Stud owners making the most of their pointing love affair

From Classic winners to maiden point-to-pointers, Paul and Sara Thorman have trodden the highways and back alleys of racing.

Walk on to a racecourse and they could blend anonymously into the crowd, but beneath racing’s iceberg tip, in the big-and small-money world of bloodstock and sales, they and their Trickledown Stud are royalty. The hub of their business is to sell horses for clients, to be their representatives at auctions, and on one occasion they offered 86 foals at Tattersalls’ December Sale. Paul says: “I wanted to get up to 100, but after that sale I wished it had been 50.”

Guineas winners George Washington and Cockney Rebel have passed through their hands, while their 12,000gns purchase of the pregnant mare Halland Park Lass in 2005 led to an astonishing outcome. The following summer her two-year-old son Dutch Art won the Prix Morny and Middle Park Stakes, and the Thormans – who had taken in two partners – sold her foal for 280,000gns and Halland Park Lass for 710,000gns. Do the sum yourself, but Paul’s droll reaction to the mare’s sale was: “Pity she didn’t make another ten grand.”