Airman
There’s an old saying about the relationship between hard work and luck.
For Toowoomba chiropractor Chris Barham – who became the breeder of a sixth stakes-winner through Airman (I Am Invincible) last Saturday – it perhaps should be modified: the harder I listen, the luckier I get.
Granted, there has to be some dumb luck involved. It’s partly what binds us all together in this game of tough breaks and outrageous fortune, both to be treated with the same wariness.
But Barham, 63, and his wife Jane, have largely been gigantically successful small breeders by asking for advice from experts and, as he puts it, “doing what we’re told”.
The success they’ve had by not merely tapping into – but largely cultivating – one of Australia’s most successful families becomes more remarkable considering they came into the industry without any equine background.
They’d built a health industry business which at one stage encompassed 25 chiropractic practices from Adelaide to Townsville.
Far from being some romantic dream linked to thrills and the love of horses, it was a piece of cold, hard accounting advice that did it. They’re glad they listened.
“We’d never had anything to do with horses,” Barham told It’s In The Blood. “Probably only been to about one race meeting. Never looked at a form guide.
“But then someone convinced us that breeding, or tax mares, was a good tax planning idea. So it was more about tax than anything else.”
In 2001, the Barhams arranged a visit to Highgrove Stud, near Toowoomba, to kick some tyres and chat with its owner Ron Gilbert. There, they saw a mare named Decidity (Last Tycoon) who Gilbert had saved from a vet’s lethal syringe two years earlier when she was stricken with colic.
They also saw her filly foal, by Snippets (Lunchtime). Gilbert said she could become something Barham hadn’t heard of – a foundation mare. He also recommended a book, and Barham listened.
“I read it – Horse Trader, the story of Robert Sangster. I thought, ‘That sounds pretty easy. You buy a mare and put it to a stallion and sell the colt for $30 million and it’s a really easy game’,” Barham said with a characteristic laugh.
“It’s not that simple, of course, but I did read it and said to Jane, ‘This is what I want to do’.”
The Barhams went to the Inglis Easter sale of 2002, and there was Gilbert’s filly.
“We decided to go down to Easter sale and have a bit of fun. We put our hand up. No one else bid on the horse, so she was ours for $220,000,” he said.
Suddenly, the Barhams were gripped with an almost overwhelming feeling: that of having no idea what to do next.
“We honestly had never thought past the idea of buying a horse,” Barham said. “We didn’t have a farm, didn’t have a trainer, didn’t even have any way of getting the horse away from the sales complex.”
Barham had by chance met Rob McAnulty at a dinner the night before. The bloodstock agent suggested he “go talk to that little bloke over there”, who Barham didn’t know was one of the highest flying trainers of the time, John Hawkes.
“John said the filly hadn’t even made his list, and that he wouldn’t have chosen her,” Barham said. “But he said, ‘Go and talk to the transport people over there, and have her sent to Crown Lodge, and we’ll give her a prep’. I didn’t know what a prep was either.”
Hawkes, private trainer for the Ingham brothers, only had one or two outside horses. But perhaps, Barham says, out of “pity for these two yokels from Queensland who didn’t know what they were doing”, he made this filly one of them.
There was at least one thing the chiropractor knew about: movement. Yes, it had pertained to the human body, but he quickly found the recognition of fluid motion was transferrable.
“I’m still not the best pick of a horse in my mind, so I listen to the experts and the rules,” Barham said. “Now I know heads are important, and scope and eyes and ears and throats, et cetera.
“But my big thing has always been movement. When you see a human athlete move, and someone who’s not athletic, you can really tell the difference. And I quickly found it was the same with horses. It’s a game of athleticism, and my eye is quickly drawn to what’s restrictive movement and what shape isn’t right.
“We’d seen this filly on Ron’s farm, so we were maybe a bit biased, and we probably bought her without a lot of thought. But one thing she did have was that real sexy movement.”
The often gruff Hawkes of course reserved his judgement, telling Barham if she was no good “you can come down and she’ll be tied to a post out the front”. But as this “prep” unfolded, the feedback was encouraging.
Barham had to learn other facets of this new game, such as choosing colours and a name. He and Jane opted gold with a blue stripe – “for a gold medal and a blue ribbon”. The name took more thought.
“She was chestnut, but there was a mistake on her passport and she was registered as bay,” he said. “There was a movie at the time called Legally Blonde, which our daughter Emma liked. So she pushed for Legally Bay.”
And there, from a clerical error over the first horse of an owner so wet behind the ears he might have drowned, for a filly who luckily ended in the care of a master juvenile trainer probably wincing over what he was getting into, was hatched what’s become one of the most important names in the Australian Stud Book.
Legally Bay began racing, and very well. She won two of her first three, including the Sweet Embrace Stakes (Gr 3, 1200m), to go into the Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) at $7.
Hawkes had just the seven starters that year. With Gai Waterhouse having four, there were only six stables represented. Graeme Rogerson and his lone runner Polar Success (Success Express) took the spoils, with Legally Bay fifth, but the Barhams were already in front on their purchase.
From there, their tax-savvy investment only grew further, with one more stakes win and two Group 1 placings en route to earnings of $628,000 from 21 starts. After that, the fun really started.
Legally Bay’s first foal Unity (Redoute’s Choice) fetched $520,000 at the 2008 Inglis Easter sale, bought by Darley.
“We just kept following advice, and the advice was to go to Redoute’s,” said Barham, who was guided by Hawkes and his now co-trainer sons Michael and Wayne, along with Peter O’Brien of Segenhoe Stud.
“I think my biggest skill is finding the experts in businesses and doing what they say. I’ve learnt a bit along the way, but I have so much respect for people like John Hawkes and Peter O’Brien.
“My chiropractic business is such a simple model. But the guys I deal with in horses, they have to be so knowledgeable in so many areas. They’re people who really know their stuff, and they’re so smart. They could’ve been in any other business and been successful.”
Sadly, Legally Bay’s breeding career started on a down note, with Unity breaking a leg before she raced. The mare then threw Legalistic (Encosta De Lago), a city winner, and the city-placed Carbon Takun (Lonhro).
Barham then heeded advice to try Fastnet Rock (Danehill), and everything changed.
From five live foals by him she threw three stakes winners, headed by dual hemisphere Group 1 hero Merchant Navy. With his breeder retaining ten per cent, that horse became that multi-million dollar stallion of Barham’s fanciful dreams. While he was moved on from Coolmore after a modest start as a sire, he has a Group 1 winner from his three stakes winners in the shape of Royal Merchant.
One full sibling was Jolie Bay (Fastnet Rock), a Group 2-winner who’s now a Group 1-winning dam, of Joliestar (Zoustar). Another was Setanta, a $2.3 million yearling buy for Aquis Farm, who won in Listed class.
Another full sibling Bayrock (Fastnet Rock) threw a stakes-winner, and now has one of the favourites for next month’s New Zealand 2,000 Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m) in Age Of Discovery (Savabeel). Bayrock’s past five yearlings sold have averaged $685,000.
In 2009, a diversion for Legally Bay to Exceed And Excel (Danehill) produced Maroon Bay, now a stakes-winning dam.
But a return to Fastnet Rock yielded Zara Bay, who was stakes-placed and is now the dam of Team Hawkes’s Airman.
The five-year-old’s conception was designed mostly on a type match between the large Zara Bay and the robust I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit), said Barham, who’s also thankful, mind you, to have built up the cash to use sires like Vinnie and Zoustar (Northern Meteor).
Airman’s notable duplications are a 4m x 4m of Danzig (Northern Dancer) through Green Desert and Danehill, and a 5f x 4m of Lunchtime (Silly Season), via Jesmond Lass – dam of I Am Invincible’s damsire Canny Lad – and Snippets, Legally Bay’s sire.
Usefully, of all I Am Invincible’s powerful nicks, Fastnet Rock has yielded him 42 winners from 56 runners, including four black type victors – ranking second only to Encosta De Lago (Fairy King).
The somewhat headstrong Airman finally fulfilled his promise by taking Saturday’s Premiere Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m) at Randwick. With a little more luck Barham might have bred two starters in next week’s Everest (Gr 1, 1200m), with Airman’s win prompting talk he might join Joliestar in the $20 million event.
That hasn’t happened, but to have two Group-winning sprinters in the Sydney spring, and with Airman the sixth stakes winner he’s bred, it’s all not a bad return for a Toowoomba chiropractor.
Barham knows he’s been blessed. He’s sought out the right people, and others have fallen in his lap, such as John Hawkes – now close enough a friend to have been at the Barhams’ son’s wedding.
And he’s immensely glad the dawning of a new century brought a new hobby.
“It’s a game of luck. I don’t think it’s a game of numbers any more,” he said. “But you’ve also got to be smart, and for me that means listening to the right people.
“The thing I’ve learnt the most is the people in the industry are generous with their knowledge and they care; they all want people to do well.
“It’s a wonderful profession, the friendships you make a great. It’s been very good for our lives, Jane and I, to be in this industry.”