Rick Hore-Lacy is looking forward to playing a part in the racing industry despite his impending retirement from the training ranks.
Hore-Lacy, who has had a colourful career of many highs and lows, is in the process of winding down his Caulfield stable which will close by the end of the year.
“Over the next six months I want to retire. I’m 75 and I plan to, starting next year, try to find a big client and just buy yearlings for him,” Hore-Lacy said.
“If I’m successful at that, the aim would be to fly all around the world buying yearlings for what I hope would be just one client.”
Hore-Lacy has about a dozen horses left in work including Jarrah Twist, a winner at Seymour on Sunday for apprentice Patrick Moloney who is back after four months on the sidelines recovering from injury.
“They’re all for sale and I have to be out of the training side of it well before Christmas,” Hore-Lacy said.
Hore-Lacy has an eye for a young horse and nurtured the early careers of many Group One winners including future breeding giants Canny Lad and Redoute’s Choice.
The winner of the 1990 Golden Slipper, Canny Lad produced the winners of 10 Group One races and became an exceptional sire of brood mares including Shantha’s Choice, the dam of Redoute’s Choice.
Hore-Lacy prepared Redoute’s Choice to win multiple Group One races before he was retired to Arrowfield Stud.
Redoute’s Choice is a multiple Australian champion sire, this year beating his son Snitzel for the title.
The most recent Group One winner Hore-Lacy trained was Toorak Toff, the colt and now stallion who claimed the Golden Rose in 2010 and Sir Rupert Clarke Stakes at Caulfield a year later.
Toorak Toff was a perfect example of Hore-Lacy’s eye for a yearling.
He picked him out at the Magic Millions but had to persuade a long-time client to bid after being barred from buying yearlings because he was in debt to the sales company after failing to sell shares in horses he bought the year before.
