Most winners at Royal Ascot last week were sourced by their owners through the conventional methods of being bred at home or bought from public auction.
But not impressive Windsor Castle Stakes scorer Big Evs. He has ended up carrying Paul and Rachael Teasdale's silks as the result of a much more unusual sequence of events.
The first-crop son of Blue Point was spotted in the background of a gallops video of another 2-year-old by bloodstock agent and breeder Conor Quirke, who immediately noticed the colt's above-average athleticism and made it his business—literally, in this case—to find out who he was.
"It all happened quite by chance, really," says Quirke, who operates out of Hunting Hill Stud near Castletownroche in County Cork, as he takes up the tale. "I purchased a Waldgeist colt foal at Goffs last year, and saw that his year-older half brother by New Bay had been bought by Micky Cleere a few months earlier.
"So I got in touch with Mick O'Dwyer, a good friend and an icon of the sales scene who works as head lad to Micky and his partner Oceane, and he kindly sent me a video of the New Bay.
"I watched him, but it was the next horse that came up the gallop that really caught my eye. I thought the way he moved was really exceptional. There was no suggestion at all that he was for sale, but I got the bit between my teeth and made a few inquiries, and spoke to Paul and Rachael before asking to go and see the horse in the yard. It was then that I realized that he wasn't just electric on the gallops, but also a gorgeous specimen in the flesh."
The Blue Point colt's pedigree also made serious appeal to Quirke and his clients, and not just because his sire was a three-time Royal Ascot winner. In fact, it was his connection to another top-tier track a little further north that made him a must-have.
Quirke says: "My partner Kathryn (Birch) and I met Les Eyre's son Michael on the National Stud course and we became good friends with him, and he said that if his dad ever got an order he'd get in touch with us. That led to us selecting Bedford Flyer, who ran in the Nunthorpe and is still running to a high level, and was also owned by Paul and Rachael's RP Racing, as well as Just Frank.
"We've spent a lot of time in Yorkshire, and had lots of great days at York Racecourse, so when we scratched the surface of the colt's pedigree, and saw that his granddam was Queen's Logic, who was not only a champion 2-year-old but also won the Lowther and produced another Lowther winner in Lady of the Desert, who also produced a Lowther winner in Queen Kindly, we knew we had to get him. All roads lead to Yorkshire for us."
Good fortune also played a significant role in Quirke acquiring Big Evs for the Teasdales.
"It fell nicely for us that the horse had a bit of a hold-up that meant it was touch-and-go whether Micky would get enough work into him before his intended date at the Tattersalls Craven Breeze-Up Sale," he says. "That meant we were able to buy him privately. I'd seen enough to know I liked him, and to be fair Micky and Mick recommended him highly too."
Quirke won't be drawn on how much Big Evs cost, remarking only that "both sides of the transaction would have been satisfied at the time, and he's now worth many multiples of what we paid".
The sky-high valuation of Big Evs, placed in training with Mick Appleby and named in honor of Paul Evans, a late friend of his new owners, is due to him not just winning at the royal meeting last Wednesday, but fairly bolting up.
He broke well, blazed a trail towards the stands' side rail and surged clear to win by three lengths from Ballydoyle raider Johannes Brahms, a son of Siyouni bought for 200,000gns from Book 1 of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale.
"I'm still pinching myself," says Quirke. "We went over to Ascot thinking that he could take a step forward but really just hoping that he'd give a good account of himself. However, by the time the race came around at the end of the card on Wednesday, and I'd seen first-hand just how hard it is to win at Royal Ascot, my belief had evaporated.
"He did it though. The scenes in the winner's enclosure were very emotional, I can tell you. The last time we'd been racing with Paul and Rachael was to watch Bedford Flyer in the Nunthorpe and Paul, the original Big Evs, was there. Michael and Les both rang straight after the race to congratulate me, as well. This is such a special industry. You can meet people with the same shared passion, hit it off straight away, and make friendships for life."
Big Evs is set to contest the Molecomb Stakes (G3) at Goodwood for his next assignment. If all goes well there, he could fulfill his destiny by running in God's Own County in August.
"We'll take it race by race," says Quirke. "Jason (Hart) got off him last week and said that he would need targets where the emphasis is on speed until he tells us otherwise. He could potentially go for the Gimcrack but there's also mutterings of the Nunthorpe, although I'm doing my best to keep everyone's feet on the ground!"
What makes Big Evs' origin story even more surprising is that Quirke, 31, is a relative newcomer to working with horses. This time 10 years ago, he hadn't even touched one.
"Hunting Hill Stud has been in my family for more than 200 years, but I grew up in the city and when my dad farmed it part-time, it was exclusively bovine," he says. "I wasn't brought up with horses at all, it was my brother who got me into racing when I was quite young, and it was events like the Grand National and Cheltenham Festival that got me hooked.
"I later developed an interest in pedigrees, and when I was old enough I saw the farm as an opportunity to forge a career, so I re-skilled and did some certificates in basic horsemanship, animal nutrition, anatomy, and so on, and also learned to ride.
"I only touched a horse for the first time in the September of 2013, so it's all happened very quickly, but there's lots of history here on the farm. In the house there's a picture of my great-great-grand uncle sitting on a horse in West Virginia, and the story goes that he used to trade horses with Jesse James."
Quirke might have been a late-comer to the bloodstock industry but he has packed an awful lot into the last 10 years: work experience on Tony 'Tubba' Williams' own stud in the Hunter Valley; further education on the National Stud diploma course, where he first met Kathryn; and putting in more hard years at the Aga Khan Studs in Ireland, Haunui Farm in New Zealand, and Lane's End in Kentucky.
He and Kathryn certainly aren't shy of hard work, either. Even as they were busy converting Hunting Hill Stud from a cattle farm to a Thoroughbred nursery five years ago, they worked for other operations in order to make ends meet.
And they've proven they must know what they're doing. Among the first mares they acquired for the farm was Jolie Chanson, an unraced Mount Nelson half sister to group/grade 3 winners Funny Duck and Slow Pace bought for buttons in 2018.
Two years later her son Majestic Dawn won the Cambridgeshire, while the result of Quirke's and Kathryn's first mating for her, with Acclamation, resulted in last year's Coventry Stakes (G2) sixth Rousing Encore.
Hunting Hill Stud also bred last month's wide-margin Newbury winner Greysful Storm (IRE) "by throwing the commercial rulebook out of the window to breed a racehorse" says Quirke. The Kingston Hill filly wasn't disgraced in 12th in the King George V Stakes last Thursday and should be better when she gets a little more cut in the ground.
If Quirke can breed a few Royal Ascot contenders on a shoestring and buy a winner of one of the most competitive races of the meeting within a decade of putting his hands on a horse for the first time, it's exciting to think what he can achieve with a few more years under his belt.
"I'm just so grateful to Paul and Rachael to have been entrusted with their money, and to have rewarded their faith in me," he says. "I appreciate that I haven't been in the game all that long but I hope I'm overachieving while still remaining humble."
