Paul Mellon

I wish I had met Paul Mellon. He does seem to have been a rather good egg. Mill Reef was born the year before me and though I wasn't precocious enough to have enjoyed his racing career live, for some reason, since I started taking a serious interest in racing, he has long been one of my favourite horses. I think a lot of it has to do with Mellon himself.  Can you imagine a modern-day Gimcrack-winning owner writing a poem about his horse, as Mellon did for Mill Reef...

Two Grade I winners inside an hour last Saturday: both sold as November weanlings at Keeneland, both through the same consignment. But while their shared provenance at least guarantees that you'll want to drop by the Bluegrass Thoroughbred Services draft this time round, as well, it is not as though Forte (Violence) and War Like Goddess (English Channel) can otherwise elucidate the vagaries of our business. Because while one made respectable money, the other was more or less given away. War Like Goddess, swept up in the kind of cull...

Edited Press Release Jonathan Thomas, trainer of the versatile multiple Grade I winner Catholic Boy, will judge the 88th annual Maryland Horse Breeders Association Yearling Show. Open to all yearlings eligible for Maryland-bred registration, the show will be held Sunday, July 24 at the Maryland State Fairgrounds' Horse Show Ring in Timonium. Entries are due by June 24. Thomas was born in Virginia and raised at Paul Mellon's famed Rokeby Farm, where his grandfather, father and mother all worked. Growing up around quality horses, Thomas was 13 when Mellon's homebred...

Mill Reef (Never Bend), who won the G1 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth S. 50 years ago, has been honoured with the QIPCO Diamonds & Pearls Award, QIPCO announced on Thursday. Second in the 2000 Guineas, the diminutive Paul Mellon homebred with the big heart would go on to win the Derby and break the course record at Epsom Downs. In the 1971 King George, the Ian Balding trainee drew off to win by six lengths. His regular jockey, Geoff Lewis, stated at the time, "Daylight was second." Retired...

When Ettore Sottsass was asked which of his many diverse achievements had given him most satisfaction, he gave a shrug. "I don't know," he said. "Life is a permanent project. It's a passage from one thing to another." The Italian designer and architect transcended disciplines in a fashion not dissimilar to his compatriot Federico Tesio, whose singular genius was as stimulated by his furniture workshop as by his breed-shaping stud farm. And there's a corresponding breadth of engagement to the man who wrote to the widow of Sottsass, asking permission...

TOM MORLEY, TRAINER Favorite:  It's very rare that your family own, breed and train the winner of a Group 1 at Royal Ascot. But when Celeric (GB) (Mtoto {GB}) won the 1997 Ascot Gold Cup having been bred by my Uncle Christopher Spence, owned by he and my father, and trained by my uncle David Morley then to me there can be no bigger favourite. He was the horse that got me hooked, the best day out from school in the world was being able to go to Ascot that...