon,” she says.

A pair of promising two-year-old maiden winners bred and sold by Newtown Stud within three days of each other have proved the point. First, Lil Grey – a Starspangledbanner filly out of the Verglas mare Vera Lilley, the dam named in honour of the farm's former owner – scored over six furlongs at the Curragh for Sheila Lavery and then Sea The Dawn – by Sea The Moon out of the Pivotal mare Heavens Peak – hosed up by six lengths at Roscommon for Adrian Keatley.

The Grassicks did not make fortunes from either horse as they made €12,000 and €3,000 as yearlings respectively, but there is the compensation of owning foals and yearlings out of the mares who now have enhanced pedigrees when they go the sales in the future.

Suffice to say, for Cathy Grassick, family matters.

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