Simon Cooper

Frankel


Скачать книгу

Jekyll, Lutyens’ landscape gardener of choice, would most definitely have approved of the splendid herbaceous borders, the flock of colours rising from low at the front to tall at the back. Less than a hundred yards from the house, Shane swings open a small gate and beyond the shiny, black-painted tubular steel of the estate fencing is more striped lawn, specimen trees, soft pale shingle pathways and three turreted stable blocks.

      There is most definitely a sense of theatre leading up to meeting the equine who is often termed, with no sense of anything other than the truth, the wonder horse. In turn, I am shown stallions Bated Breath, Kingman and Oasis Dream who are led out of their respective stalls for my perusal. Privileged though I am to see them, I do feel a bit of a fraud. If you are a keen follower of horse racing, and breeding in particular, those names will leap from the page. For me, just starting my equine genetic education, they are simply the most beautiful specimens in the prime of life, living in the most splendid surroundings. In time I’ll piece it all together, but for now, without wishing to diminish them in any way, they are the amuse-bouche.

      He took to my scratching at the white star on his forehead in good part. Just patting him on the neck seemed rather inadequate; too small and fleeting a gesture to connect with this great beast. He kept his head slightly bowed as we went eye-to-eye. I slid my hand down the front of his face, tracing the line of his blaze, the white hairs that narrow then widen again just as the coat gives way to the soft, dark skin of the muzzle. Warm breath gently exhaled from his nostrils, the steady beat of breathing pacing out the comfortable moments between us. There was a slight damp odour in the air, but not unpleasant. Oats and hay maybe? As I jiggled my fingers around his wet mouth, we ended up playing a little game as he twisted his lips as if to capture a stray piece of my hand. Until, quite suddenly, without breaking eye contact, he nudged my hand away. The game was over.

      And that is what I recall most about my first meeting with Frankel. Not his impressive frame. Not his beautiful home. But his eyes. They followed the unknown quantity, in this case me, everywhere. Rob, Shane and all the other Banstead people – Frankel had locked them away deep inside that head of his. But of the new, he was curious. Something to be sized up, evaluated and considered. As Frankel was wheeled away and he gave me one last sidelong glance, it was hard not to come to the conclusion that he had been judging me more than I had been judging him. It was an odd and slightly perplexing sensation. He is, after all, only a horse but I felt I had undergone some sort of benediction.

      Today Frankel is ten and has spent the greater part of his adult life at Banstead Manor Stud in Suffolk. Indeed, this was where he was born, but his story really starts 400 miles due west in another horse county of another horse country. County Tipperary in Ireland.

      There is a fine motorway that takes you from Cork in the direction of Dublin. It’s very twenty-first century with wide lanes and tolls; maybe it is the latter that discourages traffic because it seemed very empty to me. But the moment you turn off to follow the signs to Fethard, you are in old Ireland. The lanes are narrow. The stone walls in need of repair. Topped with hedges interspersed with ragged barbed-wire fencing. You would never call the rural architecture that plots your journey beautiful. The grey, squat, rectangular bungalows are built with practicality rather than beauty in mind, often juxtaposed by the adjacent farmyards that seem to have been forever falling down awaiting a wave of gentrification that may never arrive.

      And pretty soon you are in Fethard. The roads are potholed. Shops are boarded up. This seems like a bit of Ireland still awaiting the arrival of the Celtic tiger. But you can’t help but smile at the sign on the wall outside the bar: McCarthy’s est. 1840. Publican. Restaurant. Undertaker. One of Ireland’s oldest unchanged pubs. If that doesn’t arrest the progress of a hungry traveller nothing will, though the slight carbolic smell that hangs over the town is disconcerting. Here is a place where peat is still burned as the fuel of choice.

      If Banstead Manor was the last word in understated stud luxury, then Coolmore Stud is something very different. That is not to say it is not smart; witness the mile-and-a-half ‘avenue’ approach which has brought