Derby Runner A Dream Come True For Gary Robinson

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00:00Desert Crown will likely go all favoured for the Epsom Derby after a scintillating display

00:06in the Dante Stakes of York. For his breeder Gary Robinson, the horse represents years

00:11of careful planning and hard work. Gary introduces us to Desert Crown's dam, Desert Berry, as

00:18well as telling us about his breeding operation, Strawberry Fields.

00:23The history of Strawberry Fields was from when my old partner Basil White was here and

00:29I forgot he was getting older. And as he got older, he eventually said to me, well,

00:35you take it on and you'll make it look good. So I actually went on and have now put trees

00:41and all the good bits in. And at the beginning, me and him followed a few old fashioned breeds.

00:50And so now we've proven the families. We've got, well, I think this year, really potential

00:56great horses. And this is the first real year. And after doing a few courses, I've

01:01realised that I don't know as much as I did about breeding until I met Alistair Nicholls

01:06and Alistair Nicholls and me sit down every year for about three months deciding on what

01:12we're going to breed the following year. And then we all get back as a team. And once we've

01:16got the team together, we decide which ones we're going to go to. Initially, we purchased

01:22her mother, which was foreign language and foreign language had been a winner herself.

01:26And we paid what I thought was good money at the time. So you could tell after, after

01:33about five to 10 years of doing this, you can see if something's starting to breed something

01:38special. She didn't. Fortunately, she did have a green desert mare, which is, we know

01:45now it's Desert Berry and Desert Berry went on to win. Fortunately, that's a little injury.

01:49So we had to retire her, but she went on from there and we kept that bloodline going

01:53with Binch and Binary and Proviso and everything. It all came back in. And she's great cross

02:00for certain Galileo type stallions. I must admit Desert Crown is a different one. He's

02:08had two runs. So the excitement is the first run really. When he saw the first one, he

02:12thought, shows a little bit like his family, which they hold right back. And if you produce

02:17them at the end, they got a change of speed. So that was fantastic. I thought that confirms.

02:21And then of course at the Dante, he looked a bit special, but that's great training and

02:26great horse handling. I did appreciate that when I saw that because I did go and watch

02:31him in the ring that day. And that was lovely to see. And he is a beautiful looking horse,

02:35wherever anybody says you'd show him in hand if you could. But it's amazing. He's with

02:41the right trainer, isn't he? I mean, the trainer has got time and patience and that's the type

02:46of breeding we're doing. We're not breeding sprinters. So we've gone for classics if we

02:50can, or anything over seven to a mile and going further along so that we're going long

02:57term. We're into the end, put it that way. And we've got time. Nathaniel's not been as

03:03sexy as he should be, although he is a well-bred horse, a wonderful female line, which has

03:09gone to prove. So he's shown that he can produce good horses anyway and able. But if you look

03:15at his colts, they're really quite successful, really. They've just not got one to click yet.

03:22But his female line was the best of the Galileo. Galileo, you want it anyway on the green desert

03:28side, but his female line came in again. So that's what's really made him a perfect horse for us.

03:36We can pay next year's wages when we sell a horse. That's the priority because we sell horses.

03:41But no, it's just, it's the ultimate, isn't it? To breed a horse. Well, a horse that can win the

03:46Dantes is an ultimate for me, but the Derby is a different game. We've got a lot of tactics in the

03:52Derby and whether that suits us because he is a flowing horse, he's a wonderful horse. And I should

03:58be closing my eyes in the last two furlongs because that's the only thing I can do. I can't

04:04help anymore. Everybody here is obviously excited. They're going to Epsom. I'm sitting at home with

04:10my daughter because she can't go. And also it's safer for me because I might get too excited.

04:15I might even buy a bottle of champagne.

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