'Rocky Marciano meets Helen Mirren's sister' - mating that made Marine Nationale

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Here he speaks to John B. O'Connor about the mating that produced Marine Nationale. Subscribers can get more great insight from Martin every Monday to Friday.

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John B. O’Connor of Ballykelly Stud is no ordinary breeder, being a self-styled industrial diplomat assisting governments around the world with their infrastructure projects and perhaps the last man to buy a farm in Ireland from John Magnier, so it is only fitting that his latest star product has no ordinary background either.

Marine Nationale, who remained unbeaten in four starts for Barry Connell with a brave victory in the Royal Bond Novice Hurdle at Fairyhouse this month, is a five-year-old by French Navy, a prolific-winning son of Shamardal who formerly stood as a Darley Club stallion at Kildangan Stud, out of the useful German-bred Definite Article mare Power Of Future.

Furthermore, he was bought for a tidy sum from point-to-point trainer Sam Curling even without having been able to race between the flags due to extenuating circumstances, so high was his reputation at home.

Marine Nationale’s breeding has its roots in John’s purchase of Power Of Future, then an 84-rated three-time winner, out of the late Sir Henry Cecil’s stables at the Tattersalls July Sale in 2007 for 42,000gns.

She was switched to Andy Oliver and carried John’s silks in 11 more races without winning, but distinguishing herself as a talented performer on several occasions, including when second at the Galway Races and fourth in the Irish Cesarewitch.

“I love horses that can compete in staying races, as you don’t get nailed by a bad draw before you’ve even started,” says John. “She should have won the amateur handicap in Galway, which was my Derby with this horse, and I don’t want to speak ill of any jockey but she probably should have won the Irish Cesarewitch as well.

“She was one of those horses that has one kick, which you can use only once, and the jockey deployed it a bit early at the Curragh that day, coming round the bend, and she was caught close home. We were getting her ready to run over hurdles when she broke down, and so we brought her back to Ballykelly Stud for broodmare duty.”

Power Of Future produced four winners from as many runners, all of whom are pretty useful. Perfect Summer (by High Chaparral) won five races, Ballinderry Moth (by Yeats) took a Killarney bumper by ten lengths, Bells Of Peterboro (by Carlotamix) has four hurdles victories to his name, and then there’s Marine Nationale.

Ballinderry Moth, who also finished third to Samcro in a Listed bumper at Navan, was particularly close to John’s heart.

“I hope Sir Mark Prescott reads this as he was good friends with my father [Barney], who was a greyhound trainer, so he’ll know the significance of her name,” he says.

“Ballinderry Moth was a great greyhound who broke the track record at Haringey three out of four times she raced there, and won one of the best renewals of the Oaks at the track.

“I waited for years and years to breed a filly who I thought might be good enough to be called Ballinderry Moth, and when Power Of Future produced a daughter by Yeats it had to be her. She was a star from day one, but she was hurt in a freak accident.

French Navy: tough and talented son of ShamardalCredit: Darley

“Sam [Curling] managed to get her back to win her bumper, and she then got another injury, but when she returned from that she finished third to Samcro in a small field for some black type.”

By the time Marine Nationale came to be conceived, John therefore already knew that Power Of Future was a highly able producer, which makes the sire choice of French Navy, who was standing his first season at a fee of €4,000, appear all the more eccentric to us mere mortals.

There was a method to the madness, though, as he explains.

“I bought into French Navy through the Darley Club as I had this theory about him being a very tough horse," says John. "I think he had two or three serious injuries but kept coming back and was still competing at the top level until he was seven.

“I just really love those sorts of hard-knocking stallions, and I like sending them mares who have a bit of class about them, even if it’s close up in their family and they didn’t show it on the track themselves, so I thought Power Of Future would be ideal for him.

“I suppose you could say my ideal mating is Rocky Marciano meets Helen Mirren’s sister, and that’s what this was.”

Ballykelly Stud is run along commercial lines, and the majority of its matings are more market-friendly, but John allows himself to think more like an owner-breeder with some outside-the-box ideas for producing racehorses rather than sales horses each year, too.

So Marine Nationale, named in recognition of his sire, was not sent to auction but sent into training with the goal of advertising his value on the track instead.

“We kept the horse and arranged a partnership with Sam Curling, who got him ready for a point-to-point, but that didn’t happen either due to Covid or the insurance issue that was preventing fixtures from going ahead at the time,” says John.

“We always knew he was a good horse, though, as his work at home was electric. I’m not sure I’m supposed to know this, but I’m aware that they took him away for a piece of work with some superstar or another, and he fared very well against them.

“So Sam was able to come to an arrangement with Barry Connell without the horse having to run in a bumper or point-to-point.”

Marine Nationale is a fascinating case of a private sale of a young jumper sold on the strength of homework alone, in an era when horses who have shown promise in bumpers or points are sold for small fortunes at auction – as, indeed, was the case with other graduates of the Sam Curling academy such as Celebre D’Allen and Summerville Boy.

“The thing with Sam is that he’s not ever going to knowingly sell someone a dud,” says John. “His whole business model is based on reputational capital, so he would have told Barry Connell that Marine Nationale was a machine and stood over the horse.

“When Sam Curling tells you this is a right one, he’s not pulling your leg. It’s not the sort of thing he’d say lightly; all his geese are not swans.”

Sam Curling: reputation is everythingCredit: Patrick McCann

Sadly then for nosy parkers like me, who like to measure the progress of the most exciting jumping prospects against their purchase prices, the private nature of Marine Nationale’s sale means we’ll never know how much Connell forked out for him.

John won’t be drawn on precise figures, of course, saying only that he was “satisfied with the whole transaction” and adding that “if every sale in all walks of life were dealt with so smoothly, and by such thoroughly decent people, the world would be a better place.”

His enjoyment of seeing Marine Nationale justify one of his more unconventional breeding ideas on the track is only slightly marred by Ballykelly Stud having no more members of the family in production.

Sadly, the Grade 1-winning hurdler is the final foal out of Power Of Future, as she died in the year of his birth from a severe form of laminitis, and both his half-sisters have been sold.

Perfect Summer made €14,000 as a foal in 2010 and just £2,500 when she reappeared on the market at Doncaster ten years later, leaving John to remark bitterly: “I bloody missed a trick there, she sold for nothing. You snooze, you lose.”

Ballykelly Stud's visiting farrier Dan Breen, breeder of top hurdling mare Marie’s Rock, is meanwhile now the owner of Ballinderry Moth, although John part-owns that mare’s three-year-old daughter by French Navy, thus a three-parts sister of sorts to Marine Nationale, so has what he calls “a tenuous grip” on the family.

The farm might not have relations to Marine Nationale, but it does retain its secret weapon, manager John Fitzell, who appeared in yesterday’s Good Morning Bloodstock.

“I have the zany ideas and John turns them into reality,” the stud owner says of his right-hand man. “John reminds me of my father, in that he could look at a greyhound standing perfectly still from some distance, and know it had gone lame. He has that eye.”

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Good Morning Bloodstock is our latest email newsletter. Martin Stevens, a doyen among bloodstock journalists, provides his take and insight on the biggest stories every morning from Monday to Friday