jim-bolger
SOME EYEBROWS were raised a few years ago when Jim Bolger sent around 20 of his mares to be covered by little-known stallion Fracas, who stands at Joe Joyce’s Cahermorris Stables in Galway. The sceptics will have their predictions put to the test in the coming months.
Fracas was covering mainly small books of locally based national hunt mares, so to receive a batch of this number of flat mares from such an esteemed breeder was quite strange, albeit a move welcomed by Joyce, who has endured plenty of his own setbacks in recent years, notably as a property developer.
As it turned out, Bolger’s own stallion, Vocalised – who would have been used to cover about a third of his own herd – suffered an injury at the start of the breeding season and, therefore, Bolger was forced at short notice to come up with a Plan B for those mares that were due to be covered by Vocalised.
Despite this situation, the selection of Fracas seemed a bizarre move, the success – or failure – of which venture will be revealed in the coming months.
Bolger has now registered the names of 17 two year olds by Fracas with Horse Racing Ireland, which formed part of around 75 two year olds that Bolger has registered.
With such a fresh army of youngsters to go to war with this summer, the evergreen septuagenarian clearly has no plans to scale down his operation any time soon.
