Trader Connors hoping Mighty Potter can snooker rivals in Novices Chase
Tattersalls National Hunt Sale 8-November-2022.
Walter Connors is in remarkably good form despite just sitting in the car after getting a drowning while doing TB tests.
It is no surprise that the Dungarvan-based vet is such a popular figure, with his ready wit and general bonhomie, even in testing conditions and he doesn’t think twice about following up on the missed call. He loves his job, making animals better. Getting out and about and meeting fellow, like-minded, rural people that work with those animals is a real bonus of the trade.
The thing is, he has found another way though and if producing national hunt stock of rich quality is a sideline, it is one that takes up a lot of time with a team that includes his wife Úna.
It is also a relatively lucrative one, though the horses that don't turn out to be fast, or brave or able to jump don't make headlines. But the Connors roll of honour is stellar.
The list of Sluggara Farm graduates is headed by 2016 Gold Cup winner Don Cossack. When Bryan Cooper propelled the Gigginstown House-owned, Gordon Elliott-trained Sholokhov gelding to a commanding success, it was emotional, not just because of the lustre of the race but for the fact that Walter’s father, Nicky had bred the 1992 victor, Cool Ground.
Don Cossack was actually sourced in Germany as a typical example of Connors' outside-the-box thinking that secured him a foothold in such a competitive environment.
His contacts now are the envy of the industry and he famously bought future Champion Hurdle hero, the ill-fated Espoir D’Allen and dual Cheltenham Festival victor and seven-time Grade 1 winner, Envoi Allen from Bruno Vagne’s Elevage Allen farm on the same day.
Bacardys and Angels Breath are just two others he has sourced and sold on to considerable success.
Three of his babies run at Cheltenham Thursday with chances. Envoi Allen would be a player in the Ryanair Chase if putting his best foot forward. Vaucelet is strongly fancied for the Foxhunter Chase.
But Mighty Potter is the flagbearer, a very short favourite for the Turners Novice Chase and a four-time Grade 1 winner already despite still being in the embryonic stages of his career.
That Connors has sourced such talent as foals, something Clonmel hotelier John Nallen of Minella fame has excelled in too, only adds to the mystique though he rejects any notions of genius or horse whispering, only that he has accumulated a team around him, pieces of a jigsaw as he says himself that contribute to the process.
With about 20 foals or so bought each year, Connors sells about half of them as unbroken stores (three-year-olds), and races the rest in point-to-points with a view to being able to sell them with form.
Envoi Allen was in the latter category, making £400,000 after an effortless victory in Ballinaboola, in which Appreciate It, the future Supreme Novices’ Hurdle winner and ironically, major rival to Mighty Potter today, was third.
But Mighty Potter is the headline act. So impressive has he and his four siblings have been - the quintet has all won this term - that Connors has gone into the breeding world by acquiring their dam, Matnie.
"She's been a remarkable broodmare. She's had five winners in the current season out of five foals and three of them are graded winners.
"She's no queen herself to look at, she's just an average mare. We bought Mighty Potter because he was a very good-looking horse, and then we bought the second fella (Caldwell Potter) on the strength of liking the first fella, which would be typical enough of us. We didn't buy the filly (Brighterdaysahead, purchased as an unbroken three-year-old by Gigginstown for €310,000 from the Bleahen brothers' Lakefield Farm) and she looks a good filly now.
"By now Mighty Potter had won his bumper. The mare had a colt foal so we bought him but (the breeder) was downsizing and I got a call from Seamus saying a French breeder was going to buy her and another mare, and if I wanted anything out of her in the future, I'd have to speak now so I bought the two mares."
She remains based in France.
"She's a bit like the young fella that'll emigrate to America and get a good job and send a few quid home to his father and mother every year," he says with a laugh.
As he tells the story of Mighty Potter, you get the sense that nothing special is happening in producing these horses, but also of the collegiate effort.
"I bought him at the sales as a foal with Micheál O'Brien, who was working with me at the time and we went halves on him. He was always going to be reconsigned as a sales horse, rather than point-to-pointing.
"All we can do is try and provide the best environment for them growing up and after that, we're a nursery. The lads that break them and do the prep work... it's like the old saying that the strength of a chain is its weakest link. If any part of that is not excellent, it can be a long road.
"If it's all a jigsaw of 20 pieces, we probably have five of them at our disposal. We can't make the jigsaw without those pieces but we need all the other bits as well."
He has built his part of that process though.
"We have and a lot of it was trial and error. If you ask us how we were lucky, well no one is lucky to be old but horses weren't as expensive when we started. The first four foals I bought to pinhook cost twenty grand in total. The stakes are very high now while you're learning. If we had to miss with one of the fifty grand foals, it makes the rest of the crop expensive and they're expensive anyway.
"I'm not complaining for a minute. It's been good to us and particularly in the last four or five years.
"Once they're bought, they're in our system and for the likes of Mighty Potter, French Dynamite was after winning and getting sold for a good price, so there was a good update there and these are all parts of it."
He is leaning towards perhaps running a few more in the point-to-points in the coming year, even though the stores sales have been the core of the business model.
"Point-to-points are our family day out. And before we know it, the lads will be big and they'll be at their own thing. So for the next couple of years we might have an extra one or two to point-to-point."
"Úna would like to race more of them. I like to make it sort of financially flat after the sales so there's not the big pressure on the expensive horse going to the point-to-points, that it's not life-support machine if anything happens!
"We ran a horse last week. If he was fourth, we'd have lost fifty grand, if he was third we'd have broken even, if he was second we'd have made fifty grand and if won we'd made two hundred grand. Sure you wouldn't go to the casino to do that!"
He is too long in racing to make wild predictions but is hopeful that Mighty Potter can continue to progress. And if that happens, he could be one to follow Don Cossack and Cool Ground as a Gold Cup winner.
"He's one of the ones you'd live in hope. Having had those good horses, I don't know if it's a help or a hindrance because you kind of realise how difficult it is to have them.
"Going back to the jigsaw, if you don't start with the pieces, you can't get them going along. For the size and frame that he has and to have four Grade 1s won in the spring of being a six-year-old, you'd be entitled to dream. He's climbing the ladder anyway."
But as Envoi Allen has illustrated - even as a seven-time Grade 1 winner - anything can happen. "That's why I hate saying anything. Circumstances can change. If it all went to plan and it all was predictable, if the best foal was the best three-year-old and if he was the best racehorse, sure you might as well have a Hereford bull to lead him up from the corner of the parade ring to the winner's enclosure."
Never a truer word. But just look at the Connors alumni. There are some things you can be fairly sure of.
