Native River
“OH Tom, we don’t buy chestnuts,” wasn’t exactly the answer bloodstock agent Tom Malone wanted when he called Garth and Anne Broom (aka Brocade Racing) to tell them about his recent purchase, a four-year-old gelding from Co Cork called Native River. They visited anyway, more out of courtesy, and were so immediately taken by him that they overlooked their chestnut ban and decided to buy.
Tom remembers the day he found him: “He came out of the cattle shed in Cork and when I saw him, I fell in love. He was a big, scopey, athletic, chasing type. You could see the outline of what he would be in the future: strong hips, a lovely way of using his shoulders, good engine, good head – it all combined to make him a proper National Hunt horse.”
Not only that but a gentleman to boot, as the man showing the horse had a bad hip and “was in bits”.
“He was trying to
