'It's my happy place' - Lingfield winner Just Like Magic the spark for Helen Tayton-Martin

Breeding is an inexact science, but it probably doesn’t hurt to bring a scientific background and methodical thinking to a fledgling hobby.

Helen Tayton-Martin, chief business and strategy officer at biopharmaceutical company Adaptimmune, has found her passion outside of work in racing and breeding horses. 

Her navy and pink silks were carried to success by Just Like Magic at Lingfield this month, with the Owen Burrows-trained three-year-old prevailing by a length under David Probert to get off the mark on his fourth start. 

He is out of the Hot Streak mare Ebrahcadebrah, an unraced half-sister to the useful Cityman and from the family of French stakes winner Riverse Angle.

Tayton-Martin says: "I work in the biotec sector and I'm a co-founder of a cell therapy company in the UK and US which is developing cell therapy for cancer. 

"I'm not a professional horse person but I'm a passionate horse lover. I rode a lot when I was younger, helping out at local stables and all that sort of thing, and then came back to riding – racing in particular – with a chance meeting with Richard Pitman on the train, commuting into London. 

"I ended up riding out at the weekends for fun with Mark Pitman in the late 1990s. It was all great fun going on the gallops at Lambourn and I became a lot more interested in racing."

Tayton-Martin's first experience of ownership came about through a birthday present, namely a mare who did not make an impact on the track but is making inroads as a broodmare. 

"My husband bought me a racehorse for my 50th birthday, my first ever horse, and we've still got her today," she says. "Unfortunately she broke down on the racecourse, but she's nicely bred and we've bred a couple of nice foals out of her. 

"One of those is in training as a five-year-old with Harry Derham, having initially been with Sir Mark Todd, who did all the groundwork with all my horses."

Just Like Magic dropped a strong hint he could win a race when third at 14-1 at Wolverhampton last month, and the son of Aclaim duly went two places better at Lingfield, much to the delight of his owner-breeder, for whom he was a first winner. 

Tayton-Martin says: "Just Like Magic is my second foal, not from the same mare but one we got by accident really. After I got my first racehorse I decided it would be nice to have a couple of ponies for myself and my teenage daughter to ride. 

"We were lucky to find two perfect ponies in their twenties from the Animal Welfare Trust and were looking to keep them somewhere, along with the mare, so we found Mark Floyd and his family at Menehall Stud in Baydon, which is just up the road from Lambourn.

"We took the ponies there and then his daughter, who worked at the local vets, was keen to find a home for the dam of Just Like Magic. She came off the gallops with a fracture in the fetlock and, because she was well bred, they were trying to find someone to take her on as a potential broodmare. We took her on, paid for the surgery and she recovered so we put her in foal."

As is so often the case when someone has an interest in horses, one is never enough. So it has proved with Tayton-Martin. 

"My interest in breeding and racing has mushroomed from those first two mares, both of whom had issues and both of whom have produced really nice foals so far," she says.

"I juggle riding out a bit here and there with what's going on with them, but I really rely on fantastic people. Owen was great in placing this horse and Sir Mark was brilliant at getting them going before he retired.

Owen Burrows: trainer of Just Like MagicCredit: Alan Crowhurst

"I'm just doing it as a hobby really on a very small scale, so it's wonderful when something comes good eventually when you put your own effort into it. It's definitely my happy place and what I do when everything else is a bit stressful."

Tayton-Martin also has a passion for eventing and consequently has an interest in the breeding side of that as well. 

"I've also got two other mares, one of whom has produced a wonderful Stradivarius filly," she says. "I've got an interest in eventing too and I've got four horses with Rafael Losano and his wife Amanda, and Rafa is on the Brazilian Olympic team. So I'm breeding a couple of event horses too. 

"I've got four mares alongside two two-year-olds – I need to keep a bit of an eye on it so that I don't go beyond my means!"

So how does Tayton-Martin decide on the matings? 

"I do what everyone else does, look at the breeding of the mare and performance of the stallions and what they've produced but, at my level, I've tried to look for up-and-coming stallions," she says. 

"The five-year-old with Harry Derham is by Time Test, just before he started to become popular, while Just Like Magic is by Aclaim.

"With Sir Mark we also got some genetic testing done to look at muscle composition, but at the end of the day it's about attitude as well. I don't know how you can genetically test for that at the moment, but both mares I started with were amazing characters, really lovely to handle but gutsy too. 

"If you can get that in the offspring as well as the physical features, then you stand a chance at least."

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