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From Classic winners to maiden point-to-pointers, Paul and Sara Thorman have trodden the highways and back alleys of racing.
This article first appeared in the Racing Post on Friday 27th January.
Walk onto a racecourse and they could blend anonymously into the crowd, but beneath racing’s iceberg tip, in the big- and small-money world of bloodstock and sales, they and their Trickledown Stud are royalty. The hub of their business is to sell horses for clients, to be their representatives at auctions, and on one occasion they offered 86 foals at Tattersalls’ December Sale. Paul (photographed last week at Doncaster sales) says: “I wanted to get up to 100, but after that sale I wished it had been 50.”
Guineas winners George Washington and Cockney Rebel have passed through their hands, while their 12,000gns purchase of the pregnant mare Halland Park Lass in 2005 led to an astonishing outcome. The following summer her two-year-old son Dutch Art won the Prix Morny and Middle Park Stakes, and the Thormans – who had taken in two partners – sold her foal for 280,000gns and Halland Park Lass for 710,000gns. Do the sum yourself, but Paul’s droll reaction to the mare’s sale was: “Pity she didn’t make another ten grand.”
Tempus fugit, and they have downsized their operation from a high of 200 lots a year to half that number, a reduction which gives them time to return to an early love, weekend afternoons at point-to-points.
Looking back to his childhood, Paul remembers measuring fences at Larkhill with his father, Major Robert Thorman, who was a course inspector in what is now the Wessex region. Then last year he was asked to sell a four-year-old gelding, but bought him “as a fun horse to run in point-to-points”.
On Sunday at Milborne St Andrew, no.1 on the card was that horse, Coolattitude, who the Thormans have placed in training with Chris Barber. Paul says: “I’ve told Chris that if he wins he’s for sale, if he’s useless he’s for sale, and if he’s in between we’ll probably keep him – he might end up as a riding horse for our grandchildren.” Note to readers: he finished fourth.
