One of Henry Beeby's favourite sales pitches is that, if you supply Goffs with the horses, his team will do the rest. Well, Denis Brosnan took the Goffs chief at his word last year and, what do you know, Croom House Stud's Frankel colt became the most expensive horse ever sold at the Orby Sale at €2 million to Godolphin. Croom House Stud is to Irish breeding what Rolex is to watches or Gucci to handbags. The County Limerick operation keeps a small but select broodmare band and has produced quality horses like this year's Prix Jacques le Marois winner Diego Velazquez and fellow top-level scorers Dynamic Pricing, Broome, Zoffany, Maybe and many more. You're talking high-end stuff here. So, when Brosnan, the former Horse Racing Ireland chairman who built up the internationally-renowned brand Kerry Group from scratch, backed the Orby Sale with some of his best horses, it represented a vote of confidence that prompted others to take notice. Brosnan said, “It's horses for courses. What we like to do is place our yearlings where we think they will be in the top 10 of that sale. So, whether it's an ordinary sale or a premier sale, we try to be in the top bracket. Going back to last year's Orby, we thought all day long that the Frankel would make €1 million and that he should leave us in the top four or five at Goffs. Obviously he made €2 million so he was out on his own in first spot. So we were very happy. We try to place our horses in sales that we think will suit the buyers who will turn up.”The record-breaking colt, who went on to be named Treanmor, made a sparkling start to his career with victory on debut for Charlie Appleby at Newmarket before posting a mid-field finish in the Chesham Stakes at Royal Ascot. He is a grandson of Ashley Hall, one of the most expensive broodmares that Brosnan has ever purchased at $825,000 from Keeneland back in 2007. And while he has a bit to go to be mentioned in the same breath as some of those previously-mentioned luminaries that Croom House Stud has produced, his topping of last year's Orby Sale represented a very proud moment indeed for his 81-year-old breeder.“There are lots of them,” when asked to sum up his proudest moment in the bloodstock business. “I suppose we followed Broome everywhere he went and he was an amazing horse. He won an awful lot of money – over €2 million – all over the world. What's interesting about Broome, and I suppose what was bad luck for us was, we had him at the Orby Sale back in 2017 with a reserve of €150,000 but we couldn't get a bid. Now, John O'Kelly [Tattersalls auctioneer] loved him and pleaded with us to send him to Newmarket for the December Yearling Sale. We sent him over there with the same reserve and MV Magnier bought one horse that day and it was Broome. Had we not listened to John O'Kelly and decided to keep Broome, we'd be a bit richer! So that was Broome.”He added, “We also sold Point Lonsdale, who, again was by Australia, and it was hard to get money for Australias at that time but he made 575,000gns one year [2020] at Book 1. After that, we sent Sweepstake to Frankel and came up with Diego Velazquez. So they were three Group 1/Group 2 horses out of that mare. What was interesting with Sweepstake was she was due to go back to Frankel after Diego Velazquez was born but we had to remove one of her ovaries and she actually missed three years of covering after that. But we got her in foal late last year and she has a St Mark's Basilica foal on the ground now. Sweepstake is now 20, so she has missed those valuable years of breeding. So that's the lows of breeding but we have had plenty of highs; for example, three in a row of 575,000gns, 475,000gns and 2.4 million gns for her progeny at the sales. But, probably last year was our most successful year because of the good luck and the bad luck involved.”Things came full circle for Brosnan last year. With Sweepstake unable to be covered, a slot became available to visit Frankel, which had been earmarked for the farm's blue hen. Up stepped Loch Lein and, the rest, they say, is history. Continuing the story, Brosnan said, “I bought Ashley Hall in America back in 2007. She was bred in the purple and was certainly the most expensive mare that we had bought. Anyway, we brought her back to Ireland and she had produced winners but no black-type winners. We sent her to Invincible Spirit and she produced a very nice filly who we couldn't sell at Book 1 in Newmarket. So we took her home and named her Loch Lein, after one of the lakes in Killarney, and she raced in my wife's [Joan] name. She won her Listed race and placed a number of times at Group level so we were delighted with ourselves.”He added, “We were going to keep her in training as a four-year-old but I had booked a covering to Frankel. That was the time when Sweepstake was out of action so we took Loch Lein out of training and sent her to Frankel instead. Of course, that Frankel yearling went on to make €2 million at the Orby last year to Godolphin. So it all came good. Not only that, but she has a Saxon Warrior filly on the ground. We were going to go to the sales with her but we have decided to put her into training next year instead so my wife will have a racehorse to look forward to now! We won't decide on who she goes to but we send horses to Jessica Harrington here in Ireland and we go to Richard Hannon in England. My son is very much a fan of Donnacha O'Brien so we have lots of choices. The death announcement of Wootton Bassett is particularly poignant as Loch Lein has a very good colt foal by him on the ground. She is back in foal to Lope De Vega. I would have gone back to either Wootton Bassett or Frankel next year with her.”In many ways, Treanmor took the attention away from the fact that Croom House Stud had an excellent Orby Sale on the whole last year, with five yearlings selling for a combined sum of €2.93 million. In amongst that figure was a €600,000 Wootton Bassett colt, who also went the way of Anthony Stroud on behalf of Godolphin. After that colt – who was named Rising Power and is unbeaten in both of his starts for Appleby – was sold, his breeder labelled the stallion as one of the best in the world. Brosnan remains in little doubt that Wootton Bassett, who died unexpectedly at the relatively young age of 17 in Australia last week, was the heir apparent to Galileo, making his passing all the more poignant. Reflecting on the prowess of the superstar stallion, he said, “He was outstanding – he was the replacement to Galileo. He stood at €300,000 this year and there was no way you were going to get him for €300,000 next year. He was going the Galileo route and probably would have been standing for €400,000 or €500,000 next year because he is the leading stallion on just about every statistic, whether that be two-year-old winners or overall winners. It was awful to get that news last week. It was worse than when Danehill suffered a similar fate in Australia actually. Danehill was just getting into his prime whereas Wootton Bassett had made it. I think he was the leading sire in the world, not just Europe.”Brosnan is widely regarded as one of Ireland's most accomplished businessmen. A true visionary, he transformed Kerry Group from a small regional dairy cooperative into a global leader within the food industry. Under his leadership as CEO between 1986 and 2002, the company expanded rapidly with Brosnan living by the philosophy that he would never ask anyone to work harder than he did himself. That sharp business acumen and relentless drive for excellence in his career in business has been carried over to life on the farm. Speaking about his philosophy to breeding, Brosnan said, “If they [the mares] haven't produced a black-type horse in their first three or four runners, we can go very hard on them. We may downgrade them with regards to coverings but we don't stay at that for long because we are trying to keep mares that produce black-type horses. We have a lot of young mares on the farm. A lot of our famous mares are getting old or are retired so now the next band of mares, led by Loch Lein, are coming through. Certainly Isle Of White (Siyouni) would be another one. I have spent most of my lifetime studying pedigrees going back over a number of generations and I can remember the great Vincent O'Brien telling me once, 'look, a pedigree might skip a generation but it will come back again.' I will always remember that. Even when I was in college, where I studied food science, I was far more interested in going to the library to study the books on pedigrees. So I have always been studying pedigrees and, probably, that is one of the things that has stood to Croom House. Vincent would always say that, 'if the pedigree is there, look past the few physical faults you might see with a mare.' So if the front legs weren't perfect or whatever or maybe the mare could have a curb or something, these are things I would have forgiven if they had a pedigree. That brings us to one of our very good mares, Shemda (Dutch Art), who is the dam of Dynamic Pricing. We bought her very cheaply [110,000gns] in England and her second foal was Dynamic Pricing. She came from an outstanding Aga Khan family and that's why we liked her.”He added, “There are two other things [that has helped Croom House thrive]. I can remember John Ferguson, when he was working for Darley, telling me he loved the Croom House horses because they were tough. It wasn't that we made them tough but they have all been brought up to live outdoors because the land is superb – it's probably only a surface of 10 inches with pure limestone rock underneath. Mares, foals or yearlings, we try to keep them outside for as long as we can. One factor beyond that is that we have excellent staff, many of whom have been with us for a long, long time. It is their life. You've Joe [Hartigan, manager], Peter [O'Riordan, yearling farm manager], my son Cathal and more. Nobody needs to tell anyone what to do. There's a system and it works well.”Likewise, nobody needs to tell anyone that if the horses are at the Orby Sale, the buyers will be there as well. Brosnan, one of the most successful businessmen Ireland has ever produced, took the sales company's word last year and was rewarded ten-fold. And that support was far from a one-off, either, with Brosnan excited by the six yearlings Croom House Stud will offer at this year's sale, which gets underway at 10am on Monday. “We had a very good sale last year,” Brosnan concluded. “Two of them sold to Godolphin and another went to Hong Kong so we were well-rewarded last year and we have sent some very good horses for this year's Orby Sale as well. We have a mixture, but certainly two of them stand out. One is a Wootton Bassett filly [lot 187] out of a very young mare and the other is a Dark Angel colt [438].”The post Record-Breaking Croom House Stud Continues Support Of Goffs Orby Sale appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.