Soldier's Call

A one-stop shop for stallion nominations? Well maybe it's not quite there yet but, having only launched last autumn during the yearling sales, the stallion nomination trading website buyanom.com has quickly gained a decent following. A browse through its listing pages this week showed nominations available to Dandy Man (Ire), Dark Angel (Ire), Kodiac (GB), Oasis Dream (GB) and Showcasing (GB) among the more established stallions, and these are just a fraction of the those for sale, with the first-season sires available including crack sprinter Soldier's Call (GB) and Arc...

On a typically busy day last week at Ballyhane Stud, Joe Foley was asked by a visitor, "What do you actually do?" It's a good question, and one which it would be hard for the master of Ballyhane to answer definitively. That's not because he's idle, but because there are few facets of Irish breeding and racing in which Foley is not actively involved. On that particular day he had just delivered 100 questions—some of them fiendishly difficult—for the popular quiz named in memory of his friend Mark O'Hanlon and...