'If you’re a small breeder you’ve got to look at the fast ones'

Jiffy Boy, one of the first of this season’s two-year-old winners when coming good at Leicester last Friday, was continuing a theme of speedy horses to have emerged from Joe Skinner’s Helescane Stud.

Skinner and his late wife Bridget developed a thoroughbred breeding sideline alongside a dairy herd at their farm near Okehampton in west Devon and have produced the likes of Midnight Martini, who won the 2009 St Leger Yearling Stakes for Tim Easterby and was second in the Group 3 Firth of Clyde.

"A long time before Midnight Martini there was a filly who we sold, Maggy Damus, who was with Mick Easterby," Skinner recalls. "She wasn’t brilliant but she won three before Easter, which is quite an achievement I think.

"If you’re a small breeder you’ve got to look at the fast ones. It’s no good trying to breed Derby winners. It’s expensive and they don’t make any money unless they’re absolutely top of the tree."

Such was Skinner’s methodology when, at the 2019 Tattersalls December Mare Sale, he spent 5,000gns on the winning Dutch Art mare Renaissance, in foal to Mondialiste.

A half-sister to Ripon Two Yrs Old Trophy winner Alicante Dawn, she is a great-granddaughter of Fairy Dancer, a half-sister to a certain Sadler’s Wells.

Helescane graduate Midnight Martinie landed a big prize at DoncasterCredit: Mark Cranham

Through Selwood Bloodstock he sold the resultant offspring, Jiffy Boy, to the shrewd Robyn Brisland for 1,500gns at last year’s Tattersalls Somerville Sale and the chestnut emerged a promising third to Persian Force in the Brocklesby before following up in economical fashion at Leicester.

"I foaled her down, had him yearling prepped by someone else but I liked him, he was a nice foal, a very nice yearling and better judges than I liked him," says Skinner.

"But they all said the same thing; Mondialiste, they can’t sell him.

"But then I knew that when I bought the mare. The comment in the catalogue says 'nice' and I knew she wasn’t going to be expensive and she wasn’t, it wasn’t very much for her page.

"I’ve still got her, she’s been covered by Havana Grey and should be scanned this coming Sunday.

"There was a yearling colt by Eqtidaar, which I sold as a foal. I think it’s very nice, but then all my geese are swans, aren’t they!"

Skinner admits that he has reached an age where the prospect of sitting up all night foaling mares has become increasingly unappealing, but results from the likes of Jiffy Boy and Hurricane Harvey, the Grade 2-winning novice chaser for the Fergal O'Brien stable, have been the reward.

Several decades ago, he and Bridget prepared Borderlescott, Robin Bastiman's extraordinarily popular Group 1-winning gelding, to be sold as a yearling at Doncaster.

"Little so-and-so he was," Skinner recalls. "He was a double rig and he had all the characteristics of a double rig, but he was a brilliant sprinter.

"It’s a very, very small operation. My wife really started it, we had a reasonable sized dairy farm and she had the horses as her enterprise. When we retired from farming, we kept the horses.

"She was the one who really ran the horses and knew about horses. I inherited them and thought I’d try to carry on. It hasn’t been too unsuccessful but she knew far more about them than I do.

"The dairy farm kept the horses afloat and occasionally the horses gave the injection to the cows, as it were, but horses are muck or money. You make nothing at all for years then suddenly it all goes bang and you’ve got a good 'un."

The Skinners prepared the fine sprinter Borderlescott for sale as a yearlingCredit: Edward Whitaker

Persian Force was given a Racing Post Rating of 98, a full stone better than 2021 winner Chipotle, so it follows that Jiffy Boy could yet be the sort of good horse that Skinner is referring to. However, he is too experienced to fall for such obvious journalistic bait.

"You don’t want to get carried away by a small race at Leicester, do you," he says amiably.

"I got the impression there might be more to come, but how far he could go, I wouldn’t pretend to know. He was third in the Brocklesby and learned from that. Still, it’s all a little bit of something to catch people’s eye in the catalogue."

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