IMPERIAL Racing, whose livery has become more and more familiar on British racecourses over the past decade, is a natural evolution of the Our Friends In The North partnership started by Ian Robinson, which hit the jackpot when Imperial Commander won the 2009 Ryanair at the Cheltenham Festival, and went on to a fabled success in the following year’s Cheltenham Gold Cup.

Our Friends In The North comprised partnerships of four to eight people, but when Ian joined forces with Paul Costello at around the time of Imperial Commander’s Gold Cup win, he decided that the future would entail changing to a syndicate model which would open up the experience to more new owners.

Rebrand

Rebranded as Imperial Racing with a view to buying one or two horses a year and syndicating them, the operation has snowballed, and in the past 18 months Ian has also branched out into flat racing through Mick Easterby.

The syndicates aren’t run for profit, with Ian and Paul giving freely of their time among other commitments, and the ethos is to give members a tangible involvement in racing ownership in a social setting. Anyone who witnessed the scenes after Imperial Aura landed the Northern Trust Company Novices’ Handicap Chase last March would have to admit that the joy of having a Cheltenham Festival winner was not diluted for the sharing.

In terms of numbers, the aim has always been to ensure all members are treated in the same way as if they were sole owners, including owners’ badges on a raceday, which – with some wrangling – is possible for a small syndicate, but not when there are 40 or more shares in each horse, and the Imperial ideal is for each syndicate to consist of 10 to 20 members. Each syndicate might have one person who holds 25%, and at the other end, perhaps four people sharing a 10% interest, so one balances the other in terms of total people involved.

That enhanced ownership experience is deemed vital, and is one of Imperial Racing’s big selling points. Much of the communication in the early days involved hours spent on the phone relaying information from trainers to multiple owners, but the advent of WhatsApp has enabled trainers to upload work videos and voice messages directly, cutting out a lot of the legwork, which is a relief to Paul and Ian, and a great boon to the members.

Team Ross

The team at Imperial is by necessity small, with Paul and Ian backed up by the latter’s partner as well as his daughter Michelle, while the sourcing of the new jumping stock has always been done through Goffs NH agent and inspector Kevin Ross and his wife Anna.

In order to source quality horses at the prices members can afford, Ian has an excellent eye for a staying pedigree, and has always looked to buy unraced horses with the view to giving them plenty of time before being syndicated, knowing that such types tend to be overlooked at the sales in favour of proven ability or more precocious pedigrees.

That’s an outlook which dovetails well with Kevin, with the stores tending to board at the Ross family’s Mount Top Stud in Newtonabbey, Co Antrim, where the horses in training also spend their holidays. Finding two Cheltenham Festival winners in a decade with a strictly limited budget is no mean feat, and while instant success tends to be the general mantra, the patient approach clearly works.

Impressive winner

Imperial Commander cost Robinson just £30,000 from Colin McKeever, who had purchased him as a store at the Goffs Land Rover Sale, and he ran out a hugely impressive winner on his only point-to-point start at Summerhill a few months later in the now-familiar black and white silks (he is a long-suffering Newcastle United fan).

It’s fair to say that the price after that Summerhill romp would have been significantly higher, and there was no fluke about the purchase, with Robinson having seen half the unraced three-year-olds in Northern Ireland before alighting on the one who met his exacting standards.

Ian’s pedigree knowledge and willingness to cover the ground has ensured that the horses bought for Imperial Racing have achieved success which far exceeds the money spent on them, which is again evident in the case of Imperial Aura, who was bought as a three-year-old store by Kevin on behalf of Imperial Racing at the Goffs Land Rover Sale for just €26,000, and Imperial Alcazar, who was a €46,000 purchase at the same age.

That pair are set to represent Imperial Racing at Cheltenham in March, and despite mixed fortunes in recent outings, both have done enough to be prominent in the market for their intended targets.

Carlisle winner

Imperial Aura started the season by landing the Colin Parker Memorial Chase at Carlisle, and improved further with an impressive win in the Chanelle Pharma 1965 Chase at Ascot, where he outjumped Itchy Feet and Real Steel for an impressive Grade 2 success.

His normally reliable jumping surprisingly let him down at Kempton next time, which is something of a setback as trainer Kim Bailey plots a path to Prestbury Park in the spring.

When I spoke to Paul Costello after Imperial Aura’s Kempton lapse, he told me that while he is entered in the Gold Cup, and has options to run in February, it was thought he would go straight to Cheltenham for the Ryanair.

Brutal slog

The Ascot Chase is viewed by many as the ideal stepping stone to the Ryanair, but the former contest turned into a brutal slog on bad ground last year, making it of questionable value in Paul’s eyes, should the ground again be testing. Paul explained that the Gold Cup entry was effectively insurance in the event that Irish runners couldn’t travel, with the Ryanair much preferred in normal circumstances.

Imperial Aura used to suffer from sore shins as a younger horse, and while that hasn’t really been an issue in the past 18 months, the team decided that he would benefit from a fortnight at Jason Maguire’s Ivy Lodge Farm, where the facilities include a water treadmill and hydrotherapy spa which will enable him to remain active without putting as much strain on his limbs as he would cantering up hills at Bailey’s Thornhill Farm yard a few short miles away. It’s certainly not hard to see the appeal of swapping two weeks of work for a spa break.

Imperial Alcazar was due to go chasing this term, but as with Imperial Aura, who finished a good third in the Silver Trophy at Chepstow last autumn before launching his chasing career, Imperial Aura was given a chance to run in a valuable handicap hurdle first, the logic being that experience in such a competitive environment will prove a useful grounding for the future.

He ran well at Haydock, but didn’t see it out on bad ground on his first run since January having raced quite freely.

Pertemps Final

His chase bow was pencilled in for the following month, but he had a small setback, and then the weather intervened when he was again due to run, so the decision was taken to delay his chase career and aim him at the Pertemps Final.

He duly won a qualifier at Warwick in the middle of January, beating a pair of previous winners with plenty in hand. It may not be de rigueur to rock up in the Pertemps Final on the back of a win, but it was hard not to be impressed by the way he put the Warwick race to bed having been forced wide on the final bend.

He looks yet another graded performer in the making for his owners, which is just as well with the Pertemps becoming dominated more by better class horses in recent times.

There are other owners who bring stronger numerical squads to Cheltenham, but most have paid a pretty penny to be in such a position, whereas Imperial Racing see their only two representatives priced up as short as 6/1 and 8/1 in the ante-post markets for their respective targets.

To be in that sort of position with Imperial’s resources, both human and financial, is a testament to the good judgment and hard work of all those involved. ?