Thorne's
growing
STEPHEN THORNE sits back in his chair at 3.15pm on a Wednesday afternoon in mid-October, content with the biggest part of another day in the books.
He’s just returned from working a couple of horses up in Dundalk and as I walk in, what looks to be a brand new two-horse lorry adorning a slick ‘ST’ logo is getting washed out.
“We may as well look the part,” he says with a smile.
It’s been a while since we had a proper chat, 15 years to be exact, when we were both on the same Equine Business course in NUI Maynooth.
Some people just know what they want from early on. Thorne certainly falls into that category. There was a steeliness to him, even then. He was focused and engaged at university, intent on getting everything he could out of his time there. Some weren’t as much.
We’re sitting on a peninsula style table in a modular style cabin that makes do as a racing office, meeting area and kitchen all in one. It’s very comfortable and stylish, but it is also temporary, as plans are in place to move into a purpose-built yard back near his home town in Man O War, County Dublin.
For now, Thorne is a tenant on this land - Killarkin Stud, just outside the busy County Meath town of Dunboyne - sharing facilities with fellow trainer Jack Davison, who was happy to allow this arrangement when requested in June last year.
That request came following a split from Thorne’s association with his cousin Ado McGuinness, to whom he acted as assistant trainer for a hugely successful seven years.
After a comprehensive undergrad, which included the Godolphin Flying Start programme and year-long stints with Mike de Kock in South Africa and Ralph Beckett in Britain, he took up a central role at McGuinness’s yard in 2017, and an upturn in performance soon followed.
In Thorne’s first full season in the role, McGuinness sent out a career best 28 winners in Ireland, and followed that up with 34, 34, 43, 39, 46 and 49-winner years.
The upturn in results coincided with the birth of Thorne’s own project, Shamrock Thoroughbreds. An equity share model, the premise essentially involved bringing together a number of owners to allow the now 35-year-old to source a better class of horse for the yard.
The first horse he bought for the syndicate, Master Speaker, cost €11,000, and in a show of how the operation grew (now well over 100 members), the more recent purchases have hit six figures, most notably when they acquired Go Athletico for €165,000 in an online sale.
There has been success in between via dual Group 3 winner Pretreville, listed winners Laugh A Minute and Harry’s Bar, who have 16 wins in all between them, and Tiger Belle, a Group 3-winning juvenile who took the syndicate to the Breeders’ Cup.
McGuinness and Thorne hit the very top of the game when A Case Of You, privately purchased after his two-year-old career, secured two Group 1 wins in the Prix de l’Abbaye and Al Quoz Sprint - an extremely rare feat for an Irish yard in International sprints.
So, when it was announced quite suddenly that Thorne would be leaving the stable to start to train horses in his own name, it was a surprise to many.
“In the back of my mind, I always wanted to train racehorses,” Thorne says after a pause from the question.
“I had an incredible time with Ado. We grafted really hard. From starting with a relatively small stable of horses and people, we grew it really quickly. The whole thing is kind of a bliss, really.
“For me, the Shamrock project was developing as the assistant trainer role was developing and before even knowing it, I was gathering a side business. It started to thrive and other sole owners in the yard were happy for me to source horses for them.
“As that journey was happening, it became a lovely mutual relationship. The horses I was sourcing were being fed into the stable and it was going alongside my assistant trainer role,
but there comes a point in life where you have to look at the future.
“ I got married in March last year, and my son Jack was born in February this year.”
When the decision to part ways came, it came suddenly, and with
that came challenges, perhaps biggest of all was attaining the support and backing of the Shamrock Thoroughbreds shareholders.
“That was the most stressful part,” he recalls now. “I had to get the backing of all 100 or so shareholders so I called each and every one of them and 99% were happy to back me.
“I was very fortunate to have found a facility where we could rent boxes and share facilities, and I am very grateful to Jack and his team for that.
"I think the shared yard scenario might be something that gets more popular in the coming years. Not everybody has the opportunity to have their own facility, but this could give young trainers a chance to get going.
“It took a bit of time for the horses to adjust to their new environment and we had a lot of seconds at the start, but as it happened, by the time I got the license mid-October, we were really ready to make an impact.”
He did exactly that. His first two winners came on the same Dundalk card in mid-November and so began a remarkable run at the County Louth track that saw him land the All Weather Trainers’ Championship after a sensational final night treble.
It was a massive achievement given he had his license less than a year and only 11 individual horses to race.
Tattersalls Craven Breeze-Up purchase Mayflower, by Ardad, won on debut at Leopardstown, and after sales offers fell away has been retained
Tattersalls Craven Breeze-Up purchase Mayflower, by Ardad, won on debut at Leopardstown, and after sales offers fell away has been retained
SINCE THE TURN of the year, only 14 trainers have trained more winners than Thorne, who has already surpassed the €500,000 prize money mark after just a year with a license, with 25 winners in all.
“Our very first winner was Sayifyouwill, a filly my assistant Stephen Mooney bought,” Thorne recalls.
“Stephen was originally an apprentice to Ado, that’s when I met him. He has a vast amount of experience working with horses internationally, most notably when he had been assisting James Ferguson in the UK for three years.
“He and his partner Lisa had a baby so they were ready to move home last year and he was the first person I called when I decided to leave Ado’s. He’s been my assistant from day one and the biggest asset I’ve acquired.
“He bought this filly for 6,000gns in Newmarket. I took a piece of her, Ricky Delaney, who is a big part of my Shamrock team, took a piece and David Carrick, an old racing pal of mine, bought in as well. She ran in the colours of Stephen’s grandparents, so it was just a really nice way to start. A nice memory, but it also showed what we could do with a cheap horse.”
The progress has come quickly since. A surefire sign of Thorne’s progress is that he has doubled his string since taking out the license. Whereas before everything he trained was for Shamrock Thoroughbreds, now it’s 50-50, with Saudi client Essam Saiel, John Kirkland and Amo Racing all coming on board.
The headline success of his season came when Saiel’s Pink Oxalis stormed home to take only the second renewal of the €100,000 mile fillies’ premier handicap at the Irish Champions Festival, elevating her rating to 94, having joined Thorne 10 months previously rated just 61.
There have also been important wins for two-year-olds Mayflower and Jack The Bachelor, both bought from the Goffs UK Breeze-Up Sale at Doncaster.
Pink Oxalis: her rating has increased from 61 to 94 in a year with Thorne
Pink Oxalis: her rating has increased from 61 to 94 in a year with Thorne
The former looked set to be sold to America after several bids came through, but after a bit of maneuvering, Thorne managed to keep her in the yard with Kirkland coming on board to back him -
a clear statement of intent for both men.
“I think it’s really important to keep these horses if you can,” he says ardently. “Not just me, but for the whole country. Once these two-year-olds run past the line, they’re getting sold. Lads just can’t turn down the money and we’re ending up as pre-trainers to the rest of the world. I don’t want to be a pre-trainer.
“I want to train these horses.
“It’s becoming detrimental because we’re nearly handing out free black-type to these fillies who are going to become broodmares.
"We are weakening the breed by selling our horses. The whole thing is a circle, if we don’t have the stock, the quality goes down. It always goes back to the prize-money situation.”
Thorne’s move towards the breeze-up sector is as much to do with necessity as it is opportunity, pointing to the rising costs of acquiring that potentially classy handicapper
His sourcing and training of the aforementioned juvenile winners this term, should serve him well, and if there is value to be found in any sector, he looks best placed to find it.
The base of all his success is the support he has garnered from Shamrock Thoroughbreds operation - as successful a syndicate as there has ever been in Ireland, it’s clearly evident that there is a deep level of trust on both sides.
What is the key?
“When I interviewed for the Flying Start, I didn’t get on it the first time when I was 20, but I did get on it two years later,” he muses. “Joe Osborne asked me the question, have I ever sold anything, and I looked at him and said no, I can’t say I have. That question still registers with me today because I know what he is asking now, but I didn’t know back then.
“In this game you have to sell yourself. Everyday you have to sell yourself, whether you’re on the phone trying to sell a share of a horse to a client, or whether you’re on the phone trying to buy a horse, you have to sell yourself, these horses won’t just land in off the back of a lorry. You have to sell yourself at the sales and you have to sell yourself at the races with results.
“Communication is everything when you’re dealing with people in this game. Good news and bad news. Being able to deliver bad news is more important.
“I’m batting 17 per cent this year, there’s only three trainers above me with a higher win percentage, so 80 per cent of the time is this disappointment so delivering the bad news well is important to my lads and to the owners.
“But the bottom line is you have to be able to sell yourself, you have to believe in yourself.”
Jack The Bachelor: bought at the Goffs UK Breeze-Up is a winner, two-time placed and rated 92
Jack The Bachelor: bought at the Goffs UK Breeze-Up is a winner, two-time placed and rated 92
It might have taken a little while longer than he expected and it might also have been part circumstantial, but Stephen Thorne is a fully fledged trainer now and is going places fast.
Pending everything goes to plan with the building of his yard in Man O War, he’ll be operating out of there in the second half of next year, and that’s exciting.
“Conditioning and training racehorses is my biggest passion,” he says. “From the age of 17, without even knowing it, you’re building up towards training racehorses, without even knowing when it’s going to happen.
“Things happen organically, there’s a light bulb moment somewhere and you’ll see the future where you’re going to be and that just happened to me in the middle of last year.
“I’m a very, very happy man now and looking forward to what the future brings.”
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