ABOUT 1pm on Tuesday the first of Airlie Stud’s draft of eight yearlings at the Goffs Orby sale will stride into the ring. About 27 hours later the last of the octet will face the same trip.

This will be an agonising time for the stud’s team, the culmination of some three years of planning and waiting. Each of the eight yearlings will have approximately two minutes under the watchful eye of the auctioneer, during which time much about the animal’s future will be decided – and be outside the control of the vendor.

What each animal is worth, where it will end up, who will train it? All of these questions will hopefully be answered positively.

A day after the Airlie homebred Kupa River ran out a nine-length winner of a maiden at Listowel in the colours of Anthony Rogers, I sat down to talk with Sonia Rogers about the upcoming Orby Sale. “I am looking forward to the sales. Prices so far have been quite good. It is a nervous time too. You have to have everything correct. And people don’t appreciate how hard it is to get that,” she told me.

The eight yearlings represent eight different sires, two colts and six fillies. Fillies have been a theme at Airlie Stud for the past few years, and it is one of the fairer sex who will most likely create the greatest interest next week when she makes her sale ring debut.

The daughter of Galileo, the best sire in the world, is a half-sister to five winners, the star among them being the Group 1 Dewhurst Stakes winner Intense Focus.

Asked to describe the filly, Sonia is firm. “She is lovely. She is correct, she is mature, and she is a good mover. She is one of nicest yearlings we’ve had in many years. She could be a star.”

The cross of Galileo and a Danehill mare has worked a treat, producing Group 1 winners such as Frankel, Highland Reel, Teofilo, Deauville, Noble Mission, Tapestry, Intello, Romantica, Golden Lilac, Maybe and Roderic O’Connor among others. Buyers looking at the potential star of the Airlie consignment will hardly need reminding of this potency.

The dam of the Galileo is the group-placed Daneleta and she has established a reputation not only for breeding winners, but also producing sales horses. Eight of her 10 previous foals have traded for significant six-figure sums, and have been signed for by some of the most eminent judges of horseflesh. This year should be no different.

In fact, Airlie can claim to have sold a couple of foals who rank among the top 20 most expensive of that age ever sold at auction in Ireland or Britain, and a Shamardal son of Daneleta ranks at number 13 on that eminent list.

Another of the yearling draft this week is a daughter of Nathaniel, out of a half-sister to Allegretto and from a family that Sonia and her great friend Kirsten Rausing have developed.

“We took a share in Nathaniel and he is doing amazingly well. He’s a nice horse, and has got the top filly in the world. We love to buy a share in a stallion.”

Airlie is very much a family effort, and has been since its foundation by the late Captain Tim Rogers after World War II. Tim was the son of the multiple classic winning trainer ‘Darby’ Rogers and brother of the man who saddled Santa Claus to do the Derby double, Mickey.

However the Captain’s career took on a different trajectory and he founded one of the first major stud farm complexes in Ireland, becoming the most significant influence on the Irish bloodstock scene at that time.

Aide-de-camp to Winston Churchill, Tim persuaded the owner of High Hat and Vienna to stand both horses at Airlie, later to be joined by many others that offered breeders the widest choice of stallions.

Among their number was the champion Habitat, a sire whose influence continues to be felt today. The Airlie Stud empire extended at one time to ownership of additional farms in Grangewilliam (now the base for Airlie), Simmonstown, Baroda, Loughmore and Loughtown.

It was not just in Ireland that Captain Rogers carved an outstanding reputation; he was a pioneer too and had interests in Australia and New Zealand, decades before the shuttling of stallions was to become an everyday phenomenon.

MATRIARCH

On New Year’s Day in 1984, at the young age of just 62 years, Tim Rogers died and control of this sprawling empire of stallions, farms and a broodmare band in three-figures passed to his wife Sonia.

For more than three decades she has been the matriarch of a stud farm that still to this day has a reputation for breeding horses of the highest quality.

It is not easy though. “The business has become very difficult for people like us. Our object is to produce racehorses, but we also want to produce something that’s a sales horse. I would love to be an owner breeder; if we were we would do something different. It is all about numbers these days.

“Every year we look critically at the broodmare band, and we try to buy into certain families. We have waited sometimes for 20 years to get into a family. We have bought an odd sprinting mare because that’s what people want, though they are not our usual type.

"We have some very good young mares here, and some nice mares coming back to the stud. We have also raced a few recently, partly because we haven’t sold them!”

Sonia herself brought her own experience and an impeccable equine pedigree to the new role she found herself in following Tim’s death. Together with working experience at the BBA with the famed Kazimierz Bobinsky, and Cloghran Stud when she was Miss Pilkington, Sonia is the daughter of Mrs Elizabeth Burke of Stackallan Stud fame.

Mrs Burke was one of the most successful breeders and sale vendors of all time in Ireland. Her draft at the Goffs Yearling Sale regularly topped the vendor’s table, and she holds the distinction of being the first in Ireland or Britain to achieve sales of more than 100,000gns at a yearling sale, achieved at Goffs in 1971. Sonia helped her mother at Stackallan and learned much from Mrs Burke, a renowned horsewoman.

The apple never falls far from the tree and Sonia continued to build on the fine reputations built by both her mother and her late husband, and today the baton has been passed to the next generation. Sonia’s son Anthony is in charge of the running of Airlie, having returned in 1996 from gaining experience initially at Circle O Farm in Kentucky, followed by Widden Stud in Australia, Three Chimneys Farm in Kentucky, with Dick Mandella in California and James Underwood in London. This year he celebrates a coming of age with Airlie.

Sonia Rogers and David Sullivan

One rarely sees Sonia and Anthony Rogers at the sales without the figure of David Sullivan beside them. The trio work closely together and all bring their own expertise to the business. When one looks at the roll of honour of winners bred and raised at Airlie, it is easy to understand why the farm can lay claim to being one of Europe’s premier studs.

Sonia explains their modus operandi. “We work as a team. We listen to others but we make our own calls. An exception would be if we are buying a filly to race. Then I always get a trainer to look at her. They know what you can train, while I am looking at a future broodmare prospect.”

The first female member of the Turf Club when she was invited to join in 1985, Sonia has been a director of Goffs now for many years, a role she enjoys greatly.

This week her focus is on selling eight yearlings well.

Could the fillies contain another classic winner such as the brilliant Petrushka or Margarula, both winners of the Irish Oaks, or the colts include another Group 1 juvenile winner like Intense Focus or Kingsfort?