The horse that made me…
Trainer Hugo Palmer, who won his first British Classic this year in the 2000 Guineas, talks about Making Eyes, who got his career off to a flying start
Hugo Palmer
MAKING EYES was the first horse I bought — before I had a licence to train, or even a real intention to do so. I had just come back from Australia, and wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do.
Bloodstock agent Amanda Skiffington took me to see this Dansili filly at the Tattersalls Guineas Breeze-Up Sale in April 2010. We ended up buying her together for 25,000 guineas and syndicating her.
As I didn’t have a licence or a yard, we sent her to Chris
Wall, who did a wonderful job in looking after her and training her for her first two runs. I got my trainer’s licence in March 2011, and she won at 20-1 on her first run for me in June at Salisbury.
She won five races for me in total, including two Listed races. If she hadn’t won the Listed race at Vichy in France in July 2012, I don’t think my biggest owner, Ibrahim Araci, who now has 20 horses with me and who owned my first Group winner, would have sent me any horses.
Making Eyes was a big, willowy filly, almost black in colour. She was a good mover who needed soft ground; she was straightforward to train and incredibly tough.
She won those races in spite of all the novice mistakes that I made with her, so she was obviously a forgiving horse as well!
I was one of 10 shareholders in her, and we sold her at the Tattersalls December Sale in 2013 for 160,000gn. She had won us 90,000gn in prize money as well, so we all did fairly well out of her.
She is at Highclere Stud now, and has an Invincible Spirit colt yearling and a Kingman filly foal. She’s now in foal to Dark Angel. H&H
‘She won those races in spite of all the novice mistakes I made with her, so she was obviously forgiving as well!’