JOE SLOAN met Geoff Salters in 1973. They were two young Northern Irish businessmen setting out in the world and ready to work hard. Big plans, big dreams.

The pair were brought together when the Irish Dairy Board bought a company called Cregagh Foods. In the expansion IDB had two positions that needed filling. sales/marketing manager and accountant. Joe was appointed to the former, Geoff to the latter.

In 1975, Sloan had an idea to form a distribution group. He had to convince Geoff and he had to convince his wife Pat. He recalls telling Pat that “We’ll either be out on the streets or I’ll buy you a house on the hill.”

The distribution group they set up was called SHS Group. When the group was first formed, they employed five people. It was a slow process. In the first year, SHS had a turnover of just £46,000.

Today SHS Group is responsible for multiple brands including WKD, Shloer and Tropicana, employs 700 people across the UK and Ireland and turns over half a billion a year.

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Joe Sloan met Pat at a friend’s barbeque when he was 17 and she was 16. Next year, three children and over 40 owned racehorses later, the pair will be 50 years married.

It’s a lot of water under the bridge but Joe and Pat’s main loves have remained constant. Family and horses. They have two daughters and one son - Joanne, Nicola and David.

Joanne is a prominent showjumper and runs a yard close to the family home. It’s a successful breeding operation that, combined with the talented Egyptian rider Sameh El Dahan, has achieved strong success internationally including a Puissance title at the Dublin Horse Show in 2015 plus major victories in Calgary, Canada. Dahan has also used horses from the yard when representing Egypt in the World Cup finals and World Equestrian games.

The Sloan’s interest in racing initially came from Pat’s family, who had always been involved in the point-to-point scene. They bought a horse called Family Boy, who won a point-to-point at Down Royal before being sold to Toby Balding’s yard. However, it was in the late 90s that the Sloans really got moving in the racing game.

“We decided that we wanted to get involved more in racing and at the time I was up and down to Dublin as we had a few business interests down there,” Sloan explains.

“Noel Meade was the champion trainer in Ireland and I just rang him to ask if he’d train a few horses for us and he said ‘I’d be delighted’ and it was as simple as that.”

The first horse the Sloans had with Meade was called Woodys Blue Lagoon and he won three races in a row on the track. He took them to the 2002 Cheltenham Festival where he finished eighth in the Royal & SunAlliance Hurdle behind the Polish-bred Galileo.

That was a fantastic start but owning National Hunt horses is like getting on a no-holes-barred rollercoaster, something Joe can attest to now. Woodys Blue Lagoon was the first gentle “up you get “ at the beginning of the ride. More of a warm up and in this case the big ups and downs had yet to come.

“The best we had was Iktitaf,” Sloan proclaims. “We got him at a horses in training sale and he was a real superstar. He won three Grade 1 races and an Irish Cesarewitch and he was only six when Noel called me one morning to tell me he had to be put down. That was a horrible feeling.”

Close enough to the time of Iktitaf was Mr Nosie who won his first four races of which the fourth was a Grade 1 win at Leopardstown. His next run was at the 2006 Cheltenham Festival but then a series of setbacks blighted his career.

Of course there have been a lot more highs as well. Flaxen Flare, trained by Gordon Elliott, gave the Sloans a maiden Cheltenham Festival win when hacking up in the Fred Winter Juvenile Hurdle in 2013. Guitar Pete, when trained by the late Dessie Hughes, finished third in the 2014 Triumph Hurdle before going on to win the Grade 1 juvenile hurdle at Aintree on Grand National day.

However, as if answering to some sort of unwritten law in National Hunt racing, the Sloans are coming off another low from last season having lost three horses.

“We lost Runfordave, Runforbob and Hostile Fire - all young and promising horses. It’s desperately sad,” Sloan reflects. “I’m hoping that’s our lot of bad luck for at least another while. As we’ve gone on, more and more you realise how important it is to enjoy the big days with horses and it’s something you just can’t take for granted. As an owner, I’m just delighted to have winner anywhere.”

However, Sloan loves to have winners at Downpatrick and Down Royal, with a particular fond for the latter. He and Pat take a hospitality box at the two-day Down Royal Festival meeting every year, sponsor a race (the Grade 2 WKD Hurdle) and have had plenty of success at the track down the years.

“Jim Nicholson and Mike Todd have done such a great job with the track. The work on the new grandstand, the work on the track itself and and the new winner’s enclosure - it has all made a massive difference to the experience,” Sloan explains.

“Mike is always out and about talking to people, making sure everyone is happy and I think he and everyone at the track has been rewarded with the crowds they’ve got at this meeting. It’s a top quality two days that signals the start of the National Hunt season.

“The track might not be on a par with the likes of Leopardstown, Fairyhouse and Punchestown but, on the other side, I think it has a lovely, family-orientated atmosphere. I’m sure they would like to attract even bigger crowds, and more people from the south, but what they have now is a good local crowd which together with the quality racing, creates a unique atmosphere.”

JNwine.com Chase day continues to attract big horses and big crowds and already this year crowds at the track are up by 9.5% year to date. However, not everything is in order below the surface.

As Down Royal and Downpatrick are outside of this jurisdiction, they are not eligible for funding from HRI. The main source of funding comes from betting shops. Up until 2015, every betting shop in Northern Ireland contributed £2,000 towards the funding of both racecourses but that figure has since been reduced to £1,123 per shop. Fortunately HRI are still able to contribute to both tracks in the north through prize money.

The funding issue is one thing but there is potentially a five-fold bigger wave coming in the form of Brexit. A hard Brexit brings with it all sorts of dangerous implications and casts doubt over prize money contributions from HRI and the movement of horses through the border for both the racing and breeding industries.

“Unlike in the Republic, the whole racing and horse sport industry isn’t particularly well looked after up here,” Sloan explains.

“There doesn’t seem to be any desire by political parties in Belfast to look at racing and support it as an industry by trying to adopt a similar levy system as what you have in Britain and in the Republic.

“I do think it is a little unfair. Both tracks have been put under serious amounts of pressure down the years and only for the money that has come in from At The Races, we might have lost one or both tracks already. Thankfully they seem to be making the best of the situation and things are looking okay at the moment.”

Sloan is coming close to 20 years as an owner so is better placed than many to assess changes the industry has gone through in recent times. His outlook is generally positive although he admits it is difficult to buy the same type of horse he could buy 10 years ago.

“We like to buy three-year-olds and watch them develop. We work with Kevin Ross and Mags O’Toole, and Joanne comes down to the sales when she can. A lot of the flat horses are now going abroad so the quality has probably diminished,” Sloan says.

“But I do think racing as a leisure activity is certainly in a better place today. Facilities have improved enormously. The way owners are treated has improved enormously. And prize money in Ireland has improved a lot as well.

“One thing that could be an issue is recent weather patterns. There is absolutely no doubt that we are in a period of weather change and I think a lot of tracks will be looking at their drainage systems. It’s very difficult for clerks of courses and often they end up in a lose-lose situation. All you have to do is look at Ayr losing their big meeting recently. That was a terrible blow to all connected.”

The Sloans had their busiest season as owners last year with 68 runs yielding nine wins. However the familiar dark blue and yellow silks have not been carried to victory in a graded race since Guitar Pete’s Grade 1 win in 2014 which is perhaps a sign of just how difficult it is at the top table of National Hunt racing these days.

“There is no doubt it’s harder to win good races these days. But with regard to the likes of Gigginstown and J.P. and so on, you could never criticise them in anyway. They bring huge competition to the game and they are never afraid to run their own horses against each other, which helps the numbers in races which in turn helps the betting industry,” Sloan explains.

“I don’t think you could ever knock a person or group from buying a number of horses at the sales. They are pumping huge money into the game and without them racing would be a good deal poorer.”

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Sadly Geoff Salters, a great business partner and a great friend, died on New Year’s Eve in 2009, at the age of 64. There is little doubt Geoff would be proud of the continued growth of the SHS Group he and Sloan founded over 40 years ago. Just last weekend Sloan accepted a Lifetime Achievement award at the Neighbourhood Retailer Awards where he paid tribute to the role Geoff played in the business and in his life.

SHS Group continues to go from strength to strength. Sloan is doing this interview from his home. He operates from an office in his house while still regularly visiting SHS offices around the UK and Ireland. He has no intention of retiring anytime soon as the idea of “sitting around wearing a cardigan” just wouldn’t suit his personality.

He has time to speak for just under an hour and then is waiting on a call from Joanne to go down to the yard and see a three-year-old jump for the first time. The hands-on involvement is key to how the Sloans enjoy this game. All horses bought will be pre-trained at their base, while horses who are injured or retired will come back home as well.

The aforementioned Mr Nosie is probably the best example of the patience afforded to their horses. He was given all the time he needed to recover from a series of setbacks and was nursed back to full health by Joanne and her team. After finishing fourth behind Nicanor and Denman in a crack renewal of the Royal & SunAlliance Novices’ Hurdle on 15th of March 2006, his next run was his chase debut at Fairyhouse on 29th of January 2011 – a layoff of 1781 days. It’s safe to say that not many other horses would have been afforded the same patience.

DOWN ROYAL

All being well, the Sloans will be well represented again at Down Royal next weekend. Despite the fact that Pat gets very nervous watching races with regard to the danger facing the horses and jockeys, she cannot wait for the season to get going.

“Pat wanders off when the races are on and I often joke with her that she seems to be able to cover the last furlong faster than the horses,” Sloan says laughing.

“This is the best time of the year. There are no disappointments and you live in hope with the season stretched out in front of you.”