When submitting the breeding sheet to Laurie all foals are required to be named. With upwards of 600 foals born each year though, it is becoming increasingly difficult to use truly original names. Some keep with the tradition of using the parents for inspiration. Many other players do similar вЂ“ some stick with movies (been there done that!), songs (copycats!), famous footballers (interesting especially as one is actually a filly!). More recently I have taken inspiration from the books of Jane Austen (these are currently 2yr olds) and my last crop were named after Downton Abbey (both people and places). In order to keep track of breeding upwards of 25 foals a year, I devised a system whereby I used a theme вЂ“ for example one year I used songs by Duran Duran, another was films starring John Wayne вЂ“ one of my more successful years was using Sherlock Holmes. Chaps Gal was a filly by High Chaparral out of Bosra Sham and again the names linked.ДЄfter that though as my breeding programme expanded so did my names (much to LaurieвЂ™s disgust/amusement in equal parts!). The first was a colt by Danehill out of Indian Skimmer so the name is reflective of the breeding.

In my first year I breed two foals вЂ“ Skim the Hill and Chaps Gal.

ThatвЂ™s right, no matter what method you use to breed your foals at the end of the day they must all race with a name! Others will spend somewhat less time on this, using old fashioned methods such as if I put a 10f dirt mare with a 12f dirt stallion I should get a nice classic distance runner вЂ“ so basically they are matching like with like.ДЄnd then you have the lastminute dot commers вЂ“ who suddenly freak out at Week 52 realise they havent booked any stallions and just throw names into the spreadsheet and keep everything crossed that they donвЂ™t get a 2f dirt mudlark who matures at 6!Д«ut they all have one thing in common вЂ“ names. As we approach the last 10 weeks of racing (or 5 real life weeks!), attention is starting to shift from racing to breeding (not forgetting the End of Year Auction for those who didnвЂ™t make the grade on the track this year!)ДЇor some this will see many many many hours spent pouring over databases, analysing figures then inputting the data into highly sophisticated spreadsheets which will hopefully give them the data they want вЂ“ ie which stallion/mare pairing will result in the next Frankel :)

Well hello mr.fancy pants