Robin Bruss’s Northfields Stud deservedly received the Outstanding Breeders Award at the Equus Awards having bred the like of Vodacom Durban July winner Do It Again, Mercury Sprint winner Will Pays and overseas Grade 1 runner up Horse Of Fortune.

His achievements with a tiny band of broodmares defies the statistics, which have one in every 1000 foals winning a Grade 1, and should have received more fanfare.

Bruss, who bred his first thoroughbred in 1975, reached a height of keeping eight broodmares but affordability has allowed him to operate with an average of just five. Yet he has now bred eight Grade 1 winners, including winners of all of the big three, The Vodacom Durban July, The Sun Met and the Premier’s Champions Challenge.

In the past season Bruss had 12 runners and seven winners, including: Do It Again, who won the July, the Grade 2 Daisy Guineas, was second in the Grade 1 Investec Cape Derby and was Equus Champion Three-year-old colt (season earnings R3,257,500); Will Pays, who won the Grade 1 Mercury Sprint, the Grade 2 Hawaii Stakes, the Grade 3 Spring Spree Stakes and was third in the Grade 2 Drill Hall Stakes and was Equus Champion Sprinter (season earnings R1,240,700); Hong Kong-based Horse Of Fortune (originally named Strongman), who was runner up in the Grade 1 S$1 million Kranji Mile (season earnings of HK$1,007,500 plus S$273,500 translates to R4,771,298); Mighty Emperor, who recorded his 7^th win in Singapore (season earnings of S$85,864 translates to R828,335).

Bruss said, “I believe the purpose of horseracing is to make your mark in history. With one click you can look at the pedigree of any racehorse to 20 generations, but us humans would battle to know our family trees beyond three generations. Horseracing is probably the world’s most documented sport. Money comes and goes but the winners of the signal races are always remembered. The record book for Grade 1s should be the aim of every breeder.”

Bruss, like most small breeders, is unable to afford the service fees of the proven stallions so owes his success to decades of observation and studying. He is not a great fan of line-breeding and prefers to have pedigrees with “class close up.”

He explained another of his tricks, “It is better to own the daughter of a Group 1 winner than a Group 1 winner herself.” He has used that theory to own Group 1 class mares without having to pay for the Group 1 status.

Of the eight Grade 1 winners he has bred, only one of them was by a proven stallion and that was due to a foal-share agreement he had made with Drakenstein Stud. That horse was Deo Juvente, the son of Trippi, who won the 2017 Grade 1 R4,5 million Champions Challenge and was second in the Summer Cup.

His first Grade 1 winner was Basic Instinct (Comic Blush-Joyfields (Northfields), who won the Grade 1 Golden Spur sprint in 1998. His mare Teclafields gave him three Grade 1 winners, Circle Of Life (Complete Warrior), who won the Garden Province Stakes in 2000, African Lion (Shalford), who won the Champions Cup in 2003 and Zebra Crossing (Jallad), who won the 2006 Met. Circle Of Life is the dam of Deo Juvente. August Rush, a colt by Var out of the Zimbabwean-bred Huntingdale mare Bushgirl, won the 2011 Mercury Sprint.

Will Pays is by Imperial Stride out of the Jallad mare Rattlebag and Do It Again is by Twice Over out of Casey Tibbs mare Sweet Virginia.

Bruss’ beginning point when matching pedigrees is to produce a horse that will stay the July distance. However, he pointed out horses who won the July and Met invariably had the speed to win over sprint trips so finding a combination of speed and stamina was important.

He pointed out one of the anomalies of breeding, “Aiming for the winning post is different to aiming for the sales rings. A horse who is going to win the July is not going to be peaking at the National Yearling Sales and although people want July and Met winners strangely those are not the ones that sell well at the sales.”

The National Yearling Sale (NYS) is always Bruss’s target sale.

Do It Again was also sold through a foal-share deal with Drakenstein Stud and was by far the most expensive yearling Bruss has ever sold, fetching R1,1 million. Of his other Grade 1 winners, Basic Instinct fetched R40,000, Circe of Life and African Lion were not sold, Zebra Crossing went for R600,000 but the buyer reneged so Bruss had to form a syndicate of friends, August Rush was not considered of sufficient standard to make it on to the NYS, Will Pays went for R60,000 and Deo Juvente for R250,000.

Bruss has produced three Grade 1-winning sprinters but this was not by intention and he pointed out that all of them had won their Grade 1s as older horses. Will Pays is in fact by a mile-and-a-half horse out of an Oaks winner.

Bruss bought Sweet Virginia for a bargain R200,000. She beat the boys in the Grade 3 Winter Classic and Grade 3 Winter Derby but was small and Bruss recalled breeders had felt she would produce “weedy” horses. Instead she has produced a number of fine horses for different stallions, the others being Strongman (Stronghold), Mighty Emperor (Kahal) and Graded-placed Vilikazi (Visionaire) who is now doing well in Hong Kong where he is named Sleep Education.

Bruss has sold Sweet Virginia to Lammerskraal Stud, “as I was offered more than what I paid for her.”

He credits the matching of Sweet Virginia and Twice Over to Drakenstein’s racing manager Kevin Sommerville, who worked for Juddmonte on the stallion nominations side and had an intimate knowledge of their horses.

Bruss also acknowledged the team effort in every horse bred. He makes the matches but the farms feed and nurture the horses.

“The Aga Khan called breeding playing chess with nature,” he concluded.

By David Thiselton