There is an old axiom in horse racing about breeding the best to the best and hoping for the best, and then there is Stephen Gillard’s way. Stephen and his wife, Marilyn, who also happens to be his assistant, run a modest operation, consisting of a stallion they own and one or two broodmares. Together the couple runs the equivalent of a Mom and Pop shop, but they are holding their own in an industry in which breeding is, at best, an inexact science.
By Perry Lefko
Stephen and Marilyn Gillard, who have been married 36 years, run their modest operation together on their 80-acre farm in Tavistock, which is just north of Woodstock in the heart of southwest Ontario. They bought the property in 1986, relocating from a farm about 10 miles east in Bright, with the specific purpose of raising their horses in an environment they consider conducive to success.
They believe in a natural approach that begins from the day the foals are born – outside in a field instead of inside their mothers’ stall – followed by familiarizing the horses with human handling, allowing for a seamless introduction to a harness. They raise their stock on big, rolling hills to build the horses’ stamina and on an oval to produce speed. They own their own stallion, Your Nemesis, which they bred, then sold for $150,000 before he made his two-year-old debut.
They bought him back after he ended his career, believing he could do well as a sire for them when matched with broodmares specifically suited to him. Indeed, Your Nemesis has produced some good racehorses, including the Gillards’ mainstay, seven-year-old mare Call Me Yours, that has raced 97 times, winning 27 of those and earning more than $385,000. Classic Call, a full sibling to Call Me Yours, is a four-year-old gelding that has only raced 12 times, winning twice and banking $67,280, and is back in training after suffering a colic bout last August that required surgery. The Gillards’ hopes are high for the three-year-old filly Your Beautiful, who won five of 10 starts last year, including the $150,000 Battle of the Belles at Grand River Raceway in a time of 1:56.1, and four Ontario Sires Stakes races, earning some $143,250.
Collectively, the Gillards own three three-year-olds, two four-year-olds, two two-year-olds, an unnamed yearling and two broodmares: Sharonas Dignity, who was claimed for $5,000 for the sole purpose of breeding, and Midnight Motion, who is 23 and retired. She had seven foals and produced five multiple stakes winners, and because the Gillards think so highly of what she has done, they’ve decided she deserves a home with them for the rest of her life.
Stephen admits that people involved in the commercial breeding business – the individuals who study pedigree, and either stand champion sires that they promote with ad campaigns, and/or owners of fashionable broodmares – would probably be baffled by what he and his wife are doing. To some it might look like breeding something to nothing and hoping for anything.
“Most people in the business have a hard time understanding something they don’t understand,” he says frankly, and then wonders if I understand what he is trying to say. “I know there are a lot of smart people in this industry. When they look at the paper version of what we’ve done and the pedigrees and the horses that we’ve used to accomplish what we have, I’m sure it makes no sense. For us, we have an intimate knowledge of these individuals. We didn’t raise all good horses. We sort of picked this one and that one to try to come up with that decent horse. We all have to raise our share of horses that are not going to do well in the racing game or subsequently be used for breeding stock, but I guess there’s luck involved. If I was on the outside looking in on this operation and I was more mainstream in my thought process, I’d look at the book (and wonder). It will only make sense to someone like us – it certainly wouldn’t make sense to anybody else – because most of those horses on that (pedigree) page are not recognizable.”
His unorthodox thinking, he thinks, is the result of taking a less-than-traditional path into the breeding and racing game. Born in England, he moved with his family to Canada as a young child and settled in Ontario. His dad was a jazz musician, his mother worked in multiple positions in the theatre. “Pretty artsy,” he says. “Obviously this is straying down a different road.”
His father took him occasionally to see the thoroughbreds race at Woodbine, but his first hands-on experience with horses came at the age of 12 when he joined his first cousin working at a farm that had gaming horses. “I got the bug, he didn’t,” Stephen says. “I liked horses and I didn’t mind the work, but it’s something I couldn’t see a future in, so I treated it lightly. I never would have dreamed about owning any (gaming) horses. I could not foresee myself partaking in it because there’s no way it pays for itself, whereas in horse racing you have that chance.”
But life has a way of moving in different directions, sometimes pulling you toward a particular direction, albeit with twists and turns. Certainly that was the case with Gillard. The only thing he knew for certain about his future is that it didn’t include school.
In 1969, at the age of 17, he enlisted in the Navy, following a career that his father had in World War II and his grandfather before that, and was stationed in Nova Scotia. “I joined the Navy because I was going nowhere in school,” he says. “That might have been on purpose. My heart wasn’t in it, never was. I couldn’t wait until I got out the door. I hated walking through the door in the morning. I was never going to achieve anything in life in school, so I had to try something else. I thought with the travelling and the discipline and everything that the Navy offered, maybe I could sort things out better there. I got a little bit of structure, which is what I needed. I didn’t have much structure in my life as a young person, and I’m pretty sure the Navy did that for me.”
He worked on the ship as a purchasing accountant, and when the ships went out to sea he developed firefighting skills on the flight deck for the flying operations. “When I was in the Navy I was just looking for something that maybe I’d like to do for the rest of my days,” he says. “It certainly wasn’t to be a sailor. I enjoyed the firefighting and thought it was a job I can do in civilian life and enjoy it.”
After six years in the Navy, he moved back to Ontario and became a full-time firefighter.
“I enjoyed the work I did and didn’t feel like I was ever doing it for the money,” he says. “It was a nice job to have. It makes you feel like you’ve done something for somebody who really needs your help.”
He took an early pension, retiring after 23 years, and began to focus full-time on breeding horses commercially. He decided about the time he started firefighting that breeding horses was something he’d like to do and focused on standardbred racing because he’d been introduced to it in the Maritimes. “Breeding horses was my first dream about being involved in the standardbred game,” he says. “When I saw them racing, my first thought was in order to get one of those horses I’ve got to get a broodmare. I didn’t say I’m going to buy a yearling or I’m going to buy a horse or claim a horse, none of those dreams. My first dream was I’ve got to get a mare. In order for her to have a baby, I’ve got to breed her to something and start raising these horses that are going to race for $200 or whatever it was.”
He fancied the idea of breeding to a stallion he and his wife would lease. It seemed like a logical idea, and it began with a stud called Bergstein Hanover leased from an owner in Woodstock. Bergstein Hanover sold for $50,000 as a yearling but didn’t do much on the racetrack. He turned into a dud as a stud, attracting scant interest, but Stephen learned the sire’s pedigree should be on the broodmare’s side, and used one of the stallion’s daughters, Pals Miss, as a broodmare. Greystone Al, who produced Midnight Motion (out of Pals Miss), became their second sire and had a solid booking of 58 mares at his peak. He was replaced by Gypsys Hellion, who was replaced by his son, Your Nemesis, the first and only stallion the Gillards own outright.
“We didn’t set the world on fire (breeding commercially),” Stephen says honestly. “What we did in that industry wasn’t worthy of note in my eyes. I had to make a few mistakes before I started doing it right.”
But Your Nemesis, by Gypsys Hellion out of Adanas Beauty, showed talent from the start. Two qualifiers leading up to his debut as a two-year-old attracted interested buyers, one of whom, Norm Clements of Cam Fella Fame, offered $150,000. The Gillards accepted it, giving them some financial security at a time when their two children were heading off to university.
The horse won the $200,000 Battle of Waterloo at two in his fifth lifetime start, and though he was no longer in the care of the Gillards, they took pride in his win. “We were absolutely thrilled that day. It was a big deal,” he says. “It was the first time we could say to ourselves we raised a decent product. It’s hard to match the day. It didn’t matter that we didn’t own him.”
That was the highpoint of the colt’s career. He won the $71,200 Clearwater Cup at three, but by the end of that year he would join the claiming ranks. He would go on to earn $427,418, taking a mark of 1:51.2 in the process.
Following the horse’s six-year-old season, Gillard contacted the owner of the horse, who was based in New Jersey, and offered him a package of two young horses for a price, and asked to have the “old boy” thrown in as part of the deal.
“I had an intimate knowledge of him. I always thought he’d be a good stallion,” Stephen says. “He’s perfect-mannered, perfect-gaited. Selling him was the absolute best thing to do at the time and getting him back was even better.”
The plan was no longer to publicly market their stallion, only to employ him for their private purposes. Aside from a bad ankle, Your Nemesis returned to the Gillards in good order, and he passed on his perfect manners to his foals, which Stephen says took to their training like seasoned veterans.
Your Nemesis’s best money-producing horse has been Call Me Yours, out of the mare Lucky Call. While the Gillards as a rule sell their horses after their three-year-old season, Call Me Yours has been an exception. “She’s been our steady rock,” he says proudly. “She’s always raced well from two until the present day. We just couldn’t part with this horse. We could have sold her many times, but we just like her a lot. Sometimes money isn’t the only factor. You couldn’t do that with them all otherwise our barn would be filled right up.”
In the mid-90s, Stephen decided to train his horses to race instead of just raising them and turning over the conditioning to someone else. He began with the Gypsys Hellion two-year-old colt Ten Red, who earned some $35,000 in his freshman season and was sold privately for $40,000 in the fall to an American buyer. “I thought I had myself a hell of a year that year,” he recalls.
Last year, Stephen eclipsed the $1 million mark in lifetime earnings as a trainer by winning $336,576, and his total purses of $1,139,795 come from just 602 career starts.
Stephen takes a practical approach to racing his horses, employing a simple rule that too often is overlooked. “I try to race them where they belong,” he says. “It’s very hard to raise a horse that belongs on the top circuit. I’ve had a couple that did all right over the years, but not a high percentage of them. I’m not shy about paying them up to big-money races. You will soon ruin a good horse when you let your dreams enter a horse over his head. Regardless of how many stakes payments you’ve made, you’ve got to go in there with the horse’s good and welfare in mind. You don’t want him to be just good this week. You want the horse to be good next week, next month, next year and you cannot race horses over their head and expect there’s not going to be some fallout from that because there is. You may never recover from those kinds of mistakes. Even if it’s only a Grassroots horse, I want the horse to go out and be as well prepared mentally and physically to do their best. Whatever their best is, that’s good enough for me.”
Last year, he was approached by an individual giving him the opportunity to pick the mare of his choice without regard for the cost to breed to Your Nemesis and partner on a foal-sharing agreement. He gave it some thought and opted not to pursue it. “I’m 59 years old. I didn’t want to start a new endeavour when I’m in the process of trying to wind down my operation,” he reasons. “It was interesting and I’ll always wonder what this horse could do if he ever got a book of decent mares because he’s done so well with mares that money people wouldn’t buy or own or use. It makes you wonder, but this stuff should have happened 25 years ago. I don’t want to get narrow in my life. I love horses, but it can’t be all about horses and horse racing. There are lots of things in this world you could and should do.
“I know it sounds crazy to have a stallion to breed to only one mare, but that’s the way it is right now because we want to downsize our operation more to the hobby status. There’s more to life.”
And indeed, Mom and Pop Gillard, it seems, have earned the right to finally step back and smell the sweet success of their operation.