Date with destiny has taken Dance to racing’s top table
As Laurens heads to Ascot, her owner tells Marcus Armytage she is the horse of a lifetime
If John Dance’s rise in business from a “temp” sent to stuff envelopes to founding his own stockbrokers in Newcastle is pretty dazzling, it is nothing compared to his rise to the top as a racehorse owner. In only his fifth season, after planning to buy five per cent of one horse, he has 34 in training, including Laurens who, at the end of a spectacular season, attempts to win a sixth Group One in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot’s Champions Day today.
Born in Cheshire, Dance moved to Newcastle aged 13 when his father, who sold turbines for Rolls-royce, relocated there. When he was wondering what to do for a job he joined a temp agency, which sent him to Wise Speke. “I didn’t even know there was a stockbroker in Newcastle,” recalled Dance, 43. “I was supposed to stuff envelopes but the machine was broken so they put me on something a little more analytical and soon realised I had an affinity for numbers.
“Dad would drop me off on his way to work, which was an hour early. so I’d sit in a cafe going through the City pages. I wasn’t just interested in share prices, I was interested in what drove them.”
He moved to Merrill Lynch in London in 1998, returning to Newcastle in 2004. Eight years ago he and a colleague took the plunge and set up their own stockbroking platform, Vertem, which now manages £300million in assets.
To build the brand Dance started sponsoring races at Newcastle and a week today his company sponsors its first Group One, the Vertem Futurity, at Doncaster.
“While I’d followed racing I’d never thought about ownership,” he explained. “But handing out prizes to winning owners and seeing what their horses meant to them was infectious. It was a catalyst. My wife Jess and I went to a yard planning to buy a five per cent share in one horse, four weeks later we had six!”
Using his analytical mind he could see that there was always a chance of a nice horse coming along but could only hope for that with a number of horses. “Two of the first six were quite good and, incorrectly, I turned down offers, but it gave me the idea that it could make the economics of it, if not commercial, then less destructive.
“Since then, we’ve sold the better ones for good money compared to what they cost. We sold two to Hong Kong which, with Laurens’ prize money [£1.46million] has covered the costs for the past two years. The main reason Laurens is staying in training at four is that it delays the decision of whether we sell her or keep her as a broodmare,” he said.
Sometimes you have to wonder if there is a higher power at work in this world. When Laurens was about to go through Doncaster Sales, Dance already had a twoyear-old named after his eldest daughter, Ashleigh, and was keen to redress the balance with his other daughter, Lauren. In the catalogue there was a French filly that was named – yearlings are very rarely named before being sold – Laurens.
“I liked her sire Siyouni and she was a half-sister to Salford Mill, the Hong Kong Derby winner, so we’d ringed the page. Then Daniel Creighton, who was advising us, sent a text saying he’d had seen the most gorgeous filly. It was Laurens so we went to see her and she was mind-bogglingly beautiful.
“Every time we bought a horse under budget, I’d put it on the Laurens budget, but she was still [220,000 gns] four times more expensive than we’d paid for anything. We’d paid what we should be selling a horse for but now it looks like sale of the century and we’re incredibly proud of her.”
In the capable hands of trainer Karl Burke she won the Fillies’ Mile at two and this season has landed the Saint-alary, French Oaks, Matron Stakes and Sun Chariot.
“Being realistic we know we’ll never find another like her and will have to reset our expectations. Even Coolmore don’t have many that win five Group One races in 12 months. What we loved about going to 1,000 Guineas day with her [she finished second] was being part of the occasion as much as anything, and it will be the same at Ascot, going there with a horse with a live chance.”
‘She cost four times more than any horse we had bought before, but that looks like the sale of century now’