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Atomic Force, the explosive winner of the Gr.2 Prix Robert Papin at Chantilly on Sunday, owes much of his immense talent to his experienced trainer Kevin Ryan, his exciting freshman sire Cotai Glory and his breeder David Barry, who told us on these pages last month about the gelding’s “very strong and lovely walking” dam Atlas Silk.

 

But Atomic Force also pays a handsome compliment to the rearing of Co. Tipperary-based agricultural consultant Tim Bourke, who pinhooked the horse for €12,000 at the Goffs November Foal Sale and resold him to Ryan and Stephen Hillen for £22,000 at the same company’s Sportsman’s Yearling Sale.

In the ten months that Bourke owned Atomic Force, he put into practice some of the advice he gives clients such as Coolmore and Bansha House Stables in his day job as a nutritionist and agronomist.

 

“I have 25 years’ experience in those roles, working with stud farms on grassland management and feed programmes, and I would’ve advised the mineral nutrition of many of the Galileos we’ve seen winning big races over the last 20 years,” says Bourke.

“The way I look at it is that the best feed to give horses is grass that’s highly digestible and balanced for minerals, so what I would do for clients and on my own farm is to test the land very regularly for its mineral background.”

 

“In my experience, you have to keep calcium and phosphorus, the two things fundamental to bone development, in a certain ratio and also micromanage the micronutrients that have an important role to play in growth, such as selenium, iodine, zinc, copper and magnesium.”

 

Bourke believes his meticulous approach to nutrition has played a part in the meteoric rise of Atomic Force, who has now won his last three starts by an aggregate of more than ten lengths.

 

“The horse would have been out on grass early, from the February of his yearling season to the summer, when he was sent to be prepped for the sales,” he says. “As long as they get the right grass and you balance the nutrients they receive, there will be no bad in it whatsoever.

 

“It’s as organic as you can get and it all has a huge part to play in the bone development of the horse, so that when they reach the track they’re able to take their training well and have a bit of an edge over their rivals.”

 

A successful pinhooker needs to have an eye for a bargain at the foal sales as well as a thorough knowledge of nutrition, of course, and Bourke has some interesting selection methods, too.

 

“I partner in a few foals with Tanya Browne and Reinaldo Souza of Mayfield Stables and the first time I saw Atomic Force I was with Reinaldo in the pre-parade ring,” he says. “We hadn’t actually been down to his box to pull him out and look at him.

 

“He just caught our eye and when we looked at his page he ticked a lot of the boxes that I want from a pinhook. First, his dam was rated above 80 – she was 90, in fact – and second, she was by a top sire in Dansili. He was also by a good first-season sire, so it was a safe bet he would command attention at the yearling sales, and the fact that Cotai Glory stands at Tally-Ho was also a big thing as we knew he’d have support behind him.

 

“So I bought him, and I loved him from the moment he arrived on the farm. There was just something about him I couldn’t quite put my finger on, but I noticed when he was in the field he moved like a butterfly – he used his body rather than his legs to move. I always knew I’d got a bargain, to be honest.”

 

Bourke trades only one or two foals each year, but this is not the first time he has found himself in the spotlight. In 2017 he paid just €7,000 for a Hallowed Crown filly out of the Bushranger mare Lauren’s Girl, only for her year-older Dandy Man half-sister La Pelosa to win the Gr.1 Natalma Stakes in the following year.

“In my experience, you have to keep calcium and phosphorus, the two things fundamental to bone development, in a certain ratio and also micromanage the micronutrients that have an important role to play in growth, such as selenium, iodine, zinc, copper and magnesium.”

TIM BOURKE

Thanks to the huge pedigree update, he sold his pinhook for the tidy sum of €62,000 ten days later. Last year’s foal investments were a New Bay half-brother to smart handicapper Saisons D’Or bought for €16,000 from Goffs and heading for Tattersalls October Book 3, and a Dandy Man colt related to Champion Two-Year-Old Filly Seazun bought for €5,000 in partnership with Mayfield Stables. He is bound for the Tattersalls Ireland September Yearling Sale.

 

Bourke says: “They’ll have been reared on the same regime as Atomic Force, with particular emphasis on their mineral nutrition, and then they go to Mayfield Stables, who do an excellent job in prepping them for the sales.”

 

There is yet another well-known horse who has benefited from the noted agronomist’s mastery of nutrition, and that is Chocquinto. The homebred four-year-old filly caused a stir by winning a Curragh maiden at 150/1 last July and has scored twice again this year.

 

“We’re a very small operation that owns precisely those two yearlings, a mare and a horse in training,” explains Bourke. “The mare, Sara Hammock, is a family pet, really. She hasn’t produced many foals and four years ago she had her last one, a Requinto filly. “We couldn’t get a bid when we took her to the sales and so we decided to put her in training ourselves with our neighbour, HIlary McLoughlin, and that’s Chocquinto. She’s done us proud.”

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