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Incinerator casts shadow over Hawk Wing stud plans

Richard Edmondson
Monday 08 July 2002 00:00 BST
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The glossy sales pitch can now be completed following Hawk Wing's success in the Eclipse Stakes at Sandown on Saturday. The spiel outlining a vegetarian, tall, athletic individual, who likes outings in the countryside and would like to meet similarly well-bred ladies now also has the credential of a Group One victory.

Yet when the magnificent colt retires to the breeding shed it has become unclear where the bulk of his stallion career will be spent. While Ballydoyle have been shouldering all the opposition into the gutter this season – the Eclipse was their eighth Group One of the season as they follow a course on schedule for last year's record 23 – a dark spectre, a geographical one, has become more prominent on the near horizon. The most potent enemy, it has proved, has come from within, in the shape of a meat factory within sugar-borrowing distance of the Co Tipperary yard.

The local County Council has already passed plans which will allow construction of a waste incinerator at the plant, an eventuality which Ballydoyle has greeted with an apocalyptic vision of poisons being pumped into the atmosphere and subsequently the surrounding countryside. The factory owners maintain they are within legal limits. This is just one of several puzzling aspects of the case. Most notable is the late entrance into the debate by the Ballydoyle and Coolmore Stud supremo John Magnier, who is not the favourite for the title of Ireland's biggest political virgin.

Even after Group One victories Magnier has the demeanour of a man whose dog has just been knocked over, but on Saturday there seemed genuine worry that his whole operation was under pressure. "It's the most important thing that any of us are thinking about at the moment," he said.

Aidan O'Brien has already suggested that he would move abroad, probably to the United States, if the application was allowed, citing the threat to his children and horses as reason. "We would have to seriously think about our position because we wouldn't have any staff," Magnier added. "They wouldn't want to live in the area. The implications are huge. About 20,000 people in the area have signed a petition and we can only hope that the will of the people prevails."

Protesters maintain that the meat and bone products burned at the plant will produce dioxins, which will enter the food chain after falling on the grass used for grazing by cattle. Even more mysteriously, the men behind the incinerator plan are racing people themselves. The Ronan brothers include Louis Ronan, who bred a horse called Risk Material which O'Brien trained to win the 1998 Derrinstown Stud Derby Trial.

The Ballydoyle team so meticulous in their planning has now arrived very late in the legal process and has just the High Court route left available to them. The future of one of Ireland's great flagship sporting products, perhaps the most famous racing stables in the world, seem to be under threat. However, backing against John Magnier, the form book of history tells us, is the fastest route to the poorhouse.

Certainly there remains much to protect as Hawk Wing stands as an even greater lure to breeders after Saturday. Paradoxically, his most statistically significant run of the season was probably his worst, almost certainly a lower level of performance than in defeat in either the 2,000 Guineas or Derby.

Hawk Wing hurt himself with effort in the Blue Riband but it could have been worse. Michael Kinane did not give his partner a battering once he saw victory dissolving if front of him. That was vindication for the stable jockey system. Kinane was not there for just one test drive and so never persuaded to blow the engine with one big effort.

In the weekend debriefing, Kinane blamed the softish ground for Hawk Wing's inability to make complete mincemeat of his rivals, in itself a comment on the huge pre-publicity that follows this horse around. You should not have to make excuses for winning a Group One by two and a half lengths.

O'Brien ruled out quarter horse racing and the Pardubice for Hawk Wing's next outing, but anything within those bands seems to be fair game.

Amid all the Hawk Wing hullabaloo it became easy to forget the contribution of his stablemate, the second-placed Sholokhov. He is a general himself, a Group One winner at two, and it will be interesting to note his rating in the International Classifications. At this stage, the "pacemaker" is probably one of the top 10 three-year-olds.

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