Banks Bringing the Talent to Tattersalls

10/05/2024 08:14 AM

“This business is a great leveller,” says Emma Banks, who is preparing for the sales debut of the first foal of her star mare Lady Bowthorpe (GB) (Nathaniel {Ire}) at Tattersalls next week. The Dubawi (Ire) colt is being consigned by Fittocks Stud, where he was born, and is lot 242 on Wednesday. 

“It's getting nerve-wracking. He's going to be the second horse I've sold this year. I had a yearling in the Somerville Sale, which didn't sell. I'd have happily raced him but Tim Easterby bought him outside the ring for 1,000gns, which is great because Tim will do a great job and if there's any racehorse in there, he will find it. But [selling for] 1,000gns ends up with you being sent £82 by Tattersalls. So all hope rests on Lady Bowthorpe and, really, he's a nice yearling.”

She adds, “But they're horses, aren't they? And you can't wrap them in cotton wool, and they're in a field with their mates for the first 18 months of their lives, and something might happen, and that's what you have to accept. And I think I'm quite good at accepting stuff. It'll happen or it won't happen.”

So far, in Banks's association with the eight-year-old Lady Bowthorpe, much has happened. The winner of five of her races, three at group level, the mare brought the house down at Goodwood when winning the Nassau Stakes – an emotional final Group 1 winner for popular Newmarket trainer William Jarvis. 

“She wasn't the easiest as a racehorse,” Banks recalls. “She was obviously really good, but she was tricky and had her own way about her, and was a terrible traveller. William did a brilliant job getting out of her what he did, and Claire, who always looked after her – I sound like Aidan O'Brien – but Claire looked after her for so long and had such a bond with her.”

Banks now has five broodmares, including the dual Listed-winning sprinter Mrs Gallagher (GB) (Oasis Dream {GB}) and two for National Hunt. Both Lady Bowthorpe and Mrs Gallagher were bought for her at the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale by former trainer James Toller.

Banks continues, “I've always wanted to breed and I figured out, for me, I need to breed from the best horses, because when you're boarding them as well, it's too expensive and it doesn't work. The first filly that I bought as a yearling was Mrs Gallagher. So she's very current now. I called her Mrs Gallagher because I got obsessed with Mrs Danvers who was the season before, and she was by Oasis Dream, so that's where the Gallagher thing came from.”

The reference to the Oasis reunion of the Gallagher brothers is of course a telltale sign of Banks's day job as one of the most powerful agents in the music business. The co-head of global touring at the Creative Artists Agency, she draws parallels with that business and the imbalance in returns to racehorse owners.

“I look at the music business because, while they're very different, they're actually really similar, to me,” she says. 

“My clients are the musicians, the bands, and I'm here to plot and plan with them and their teams a career strategy for them, which is what I think I do with my trainers for my horses.

“Nobody goes to Wembley Arena or Wembley Stadium or the Shepherd's Bush Empire or wherever, if there's no one playing there. So why are people going? They're going because of the musicians, the actors or the opera singers that are performing. So the right way to look at it is that if there is money coming in, they should get most of the money, because otherwise, like Maine Road, Old Trafford, they're empty if footballers aren't playing. People complain about how much footballers earn, but they generate so much money, and people go because they want to see Ronaldo. In the same way, people went to Southwell to see City Of Troy do a gallop. If ever there was proof that if you have horses that have become celebrities, people go, that was it. That was a very special moment. I went to see Enable run at Kempton in the September Stakes. I didn't go because I wanted to go racing. I was obsessed with Enable.”

She continues, “I sometimes wonder whether the owners get enough good stuff, given that, if there aren't any horses, there's nothing else. The racecourses can go whistle if there are no horses. The bookmakers, they might say they don't really care about horseracing any more, but of course they do. 

“So, to me, there has to be a bit of an acceptance that without the horses, there isn't Newmarket, there isn't ARC [Arena Racing Company], there isn't any of this stuff. I struggle with that a little bit. The way that the music business works is that, if Shepherd's Bush Empire is the equivalent to a racecourse, Shepherd's Bush Empire get paid a fee for their facility. And you take that and any other costs off the net income, and then the artist gets probably 85% or 90% of the money, because they're the ones that have earned the money, and everyone that's putting it together gets less money than that. That's not how racing works. I've only been doing this 10 years, so I'm still an amateur, but to me, it's a very interesting thing that the feeling is apparently that owners don't deserve as much of the money.

“I'm not trying to be particularly tricky about it, but I just think that we've lost who's putting what into this and the balance is wrong. No racecourse would invest as much as an owner does for no return. They are service providers, [owners] are talent providers. Talent should earn more than service.”

As regards her own breeding operation, Banks is building a promising base of talent with her stakes-winning daughters of Nathaniel and Oasis Dream. She is also selling a Pinatubo (Ire) filly out of Mrs Gallagher through New England Stud in Book 2.

“Mrs Gallagher was my first filly. I bought two fillies that year, the other one wasn't quite so good, but Mrs G did great,” she says. “And so when it came to retiring her, I had decided that I wanted to breed, and I thought to myself that it's rare you get a horse as good as this. So that's where it started, and I sent her back to New England Stud, where she'd come from.”

No sooner had Mrs Gallagher departed for stud than Lady Bowthorpe, who missed her two-year-old season with a fracture, started to hint that she might be decent by winning a novice race at Lingfield. Far better was to come however, namely the G3 Valiant Stakes during her four-year-old season, and the G2 Dahlia and G1 Nassau Stakes at five, as well as finishing runner-up to Palace Pier (GB) in the G1 Lockinge and third in her swansong behind Baaeed (GB) in the G1 Queen Elizabeth Stakes on Qipco British Champions Day.

And in the breeding equivalent of excellence, at least in the early days of a broodmare's career, she has delivered Banks two consecutive colts by Dubawi. 

“She's in foal to Too Darn Hot with another colt,” says Banks, who admits that she is eager to keep a filly from the mare. Lady Bowthorpe lives alongside her own dam Maglietta Fina (Ire) (Verglas {Ire}), a long-term resident at Fittocks for her owners Paolo and Emma Agostini of Scuderia Archi Romani, who bred Lady Bowthorpe and her multiple group-winning half-brother Speak In Colours (GB) (Excelebration {Ire}).

“I love listening to people like Kirsten Rausing talking,” she continues. “She's put so much time and money and effort into it, and the fact that you can have families that go back three, four, five generations – I find it fascinating, and I'm still learning so much. I learned so much from talking to Peter Stanley and Luca and Sara Cumani, and I'm really lucky to have all those people in my life that are so kind and give me info and advice and opinions, which most of the time I take, because I know what I know and I know what I don't know.”

Though Banks is a relative newcomer to Thoroughbred breeding, horses have been a theme of her life since her early years, and she often races in partnership with her father, Richard.

“My dad's now much more into horses than he was, but his father [Sidney] had bred, raced, trained for himself, and my uncle, dad's brother, Michael, was a steward, a Jockey Club member, chairman of Huntingdon, and bred a bit, raced, trained. So there have always been horses around,” she says. “I had ponies when I was growing up and loved it, and then when I got my job, that was sort of the end of it. Living in London and having a job where you're out late wasn't conducive to it.”

Since buying her first horse, Lackaday (GB) (Kyllachy {GB}), 10 years ago she says she soon got over the feeling that it was a bit flash to be a racehorse owner and realised that she “needed to have as many as I could possibly afford”. 

Banks adds, “I introduce as many of my friends to racing as possible, and there's the odd person that doesn't like it and that's fine. And there are probably more people that are uncomfortable about jump racing than Flat racing. But now I look at some of my counterparts who play golf and hold meetings at the golf course for eight hours. So I have been known to have meetings with my team at a racecourse. They love it. I'm very proud of [my involvement] and happy to share it with people.

“I want to be able to race some that I've bred, because I think that's just the ultimate thrill. But I also do have to be realistic about selling. Emotionally, I'm obviously incredibly attached to Lady Bowthorpe, but you also have an obligation when you keep her to give her the very best chance. And the very best chance is the most expensive chance.”

The mare's two assignations with Dubawi to date have not been on foal-share agreements, and after her first visit the Darley veteran's fee rose from £250,000 to £350,000. The stakes certainly remain high when retaining a Group 1 winner for broodmare duties.

Banks says, “She went off to Fittocks and I was having the conversation in the kitchen, all enthusiastic, and saying, “What about this stallion?” And Luca is so good at just killing you with a look, in a brilliant, loving way. And he said, 'Well, no. She really has to go to Dubawi.'

“So I'm £600,000 in, and it's a lot of money for anyone, but it's an investment in her future, it's investment in my future. And if it pays off, that will be brilliant. And I know that I will have done the very best I can for her.”

From the lows of that early setback and a near miss in the G1 Falmouth Stakes, Lady Bowthorpe also played her part in giving her owner her most memorable days in racing.

“When she came second to Palace Pier, that was one of my most special moments,” she recalls. “The fact that we were so far ahead of everyone else and no one had expected it, that was a really special day.

“And then the Falmouth all went wrong for her but Goodwood was just incredible and so special. So special for William – his first Group 1 for so many years, and it was Kieran Shoemark's first Group 1. I still relive it all the time.”

Banks adds, “And I really hope for whoever buys her colt that he's a great racehorse because I can't tell you how much I want her to have a legacy.”

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