If you’d like to, you can read more information about Coolmore Stud elsewhere on this site. Ashford Stud is the American offshoot of the Irish horse breeding organisation, specialising in the breeding of horses for races taking place in the United States of America.
Located in the heart of Kentucky, it uses a lot of the same methods that have been developed at Coolmore, but looks to adapt and alter them in order to ensure that they’re suitable for the local environment. Mainly, the aim is to create horses that can head out and win as many races as possible.
About Ashford Stud
Located in the famous Bluegrass area of Kentucky stands Ashford Stud, the home of Coolmore America. As hard as it might be to believe now, the venue opened its doors for the first time back in 1982, when Storm Bird was the headline act of the stallion roster. Having been the highest-rated two-year-old in Europe two years earlier, Storm Bird was used to produce the first set of foals that would look to take America by storm. Amongst the mares that were resident there at the time was Terlingua, who helped to create Storm Cat, a stallion who would have his own impact on the racing world.
In 1996, Thunder Gulch was retired, having written his name in history by winning the Kentucky Derby. It is noteworthy on account of the fact that the horse was out of a daughter of Storm Bird. He also went on to become the first Champion Sire to be stood at Ashford when he was at the top of the general sires list five years after his retirement. Giant’s Causeway added three Champion Sire titles to the record books, becoming just the fifth sire since the middle of the Second World War to boast that claim. Here is a list of Ashford sires that have topped the two-year-old Sires table:
- Woodman
- Hennessy
- Tale Of The Cat
- Giant’s Causeway
- Uncle Mo
- Scat Daddy
- Justify
Both Woodman and Giant’s Causeway actually topped the table twice, whilst Justify holds the distinction of having won the Triple Crown. Meanwhile, Grade 1 winning horses Corniche, Epicenter, Golden Pal and Jack Christopher are also all based at Ashford Stud. Practical Joke won both the H. Allen Jerkens and the Dwyer Stakes, which was then repeated by his prodigy, Domestic Product. The two horses then went on to join the Ashford Stud roster.
The Stud Farm’s History
Owned by John Magnier, the initial plot of land on which Coolmore’s Ashford Stud was based consisted of around 465 acres. It was part of a crucial cattle farm that was owned by Colonel Edmund H. Taylor Junior, who would go on to create the Old Taylor Distilleries in Frankfort. It was known as Hereford Farm at the time, having been developed in the 1910s and used as a cattle farm until the latter part of the 1970s. It was then that Dr. Bill Lockridge began the process of transforming it into a state-of-the-art stud farm, designed to be fit for the best horses in the country.
Three years after Lockridge took ownership of it and began his work on it, it opened its doors for its first breeding season. It wasn’t until the middle of the 1980s that Ashford was born by John Magnier to become part of his Coolmore operation. Thanks to the success of Storm Bird as well as the likes of Woodman and El Gran Señor, the venue soon began to develop a reputation as one of the best studs on the international stage. It began to be known as America’s own ‘Home of the Champions’, housing some of the best young sires in the United States, right in the middle of Kentucky.
Can You Do a Tour?
It is fair to say that Coolmore are somewhat elusive about their operating procedures, which is entirely understandable when you think about the number of world-class talents produced out of the various stud farms that they own around the world. Whilst you can’t tour Ballydoyle for that exact reason, you can do a tour of Coolmore Stud itself. Similarly, you can occasionally gain access to Ashford Stud when the organisation decides to put an organised tour on for those that would like to get a better understanding of what goes into the way it all works.
The Bluegrass home of one of the international bloodstock industry’s biggest players stands behind the historic stone of Ashford. It boasts a storied history, which you can learn all about when you do a tour of the venue. You might even be able to spot a Triple Crown winner or two amongst the stallions that call Ashford Stud their home.
