FRIDAY, 8 JUNE 2018 ANothing to do with gambling, nothing to do with boozing, ARMSTRONG IN SPRINTING nothing to do with women, nothing to do with Haydock. Just those horses. Those athletes that had excelled themselves, that GAME FOR THE LONG RUN had come back in hot and steaming. Just the animal." True moments of epiphany tend to be confined to fiction. In most of our lives, some seed of intrigue only gradually blossoms into obsession. But there has been nothing commonplace about the trajectory of this life. Armstrong started out, 30-odd years ago, begging and borrowing the deposit on two rusting old trucks to haul sand and stone. Now he sits at his desk in one of his quarries outside Bolton, a fleet of 70 tipper lorries and a dozen concrete mixer trucks outside; a fortune made, reinvested, augmented. Waste and recycling, for a long time, but the mainstay nowadays is five quarries: cut stone, aggregate, and ready mixed concrete. One quarry, at Chorley in Lancashire, has even ended a worldwide search for the right material to complete Gaudi's Basilica de la Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Cont. p2 Paul Hanagan, Richard Fahey and David Armstrong at Pontefract in 2013 | racingfotos.com IN TDN AMERICA TODAY THURSDAY BELMONT REPORT: JUSTIFY ‘FLOURISHING’ By Chris McGrath Steve Sherack files from Belmont Park, where Justify (Scat Daddy) He'd had enough of this hot, noisy bar; enough of his pals' continues to appear well ahead of his Triple Crown bid. Click or tap drinking and staring at ladies dressed up for the races. They had here to go straight to TDN America. marched straight in, on arrival, and hadn't left. Now David Armstrong wanted some air, and at least to see a horse. He'd never previously set foot on a racecourse, after all--even though they only lived a couple of miles from Haydock in those days. His father-in-law did the bore-hole there, and the head groundsman had produced some passes for a Friday evening meeting. Armstrong hadn't felt the slightest enthusiasm, when his brother-in-law Neil called. Give it to someone else, he said. But Neil pressed him. "Come on," he said. "We'll pick David Parsons up on the way, we'll all go." Actually it was Parsons who drove, not being a drinker. So here they were. But where were the horses? Armstrong found his way outside, wandered towards the parade ring. A miniature stand, just three or four wooden tiers; two or three steps up; and his life changed forever. "I looked down at the horses being splashed down after the race," he recalls now. "The buckets of water, the steam. And the hairs come up on the back of my neck. And that was it. I didn't leave there until we were going home. I was proper smitten.@ TDN EUROPE/INTERNATIONAL • PAGE 2 OF 13 • THETDN.COM FRIDAY • 8 JUNE 2018 Armstrong In Sprinting Game For The Long Run cont. from p1 But with pigeons you'd inbreed very close, a lot closer than Sure enough, a second dizzy ascent began when Armstrong with horses, and two or three different lines. And then those returned from Haydock that June evening in 2003. Until that lines would be put completely outcross. Don't get me wrong, point, racing pigeons had been his game. But he got home to his you'd still get some that were no good. But you'd breed some wife Emma, and announced that they would be auctioning their very good pigeons. I don't think there's any set pattern, really, birds after the season ended that September. Now they have 27 but it's all interesting, experimenting.@ broodmares, and head to Royal Ascot next week with another "This year, I've specifically inbred some of the mares closer home-bred sprinting star in Mabs than ever. The champion Cross (GB) (Dutch Art {GB}), who racehorse of 2017 [Enable won the G3 Palace House S. at the (GB) (Nathaniel {Ire})] is 2 x 3 Guineas meeting and was beaten [to Sadler's Wells] and that under a length when rattling home tells me everything. Until this in the G2 Temple S. last month. At year I've not been closer than Haydock, of course. This time, he 3 x 3, 3 x 4, but now we've sponsored the entire card. come back another Mabs Cross is a daughter of the generation. And we'll see first horse he bought at auction, what the results are." and also his first winner: Miss As it happens, it was a Meggy (GB) (Pivotal {GB}), pigeon racing friend--the purchased for ,20,000 by Tim same David Parsons who had Easterby at the Doncaster driven him to Haydock that breeze-ups in 2004, four months fateful evening--who first after Armstrong scattered his focused Armstrong on his pigeons in a three-day sale at Mabs Cross after winning the Palace House S. stock-in-trade, the sprinter. Birmingham. This cherished mare at Newmarket | Photo courtesy Emma Armstrong Parsons had always loved condenses her owner's achievements from a standing start. For poring over Thoroughbred pedigrees and was sharing some of she not only won her debut at Thirsk, and promptly followed up that knowledge as they returned from the pigeon dispersal in in a stakes race, but in time became dam of Armstrong's 100th Birmingham. winner. "And he's going on and on, and I haven't a clue what he's "I was brand new to the industry, completely," he stresses. "An talking about," grins Armstrong. "But then he said this to me: annual bet on the Grand National, that was it. And I'm not a 'You've done very well with sprint pigeons, 75 to 200 miles, gambler, never have been. So there was nothing I thought I that's what you love. You've won from France, you've won lots knew. Once I put my foot over the threshold, it was a massive of different races, but you love the sprinters. Now in racing all learning curve that first three or four years: everything, the the sheikhs, all the big money men, are focusing on the milers good, the bad, as much as I could take in, day and night and above. So you've more chance of breeding a very good pestering people." sprinter.' And he was absolutely spot on. That advice went On one level, it can be an advantage to come fresh into a unappreciated for a good few years--through lack of world of unquestioned norms. Especially if the questions you ask understanding, not lack of respect. But by God I do appreciate it are founded not just in commercial experience, but in a lifelong now." affinity with animals. Armstrong was raised on a three-acre It was also Parsons who introduced Armstrong to Easterby's smallholding with ponies and donkeys, hens and geese, and farrier. And when Easterby took him to see his St Leger winner developed a corresponding interest in breeding. Not just Bollin Eric (GB) (Shaamit {Ire}) at stud, Armstrong's eyes really lit pigeons, but cattle and other livestock. In his new passion, up. All those mares and foals! Very soon he started laying the equally, it is breeding that has driven the expansion of his stable. foundations of his own breeding programme. "You go to the races, it's over in a minute," he says. "Breeding is "Miss Meggy only had half a page," Armstrong recalls. "The continuous, the rearing and the planning. It was the same with bottom half was pure white paper. She's made her own the pigeons: the breeding interested me more than the racing. pedigree. But she got me hooked quite quickly on Pivotal. So I That hybrid vigour--We bought a lot of stock birds from Holland bought Mayleaf (GB) (Pivotal {GB}) as a yearling at and Belgium. Streets ahead of this country, they were. Newmarket. Cont. p3 TDN EUROPE/INTERNATIONAL • PAGE 3 OF 13 • THETDN.COM FRIDAY • 8 JUNE 2018 Armstrong cont. She was not the best of her knees and didn't get to the racecourse. But she was a bloody flying machine, and built like a tank." Sadly Mayleaf died when her first foal was just three months old. Armstrong called the colt Mayson (GB) (Invincible Spirit {Ire}), and in 2012 he won the G1 July Cup by five lengths. Less than 10 years after first setting foot on a racecourse, Armstrong had home-bred a champion sprinter. Moreover he wasn't even present, having instead gone to York to see the debut of a colt Vice President, International Operations named Garswood (GB) (Dutch Art GB}): the next turn of the Gary King wheel. Though beaten that day, a couple of years later Twitter: @garykingTDN Garswood scored a Group 1 success of his own in the Prix [email protected] Maurice de Gheest. + 1.732.320.0975 International Editor Kelsey Riley Twitter: @kelseynrileyTDN [email protected] European Editor Emma Berry Twitter: @collingsberry [email protected] Associate International Editor Heather Anderson Twitter: @HLAndersonTDN Marketing Manager Alayna Cullen Twitter: @AlaynaCullen Mayson as a foal with his dam shortly [email protected] before her death | Photo courtesy Emma Armstrong Contributing Editor Today both Mayson and Garswood are standing alongside the Alan Carasso venerable Pivotal at Cheveley Park Stud, long a natural port of Twitter: @EquinealTDN call for Armstrong in his quest for speed. "I have a lot of time for Cheveley Park," he confirms. "It's a proper set-up, with a Cafe Racing success-rate with sprinters that's absolutely second to none.