Numbers matter to Simon Munir and Isaac Souede, whose green racing silks have become an increasingly familiar sight in the winner’s enclosure this winter. Both men have spent decades in the world of fund management and international finance, and have invested an increasing amount of their personal wealth in bloodstock in recent seasons. To date, the figures could hardly be better.
In 2012-13, its first season, the Munir-Souede partnership owned just three horses, all trained by Nicky Henderson, and recorded four winners from 13 starts. In the next campaign, a total of 13 horses carried their colours from six different stables, with seven wins from 38 starts.
This year, though, the growth curve has been exponential. Nineteen individual runners have recorded 23 wins from 52 starts, a strike-rate of 44%, including Grade One wins for L’Ami Serge in the Tolworth Hurdle and Bristol De Mai, a runner in Saturday’s Contenders Hurdle at Sandown, in the Finale Hurdle at Chepstow in late December.
Bristol De Mai’s success on his first start in Britain was one of the most impressive by a juvenile hurdler so far this season, but it was not enough to send him to the head of the market for the Triumph Hurdle at Cheltenham in March. That position is occupied by Peace And Co, who won the juvenile hurdle at Cheltenham’s Trials meeting last weekend, and is another member of Munir and Souede’s string.
Their colours, it seems, are everywhere, and will be also be aboard Willie Mullins’s Gitane Du Berlais in the Grade One Scilly Isles Novice Chase on the Sandown card. Vercingetorix, yet another potentially top-class juvenile, will contest a Grade One event on next weekend’s valuable card at Leopardstown, while Vyta Du Roc, who was beaten only narrowly in the Grade One Challow Novice Hurdle on 29 December, is a live contender for either the Neptune Investment Management or the Albert Bartlett Novice Hurdle at Cheltenham in March.
Perhaps the smartest move by Munir and Souede when they teamed up three years ago was to join the client list of Anthony Bromley, the bloodstock agent who almost single-handedly opened up the French market in jumping horses to buyers from Britain and Ireland. As a result, they not only have realistic hopes of victory at Cheltenham this season, but also a string of horses who should move on to jumping fences at Festivals in years to come.
“They’ve been friends for over 20 years,” Bromley said on Friday, “but it was only three years ago that they started to think about doing this together. They’re thoroughly enjoying the season but realise that they still need the luck to keep going. They’re really enthusiastic, Simon goes racing a lot and Isaac watches it all on computer screens around the world at all sorts of different times of the day depending on which time zone he’s in.
“Simon has had two Cheltenham Festival winners in his own right [with Soldatino in the 2010 Triumph Hurdle and Une Artiste in the Fred Winter two seasons later]. Isaac will be at Cheltenham this year and we’d love to get him a winner, but what will be, will be. They’ve got some really nice horses but they’re only actually looking at a few races. We haven’t got the depth of a string like Rich Ricci [the leading owner at Willie Mullins’s stable in Ireland], who has horses at all ages. Simon and Isaac are still building a string with hurdlers, novices and handicap horses.”
Munir and Souede have six entries in the Triumph Hurdle and while Peace And Co seems sure to line up if he is fit and well, the events of the next two weekends will determine which potential runners will join him.
“When you’re buying a nice French horse, you tend to buy them as a youngster, so they can often be quoted [in the ante-post betting] as Triumph Hurdle horses as soon as they’ve won a race,” Bromley says. “But not all of them were bought to be Triumph Hurdle types and there are a couple of embryonic chasers, of which Bristol De Mai is one.
“Bristol De Mai’s easier option would have been to go for the juvenile hurdle [on the same card], but the owners are sporting guys and they’ve gone for the much tougher option of the Contenders Hurdle. We might have bitten off more than we can chew, but if he wins tomorrow then he’s a pretty smart horse.
“That would bring its own questions and headaches, but you’d rather be in that position than not. They’ve had a good run and a lot of luck and they realise that. The season started terribly when their first good horse Kentucky Hyden [the runner-up in last season’s Triumph] sliced through a tendon at Bangor and was put down, but since then it’s all gone the other way.”
Few of the major races at Cheltenham in March will not include a contender bought by Bromley, who has been scouring France for promising young horses for nearly 20 years. Where once he had the market almost to himself, however, now there is fierce competition for the best prospects.
“I’ve said for a lot of years that oddly enough, you have to be more patient to be a Flat owner than a jumps owner these days,” he says. “I’ve been buying in France since 1997, and in those days, you could get people a ‘Saturday’ horse within a few months.
“The difference now is that the French and Irish markets are so strong and buoyant that you have to make decisions one or two runs into a horse’s career, and that brings its own risks with it because you haven’t got as much evidence.
“When I was buying horses like Azertyuiop, Kauto Star, Master Minded and Big Buck’s, they’d all run multiple times in Graded events before I purchased them, so you were very aware and confident of their level of ability. Now, for the same amount of money that they cost, you’re having to do it off much less evidence, and that makes life really tricky.
“Willie Mullins will get one right and I’ll get one right, and he’ll get one wrong and I’ll get one wrong, but you have to make a decision, because it’s going to be sold to someone after just two runs. You can’t wait for it to run six or eight times like we were able to do 10 or 15 years ago.”
