'I was chucked under the bus but people had my back' – Tom Malone looks to the future after media storm

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On this occasion, Martin Stevens speaks to leading agent Tom Malone about a milestone winner and a rocky year – subscribers can get more great insight every Monday to Friday.

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Bloodstock agent Tom Malone’s long-serving assistant Nick Taylor is not only a walking form book and fine judge of a horse, but also a fastidious administrator. Thanks to his diligent record-keeping he was recently able to deliver some welcome good news to his boss, who has endured a bit of a rocky year, professionally at least.

It turned out that Three Pikes, who notched a decisive victory in the bumper at Newton Abbot on Friday, was the 4,000th individual race winner that Malone had been responsible for purchasing. 

Fittingly, the five-year-old son of Jack Hobbs was trained by Henry Oliver for Nick Shutts, whose colours were also carried by Milton Des Bieffes, the first entry on Malone’s winning roll of honour back in December 2006.

Malone had bought Milton Des Bieffes on spec a few months earlier, having seen him take a ‘winners of one’ point-to-point at Moira and noticed that he was in possession of an easily exploitable official rating under rules.

“I was a 3lb claimer when I approached Nick as I was leaving Uttoxeter one day,” recalls Malone. “He didn’t know me from Adam, and I didn’t know him that well, but I said ‘Mr Shutts, I’d like to speak to you about selling you a horse’. He just said, ‘Who are you?’. 

“I told him about myself, and the story with Milton Des Bieffes. I explained that I wouldn’t take any commission, but in return I’d have to ride the horse. He thought about it for a while and finally said, ‘Okay. I’ll have him.’”

“I rode Milton Des Bieffes to win a novices’ handicap hurdle at Warwick on New Year’s Eve, and who was on the runner-up? Henry Oliver! I won two more races on the horse, and bought a few more for Nick over the years.

“It was only three weeks ago that I bought Three Pikes at Doncaster to go into training with Henry for Nick. For him to become my 4,000th winner is quite something, it really is.”

Malone bought several other inexpensive horses he rode himself in the mid-noughties before he retired from the weighing room and focussed all his energies on his agency work. He recorded a lot of winners in his new career by carving out a niche for himself in the early days of boutique jumps sales at Cheltenham.

“In those days, there were only a couple of point-to-point sales in a year and the full catalogue was out five weeks in advance of them, so I could go around all the yards and try the horses by riding them myself,” he says.

“It was exhausting work. I remember once heading back from Richard Pugh’s in Kilmeague, having ridden about 50 horses around Ireland in four days, and stopping into a bookies in Prosperous to watch the Grand National. It was the year AP McCoy won on Don’t Push It and I got all emotional, through a mixture of being drained from riding and being overjoyed by the result.

“It was valuable to do, though. It might not have always bought me the best horses, but it stopped me from buying the wrong ones. It all came to an end when there was a boutique sale every two weeks in the point-to-point season, with a raft of wildcards being entered after the catalogues had been compiled.

Envoi Allen: "He had a few setbacks along the way but at the end of the day he did what he was bought for."Credit: Patrick McCann (racingpost.com/photos)

“It became impossible to get around to ride all the horses, but as it happened I was starting to buy more and more winners I hadn’t tried, so I gained the confidence that I didn’t have to ride them.”

Malone has amassed the rest of his 4,000 race winners in more conventional fashion, sourcing horses at public sales or on a private basis for a wide range of owners and trainers – although he retains a spark of his old enterprising spirit by purchasing some horses on spec and keeping them at his yard in Somerset until he finds someone to take them off his hands.

He remembers every single one of those scorers, he insists. 

The one that he’s most proud of is Envoi Allen, who was bought on behalf of Cheveley Park Stud for £400,000 from a Tattersalls Cheltenham Sale after bolting up by ten lengths at Ballinaboola for Colin Bowe. 

“I know he was obvious, and cost a lot of money, so some lads will knock me for saying that, but he’s the one who excited me most,” says Malone. “At one point he really did look like he could be the next Arkle. There was the glimmer of something seriously special about him. 

“He had a few setbacks along the way but at the end of the day he did what he was bought for, by winning three Grade 1s at the Cheltenham Festival.”

Malone nominates two other horses as his best bargain acquisitions.

“Irving was bought out of Germany for €60,000 and won the Fighting Fifth Hurdle twice and a heap of other Graded races,” he says. “Native River cost sub-six-figures and was a great chaser, winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup. They were two proper top-notch horses who didn’t cost the earth.”

Malone’s hall of fame includes further Grade 1 winners Adagio, Black Corton, Bravemansgame, Brindisi Breeze, Captain Teague, Delta Work, Dodging Bullets, Dynamite Dollars, Finian’s Oscar, Lalor, Quel Destin, Quilixios, Slate House, Stage Star, Stay Away Fay and The Worlds End, plus Grand National hero One For Arthur – not to mention a few Flat stars like Caspar Netscher and My Dream Boat.

“Looking back at the records I had 37 race winners in my first season buying horses, 57 in my second, 112 in my third, 258 in my fourth and then 347 four years later, which was a personal best,” says the agent.

“I didn’t quite get to 365, which was a shame, as I was hoping to be able to shout about a winner every day. I regularly have between 200 and 250 winners each year now, and I’ll keep kicking.”

Malone was doing just that when he found himself in the eye of a media storm earlier this year. 

Irving: dual Fighting Fifth Hurdle winner Credit: Grossick Racing Photography

He had filled the role of principal talent scout to Paul Nicholls for more than a decade, and purchased a good few of the above-named top-level winners for the 14-time British champion jumps trainer during that time. 

But, when Ditcheat had a quieter season than usual, some fingers outside the yard were pointed at him. Armchair pundits, and a few professional ones, impugned his reputation for sourcing quality stock. 

Nicholls insisted in interviews he would still use the services of Malone on an ad hoc basis, but also said he would change direction by giving his daughter Megan more responsibility for sourcing horses. 

Malone emerged from the furore bloodied but unbowed.

“Some of the comments on social media were bordering on hounding and harassment, but it’s no different from what jockeys and trainers get,” he says. “I’m professional enough to know that when you’re in a high-profile job you’re there to be shot at. I get it.

“Having said that, I was a bit disappointed with some in the broadcast media, as they took it a bit far at times. They know who they are, and I won’t forget it.

“I didn’t like the way I was being chucked under the bus by some people, but I didn’t shout or roar or bark about it. I kept my head down and kept quiet, and I think that will pay dividends in the long run.

“I still maintain that things will get better, and that the horses I bought for Paul before the last six months will prove me right eventually. I still have a lot of horses with him who haven’t even run yet, too."

Malone has also continued to feed horses into Nicholls' yard even though Megan Nicholls has done most of the shopping for the stable at the store sales this year, as her father said would be the case.

“It was never a split, in spite of what the press reported,” says Malone. “In every interview Paul gave he said Tom buys for everyone, and he’ll continue to buy for me, but I want to do things differently. I understood it for what it was, but everyone else jumped on the bandwagon and said I was sacked. Myself and Paul never fell out. We still speak daily.

“I’ve bought him some new recruits recently. Sir Martin Broughton and his team gave me a pat on the shoulder a few months ago and said ‘you have an order from us, get us one’. I’ve found them a lovely horse out of France called One Island. He won at Le Mans last month and he’ll be a juvenile hurdler for the coming jumps season.

“A few of Paul’s other owners also gave me orders, and Paul bought one off of me himself the other week. I’ve worked with him for a dozen or so years, during which he won most of his trainer titles and record amounts of prize-money, and we continue to work together.

Paul Nicholls and Tom Malone (left and centre) in action at Kildare Paddocks Credit: SARAH FARNSWORTH

“Ditcheat will fly again this season, there’ll be so many well-handicapped horses. In years to come people will look back on the last 12 months as a blip.”

Broughton wasn’t the only one to rally around Malone when he came under fire in recent months. Many did, it seems. The good will wasn’t undeserved, as the agent has done his fair share for others in the past. 

For instance, last October he raised more than £36,000 for Racing Welfare and the Injured Jockeys Fund by taking part in a charity race at Wincanton in memory of Keagan Kirkby, a valued member of the Ditcheat team who died after a fall in a point-to-point.

This writer also remembers interviewing Malone in the depths of Covid, when the agent wasn’t going to let a little thing like a pandemic stop him from doing deals for horses across Europe remotely.

I asked him then whether he was concerned that smaller operators would suffer during the crisis, financially or mentally, and he assured me that he and others who were in a position to help would never let that happen. 

“People have had my back, absolutely,” says Malone. “I had so many phone calls from very influential names in the sport, which gave me the kick I needed.

“No-one made a big deal about it, they just opened the door. There was no need to talk about it at length, it wasn’t going to change anything that had happened. I’m a chirpy chap. I don’t like negativity, I just want to get on with finding the fastest horses.

“Things are picking up nice and quietly now. I’ve had the busiest spring I’ve ever had. I haven’t missed a beat.”

Does Malone concede that there exists a gulf between the industry’s perception of him and what the racing public think of him?

“Definitely,” he says. “If I have a horse in the yard that I’ve bought on spec, I pride myself on being able to lift up the phone to every single trainer, and most owners, and sell it to them. 

“There’s a reason for that: those people know what I’ve done and they trust what I do. I’ve had winners with just about everyone.

“I just have to accept what the outside perception of me is. I can’t change that. But they don’t know me. In the industry, 99 per cent of people would stand beside me if need be.”

Malone won’t allow himself to wallow in negativity for long. He is already looking forward to his next 4,000 winners and has made a few adjustments of his own to his modus operandi to get there as quickly as possible.  

“I’ve bought a lot of three-year-olds ready to go juvenile hurdling this year, and I’m really looking forward to them as they’re something I’ve been lacking with my team of trainers for a period of time,” he says.

“Leaning on stores left us naked in the three-year-old division, so I’ve made a conscious effort to make sure we’re better stocked. Three-year-old hurdles are the easiest races to win, but the winners are the hardest type of horse to buy. You used to be able to purchase Flat horses for that purpose but there are very few who are good enough that jumps owners can afford now.

“I’ve bought some two-year-olds and three-year-olds in France, including a few out of claimers. I recently claimed a lovely horse called Anaconda who won at Compiegne and he’s gone to Lucinda Russell and Peter Scudamore. He ran against horses with values of €100,000 or more, and we claimed him for a fraction of that. There’s lots of quirky little ones like him who should do the job.”

Malone also nominates Bud Fox, a son of Walk In The Park who scored in the first four-year-old point-to-point in Ireland this year and in a bumper at the Punchestown Festival for new client Owen Daley, and Sapphos Word, a Poet’s Word filly who won at Lingstown in March and has gone into training with Jamie Snowden, as likely sorts to further swell his haul of winners when the jumps season gets into full swing in the autumn.

Also to look forward to are the nine store horses that the agent has signed for in the last month. There will likely be more to come at Tattersalls Ireland and Arqana over the next few weeks.

Recent events certainly haven’t slowed down Malone. If anything they’ve spurred him on to reach 5,000, 6,000, 7,000, 8,000 winners even more quickly.

“By god, light a fire under me and see what I can do,” he says, lowering his voice. “Just see what I can do.”

Goffs London Sale

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“You have an idea when you're buying them they could be Royal Ascot horses and we generally like to race them through the winter as jumps horses,” says Patrick Mullins about another big week for the yard.

Pedigree pick

Ordinary fare in Britain and Ireland today, as you would expect on the eve of Royal Ascot, although we are set to be treated to the debut of a sibling to a winner at last year’s royal meeting.

Kunaa, declared for the five-furlong restricted maiden at Windsor (6.30), is by Inns Of Court and out of the dual-winning Cape Cross mare Hard Walnut, making her a half-sister to three winners including Haatem, who landed the Jersey Stakes a little further south in Berkshire last June after finishing placed in both the English and Irish 2,000 Guineas.

Kunaa is trained by Dave Loughnane for Nawaf Almutairi, having been bought by the handler with Micheal Orlandi’s Compas Equine for just €20,000 at the Tattersalls Ireland Breeze-Up Sale last month. 

The fact that she was so cheap in spite of her impressive pedigree could be construed as a negative but Loughnane bought last year’s Prestige Stakes winner Anshoda, also by Inns Of Court, for just €5,000 from the same sale last year. Orlandi also has an eye for a bargain, having bought Loughnane’s Royal Ascot winner Lola Showgirl as a foal for a mere €15,000.

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