Lyons Looks Toward Proven Sires

Ger Lyons signs for a yearling at Doncaster | Sarah Farnsworth

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As the official opening of the flat season approaches, turf enthusiasts will be starting to make their predictions on which sires will make their marks in 2018. These predictions always include the highly anticipated first-season sires, but can also include proven sires riding the crest of wave or hitting new momentum. For trainers who source their own stock from the sales, this also means finding out if their gambles from last year's yearling sales will pay off.

Ger Lyons is one such man, and as a trainer known for helping launch the careers of many rags to riches sires-think Kodiac and Dark Angel-Lyons has plenty of experience to draw upon with sires from all different levels of the market. Lyons said that last year, his opinions and circumstances saw him source much of his 2018 crop from the realm of proven sires rather than unproven.

“I buy plenty and I found myself being led towards the form horses as opposed to the new horses,” he said. “For the way I run my business I found this year, my head was turned towards proven horses as opposed to the first-season sires.”

Lyons said that decision was driven by two facts: that market demand drove the prices of the most desired first-season sires outside of his price range, and that he was wary of the credentials of some of the first-season sires that were left.

“I've made my name with first-season sires, and the last few years the first-season sires just didn't float my boat,” he admitted. “I'm adamant that the real [stallion prospects] have to have been proper Group 1 winners. It doesn't mean I'm right, but that's just how I operate. When you're going down to post here [in Ireland] you're taking on Galileo and whatever else Aidan [O'Brien] is throwing at you. When we started out I was allowed to buy all the Dark Angels and Kodiacs and all that, and the Arabs and those went for all the bigger sires, the mile-and-a- quarter, mile-and-a-half sires. Now, they've come back and they're buying all the Kodiacs and the Dark Angels, the speed horses, which has left me redundant. Now I can't buy a Dark Angel; and when I say I can't buy a Dark Angel it means I have to pay through the nose for one.”

Lyons admitted Dark Angel is an exception to his general criteria for a stallion prospect.

“I don't believe horses should be retiring at two; they should be racing at three and four,” he said. “Dark Angel is an exception to that rule, but name me the other hundred that didn't work.”

Among the first-season sires Lyons sprang for last year were No Nay Never (Scat Daddy) and Battle of Marengo (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}).

“I was adamant I wanted a No Nay Never and the two I bought, to put it in perspective, weren't my first choice because the first-choice No Nay Nevers I couldn't get near,” he said. “I bought two of them, and they're doing everything I've asked of them at the minute, so it'd be a positive report on them.”

“Battle of Marengo, he didn't hit me as a sire but I happened to get one of them and he's a gorgeous horse,” Lyons said. “He catches the eye every morning. [Battle of Marengo] would have been on my list not to buy, he wouldn't have hit me as a precocious Ger horse, but I have one here and he catches my eye every morning.”

In years gone past, trainers like Lyons would fill their stables with first-season sires because that was what fit their budget. The more recent rise in popularity of unproven sires-sires without blemishes on their records-has changed that.

“We were the dummy testers, we were the ones who bought the first-season sires and made them, for lack of a better word,” Lyons recalled. “I trained the first winners for a lot of those sires like Kodiac. But it got to the stage where we couldn't get near them.”

The result is that Lyons is now finding more value with proven sires.

“The experts have put Acclamation cold, or put Pivotal cold or have put Oasis Dream cold; proper horses that are rock-solid results-getters that back in the day I couldn't get near because they were the flavour of the month at that time,” he said. “For a guy who goes out and sources his own horses, for the last few years it's been getting tougher for guys like me. When you're using good, hard-earned money and you have to turn that money into money to return to the sales next year, you need a return. We've built our business on buying our own stock, and I've found it's turned into a humongous gamble.”

Lyons reiterated that, when a trainer in Ireland is taking a gamble on a sire, that sire has a lot to live up to have a chance of making it.

“When you're going down to the start here and you look across the paddock and it's a Galileo you're taking on, and yours is by a listed winner, straight away you're on the back foot,” he said. “There are exceptions to every rule, but in general. Galileo sets the standard so that's what you have to aim at to beat him.”

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