Harry Beeby & the Evolution Of
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MONDAY, 28 JANUARY 2019 >RORE=-ING TO VICTORY IN CLASSIC MILE HARRY BEEBY & THE by Alan Carasso His older half-brother Blizzard (Aus) (Starcraft {NZ}) finished EVOLUTION OF DBS third in the 2016 Hong Kong Classic Mile and in the Hong Kong Classic Cup (1800m), but ultimately ended up a high-class sprinter, with a win at Group 3 level and a big-odds third to Mr Stunning (Aus) (Exceed and Excel {Aus}) in the G1 Longines Hong Kong Sprint of 2017. Furore (NZ) (Pierro {Aus}) has always looked a scopier type and it appears he=s inherited a good bit of his little brother=s talent, as he broke through Sunday with a handy victory in the Classic Mile, the first step along the road to the BMW Hong Kong Derby in two months= time. When in for last weekend=s two Group 1s, Hugh Bowman took Furore for a Sunday stroll around Sha Tin, and the champion jockey allowed Furore to drop back into the latter third of the field, as Ka Ying Star (GB) (Cityscape {GB}) got across from his wide draw in gate 12 to set the pace in advance of Superich (NZ) (Red Giant) as Mission Tycoon (Aus) (Written Tycoon {Aus}) got the best trip just behind them. Cont. p6 Harry Beeby | Goffs UK IN TDN AMERICA TODAY CITY OF LIGHT OFF TO STUD AFTER PEGASUS WIN by Emma Berry MGISW City of Light (Quality Road) left trainer Mike McCarthy’s Not a job, but a way of life. That's how Harry Beeby regards his barn Sunday morning for Lane’s End Farm, where he will stand long tenure at the helm of Doncaster Bloodstock Sales, and it is this year. Click or tap here to go straight to TDN America. plain that this is still very much the case, almost six years after his retirement. For the last three years, of course, DBS has been known as Goffs UK, following its merger with Goffs in Ireland back in 2007, but to those in the bloodstock world of a certain vintage it will always be >Donny'. Though the name has changed, some things have not. As the first sale of the year got underway last week at Doncaster, it was a safe that you would find Beeby, now 80, his wife Elizabeth at his side as always, with a bird's eye view of the sales ring on the balcony directly across from the auctioneer. From time to time throughout the day the auctioneer was his son Henry, now the Group Chief Executive of Goffs having joined DBS in 1982, some 20 years after the company was founded. Not long after that 1962 inauguration the young Harry, son of the highly successful dual-purpose trainer George Beeby, was approached by the company's founding partners, Willie Stephenson and Ken Oliver, to join their fledgling venture. Cont. p2 TDN EUROPE • PAGE 2 OF 8 • THETDN.COM MONDAY • 28 JANUARY 2019 Harry Beeby Cont. from p1 they decided to go ahead in 1962 and they had one sale that Though the company was named after the venue of the main year and two in the following year." sales arena in Yorkshire, its offices were then, and remain, in the Deciding they needed someone to run DBS full time while they Scottish Border town of Hawick. conducted their fellow businesses, the partners had a man in "Originally the sales at Doncaster were conducted by mind for the role. Tattersalls," recalls Beeby of the town's historic link between the Beeby casts his mind back to that initial approach with St Leger race meeting and the yearling sales. "Up to 1957, impressive clarity. He says, "I was standing at Sandown on the Tattersalls had Glasgow bank watching racing in January Paddocks which was down in the of 1964 and Willie came up and town. The lease ended on that started talking to me about and they were offered a plot at Doncaster Sales, which I knew the mile start on Redhouse about because my father had Farm, but they decided, come up to the first sale and understandably, not to take this bought the top lot. That was a up. There was a gap between positive, I think. 1957 and 1962 when there were no sales here at all, and it was "He went away and we saw felt by the council, and the race another race. And sure enough, I committee in particular, that this stood in the same spot and up was detrimental to the town and he came and again started detrimental to the St Leger talking about Doncaster Sales. meeting." Beeby sells his final lot | Goffs UK Then he said that they were Like George BeebyCthe trainer looking for somebody to join of Grey Sovereign (GB) as well as two Cheltenham Gold Cup them. I had a very good job at the time with the leading winnersCStephenson and Oliver were both successful trainers. commercial property estate agents in London and I was enjoying From his Royston stable, Stephenson became one of only five that." people to have trained the winners of both the Derby and the He continues, "Anyhow, I thought about it and went to Grand National, while Oliver combined training with being the Royston to have dinner with Willie, and then the following owner of Britain's oldest livestock auction, predominantly for weekend we caught the night sleeper up to Scotland, to Hawick. sheep, in Hawick. It was this link which brought the duo together I'd never been north of Doncaster before in my life. We got out to set up in opposition to Tattersalls, which by that stage had a at 10 to six on a very cold February morning and Rhona Oliver 200-year head start in the equine market. came and picked us up and took us back to Hassendean Bank "In 1962 the chairman of the race committee, alderman Albert and we had the weekend up there with Ken. On Sunday, he Cammidge, approached Willie Stephenson to see would he be went off to Ireland with the horses and we went back to prepared to start sales up again in Doncaster," says Beeby. London. And virtually, by then, I was going to join them. It was "Willie thought he needed to have somebody who was an just as fast as that." auctioneer to be with him, and he knew Ken Oliver very well. So Cont. p3 TDN EUROPE • PAGE 3 OF 8 • THETDN.COM MONDAY • 28 JANUARY 2019 Harry Beeby Cont. That snap decision was clearly the right one. Having started his career as an auctioneer by offering the winner of a Hexham seller in May 1964C"It was on Whit Monday and the horse was called Beau d'Argent. He was bought in for 420gns," recalls Beeby, quick as a flashChe brought his gavel down for the final time at the DBS Breeze-up Sale of 2013. Throughout his 49 years of service, he bore witness to many significant occasions in British bloodstock sales history, including the first breeze-up sale in Europe, held at Doncaster in the late 1970s, but there is one Vice President, International Operations man and one horse who remain the most vivid in his memory. Gary King "Over the years there have been some fantastic characters Twitter: @garykingTDN really," he says. "Ginger McCain with his Red Rum. Undoubtedly [email protected] the best horse I ever auctioned was Red Rum. I can remember it + 1.732.320.0975 to this day exactly, where Ginger was standing, in the old International Editor complex, of course. Where Mrs. Brotherton, who was selling Kelsey Riley him, was sitting with Bobby Renton. In fact, he made 6,000gns Twitter: @kelseynrileyTDN and Ginger jumped from 5,000 to 6,000, which was his modus [email protected] operandi of bidding very often. He enjoyed doing that. You couldn't dream that any horse could be as successful as he was." European Editor The history books reflect that the former winner of an Aintree Emma Berry seller as a 2-year-old would go on to make the Liverpool course Twitter: @collingsberry his own, with a record three wins and two seconds from five [email protected] consecutive appearances in the Grand National. What is not Associate International Editor written there is how Red Rum is still one of the most Heather Anderson recognisable names in racing more than two decades after his Twitter: @HLAndersonTDN death in 1995 at the age of 30. DBS can also boast of having sold the first horse ever to win Marketing Manager the English and Irish 2000 Guineas, Right Tack, who sold for just Alayna Cullen 3,200gns in 1967. Other Classic heroes would follow, including Twitter: @AlaynaCullen Canford Cliffs (Ire), Turtle Island (Ire), Cockney Rebel (Ire), and [email protected] Speciosa (Ire), who was the first breeze-up graduate to win a Contributing Editor British Classic. Cont. p4 Alan Carasso Twitter: @EquinealTDN Cafe Racing Sean Cronin Tom Frary [email protected] Irish Correspondent Daithi Harvey Regular Columnists Chris McGrath Andrew Caulfield John Berry Kevin Blake Tom Peacock Henry & Harry Beeby | Goffs UK TDN EUROPE • PAGE 4 OF 8 • THETDN.COM MONDAY • 28 JANUARY 2019 Harry Beeby Cont. a family and being on a one-to-one basis with people. The personal touch is the one that we've always used and it's More recently, the five-time Group 1 winner Laurens (Fr) has worked out very well. We were very fortunate that we had been added to the list of notable graduates, and she is certainly terrific contacts in Ireland.