STEPHEN Collins has spent a lifetime in the bloodstock business and holds one of the most important roles in Ireland as general manager of Sheikh Hamdan’s Derrinstown Stud.

That position however does not often thrust Collins into the spotlight, but his new role certainly does as chairman of the Irish Thoroughbred Breeders’ Association. He assumed office earlier this year and prior to heading to America for the Keeneland Sales he spoke to The Irish Field about his new responsibility, and about his boss Sheikh Hamdan.

Most people will know Collins from the stud business, sales and racing, but for those who do not I asked him to provide a brief outline of his career to date. “Stephen Collins has been in the business for a long time, a lifetime in fact. I was very fortunate my parents were involved in the industry. My dad Sean was a veterinary surgeon. We originally owned a stud farm in Lucan and early in the 1970s my parents bought Corbally Stud.

“We stood stallions, dad had a vibrant veterinary practice with my Uncle Ted and it was a fantastic place to grow up in. It was one of Ireland’s leading commercial stud farms, we stood commercial stallions at affordable prices, and had a very loyal clientele. It was a fascinating part of my lifetime that I got to work very closely with dad on filling stallions, going to sales and purchasing foals, yearlings and mares. It gave me a tremendous grounding for the industry going forward.”

Having eschewed the idea of following his father professionally into veterinary work, the Collins career path was probably fairly obvious.

“When I left Clongowes I did two years business in Rathmines when I decided that really what I wanted to do was go into the stud farm business. So I went to America in the early 1980s to work for Barry Ryan in Normandy Farm, which was a small private farm. I was there for a number of months and then I transferred to Melinda Smith’s Pegasus Farm, and I worked with a number of Irish people out there, Ciaran Conroy and Paul Shanahan among them.

“The following year I went to the English National Stud and did the stud management course. The year after I went back out to America and I got a job with Airdrie Stud, with Brereton C Jones who was the former governor of Kentucky. I did about eight or nine months with him and that’s where I met Hubie [de Burgh] and he mentioned that an assistant manager’s job at Derrinstown was coming up, and would I be interested in going for it. That’s how it all started.”

Incredibly that was back in 1984 and Collins is now more than three decades at the Co Kildare farm. Did he ever imagine that he would be there for such a time? His answer reveals a great deal about the whole operation headed by Sheikh Hamdan.

“When I took the job originally I was probably looking at 10 to 20 years, because I was in my early twenties and you can’t really see beyond a certain period of time. However working for Sheikh Hamdan has been a privilege. He’s a wonderful man to work for; he’s extremely loyal. He’s totally dedicated to the stud farm and to his racing and breeding operation.

“He gets great enjoyment out of it but one of the most important things for me is his accessibility; he’s always at the end of the telephone. I can ring him at any time, or he could ring you at any time, for example to find out how a horse ran at the Curragh or Leopardstown. He comes over to Ireland three or four times a year. I think that’s vitally important to the stud farm here that he takes a huge interest in it.

“He loves his horses, and he knows his horses very well. His attention to detail is amazing and every year we have to produce a DVD, video all the yearlings in advance. Then I do a voice over, I write a report on every single horse, giving its breeding, its conformational notes and then add in all the veterinary notes. Then this is sent to him - it’s about six hours long - and he will look at that every year before he comes into Goffs. So he has seen the yearlings in advance, knows all their little issues and at that stage that’s when he starts thinking about allocating his horses.”

his own way

Collins expands further about the Sheikh’s modus operandi.

“It’s a bit like the Frank Sinatra song – I did it my way. Sheikh Hamdan loves his horses but his preference would be for his home-breds. He’s very involved with the matings; we sit down for about three days in October and go through all the mares and we mate them accordingly and our suggested mating lists are sent to him for his perusal. In the vast majority of cases he will agree, then there are others where he may have suggested previously that he would like certain mares to go to certain stallions, and that’s sacrosanct, set in stone.

“Then there’s others he’ll come back and say that in his opinion he doesn’t think this stallion will suit that mare, so we go back to the drawing board. Even from an early stage he is very, very involved. Obviously when it comes to the allocation of yearlings, the fact that a trainer may have trained the dam previously or a member of the family they are probably more than likely to get the offspring, plus they might get a share of the horses that are purchased at the yearling sales that autumn.

“However he’s very much his own man; he’s very loyal to the stud farms, we have a tremendous relationship with him but it’s very much Sheikh Hamdan’s show and he calls the shots.”

The hands-on involvement of Sheikh Hamdan is often remarked on, and Angus Gold will often say in a post-purchase comment that his boss particularly liked the yearling. Collins explains this. “He’s very keen to go around the sales, see all the consigners, see all the horses, and you know he has a particular type of horse he likes. Invariably at the end of the day he will buy something that he wants. We make suggestions but there are certain horses that he particularly likes and he’s quite happy to follow his own way.”

Finally, I wonder about Sheikh Hamdan’s views on mares and the stallions he stands. “What we are here for is to try and gain him as much Group 1 success on the track as we can. The fact we are here over 33 years and we are now into third and fourth generations, we’ve grown up with all the pedigrees and so has Sheikh Hamdan. He can remember families going back 30 years, he’s seen how families develop and that probably would be his first love. He has a tremendous eye for a horse and he’s a very good horseman.

“Sheikh Hamdan has been extremely loyal to his own stallions. We would have sent a lot of our top mares to our stallions over the years and in a lot of cases it worked. Going back about six to eight years ago things started to slow down a little bit. We formed a view that the mares were there and we had to probably change direction slightly.

“It’s a five year programme, by the time you come up with the concept, mate your mare and get to the racecourse. So we had to be patient and wait for this to happen. In hindsight it was probably the best thing we did because suddenly you get Taghrooda, Muhaarar and Awtaad. We have some very exciting horses in the pipeline and I think the years will be very bright for us going forward.”

itba

Moving on to another of the reasons for our interview, his role as chairman of the ITBA, I ask Collins about the relevance of the organisation today.

“Personally I think the ITBA has never been more needed than it is at the moment. We live in changing and challenging times. There are so many issues out there; some issues are controllable and some things are out of our control. We need a strong representative body who can basically fight on the breeder’s behalf. As you know some 80% of Irish breeders own less than three mares. It’s our job to represent them both nationally and internationally, both in Dublin and Brussels. There are many, many issues that people are probably not aware of that the ITBA are involved with and this is 52 weeks a year. I think the ITBA through its council, executive, regional structure and active HQ is a vital body for our industry.

“Shane O’Dwyer is outstanding. He’s a wonderful CEO, and he makes my job much easier. He has a great connect with all the regions; it’s a 32-county body. One thing that we are very conscious of is that we have to connect with our members and we will continue the roadshows and seminars this year to give breeders an opportunity to discuss with us their needs and concerns.

“Over-production is starting to creep back in, we’ve extra yearling days and foal days of sales and there’s obviously issues coming down the road. So we have some challenging times going forward. The market place can be a stark place to sell horses.

“The top end of the market appears to be looking after itself. It’s the lower, middle to lower end that I think we are going to have serious problems with. If a mare can’t produce an animal that can be sold profitably, perhaps that mare should be culled. It is all down to economics and if you are losing money, or a mare is losing money for you, you really do have to be taking a harsh look at the whole situation and cut your losses.”

The work done been done by the Alliance For Racing comes in for special mention by Collins, and he recognises the power of lobbying.

“The Alliance For Racing consists of breeders, owners, trainers, jockeys and stable staff and I think the fact they have united makes our industry stronger, particularly when we are lobbying with the Government here. I think ITM have also done a wonderful job bringing clients in to buy horses. The sales companies are also working very hard and are very supportive of our association.

“There are a number of issues that concern the industry here and some of my predecessors have visited Brussels on a number of occasions and have discussed certain topics before the Joint Oireachtas Committee in Dublin. Issues like transport, welfare issues, animal health regulations, availability of medicines all have to be monitored closely. It seems ridiculous in this world that you can licence a veterinary product in Germany, go through all the tests and spend a lot of money, but you can’t have a pan-European approach so that that medicine should automatically be licenced in Ireland.

“It is concerning that we are supposed to be living together, supposed to be working together but there seems to be different rules for different countries. However, we have a very good tripartite agreement, which is working well.”

legacy

Collins is following in a role that his father made his own, and I asked him about his father’s work and legacy.

“Dad was a man who knew his own mind, he was very focused. He was very strong willed and had a great way with people; he could go into a room with people and put an agenda on the table, and if he believed in that agenda it was going to be pushed through.

“He was a fantastic man, I had the height of respect for him. He was also extremely fair, he gave all our family, including myself, every opportunity to progress and we are very proud of all his accomplishments. In many, many cases I would say we would have had the same viewpoints. That’s why I think we worked so closely together.

“Obviously Corbally was his pride and joy, but the Irish Equine Centre was close to his heart. Following an outbreak of CEM in the late 1970s we had a situation where we had other countries determining our health status. There was the potential for both sales and travel embargos to be imposed. So my father, together with a group of major bloodstock breeders, decided they would develop their own Irish Equine Centre where they could basically control the health status of the Irish national herd. In 1984 they commenced building the Irish Equine Centre.

“He was the right man in the right place at the right time. We have also been very fortunate in Ireland that we’ve had successive Governments over the last 30 or 40 years and they’ve all been very supportive and sympathetic to the industry and have helped us a lot.”

strength to strength

Collins is keen to stress the many areas in which the ITBA works and will focus on in the years of his chairmanship.

“The National Hunt Fillies Bonus Scheme has gone from strength to strength over recent years and is starting to have a real effect at the breeding, sales and racecourse end of the business. We are delighted that Weatherbys Ireland are coming on board as title sponsors next year and HRI has committed to financially supporting the scheme.

“One thing we are very concerned about is genetics and Des Leadon sits on the Equine Genomics Advisory Group. While it is a new and exciting science, I would suggest we hasten slowly for a number of reasons. With horses having over 20,000 genes, we would have serious concerns about selecting them on the basis of only one single gene linked to racing performance.

“The ITBA is also working closely with the anti-doping task force, ensuring necessary protocols to protect breeders are put in place. There can be no support for cheating. We welcome the Piroplasmosis testing at the sales which will give added confidence to buyers from overseas markets.

“Another issue last year was that we had a shortage of the anti-abortion vaccine, and through the EFTBA we lobbied in Brussels. The Department of Agriculture was very helpful to us last year; they actually got a special licence to bring in vaccines to help us last year. We have now got a year’s supply of vaccine which arrived in June. This is vitally important, as there was a serious abortion storm on a well-known English farm this year.

“The ITBA will take over the chairmanship of the EFTBA in May next year for three years. This will involve a big commitment to Brussels. We need to create awareness in Europe at the highest level, so we are continuously lobbying over there. It is becoming a challenge because the thoroughbreds in Europe are a standalone industry. The overall horse population is vast, but the thoroughbred industry is small by comparison. Brussels would like to classify all horses the same. We are now looking at quantifying the value of thoroughbreds in Europe so we can bring it back to the table and show what the true value and true numbers are. I think that’s very important.

“We are delighted with the growth of the ITBA Next Generation which has gone from strength to strength and the apprenticeship scheme is entering its seventh year; that shows that the future is very bright.

“Derek Iceton attended the Joint Oireachtas Committee last year and one of the issues that was mentioned was the serious lack of profitability; the number of breeders has fallen by about 40% from the peak. We need more investment in young breeding stock. The cost of replacing stock is hard to justify because everything is so expensive and everything has got very selective, particularly at the lower end. Therefore it is important to work closely with the Government to try and secure a tax incentive measure to encourage breeders to reinvest and buy new broodmare stock.

“One of my priorities is to build the numbers of full and associate members. The ITBA currently communicates with in excess of 3,000 members, divided between full and associate members. So Shane, and particularly Regina and Kerry, have been working extremely hard and diligently over the last couple of years and the current membership would represent about 85% of the breeding mares in the country.

“We have a wonderful council, people who give their free time and their expertise and I think it’s fantastic. We have our elections every couple of years and it gives people the opportunity to go for the council. I think the future is bright for our association.”