00:00As everyone in this industry knows, plans for horses can go out the window quicker than the
00:06time taken to make them, but in the case of Sam Sangster and Diego Velazquez, it seems that
00:12everybody was keen to follow the script to the minute. Only days after it was announced that
00:17the agent had bought the horses out of the national stud, the Colt by Frankel went on to score in the
00:22Group 1 pre-Jacques Lamarois. An emotional win, Sangster sat down with TDN to relive the moment
00:28and to speak about the new stallion.
00:39When I went to Valley Doyle to see Diego Velazquez, he really kind of struck me when he came out of
00:47the box. He was very eye-catching. He really had that compact depth, tipped a lot of boxes in the
00:55sense that he walked very well. He was an incredibly exciting prospect. Being by Frankel with the
01:02pedigree, you know, he was tough and resilient in all his racing. The timing of the announcement
01:09was literally when we were arriving to start looking at yearlings, so for me it was a really good gauge as
01:18to whether or not it was the right or wrong decision. The lead-up to it was very nerve-racking,
01:24that's for sure. Trying to concentrate on the job of the yearling sales with Brian and also,
01:30you know, the fact that we had a chance in one of the biggest group ones in France on Sunday.
01:38Could I imagine what happened on the day was going to happen before that?
01:43No, I'd written it in my head many a time and I'd had a conversation with a few of the team at
01:50Coolmore, including MV, and they said he'd been working very well. The stars aligned. Christophe
01:56gave him a hell of a ride, kept it very straight forward, didn't see notable speech because he
02:02wasn't on the screen when they hit the line. Quite something and a moment that will live with me for
02:09the rest of my life, that's for sure. The finish, Diego Velasquez with notable speech,
02:13absolutely flying under the stand side. I think first and foremost, I want to thank the shareholders
02:20because, gosh, they got behind him in their sales. Few of them have gone from having a couple of horses
02:27in training to now owning four or five mares. You know, I think that really just shows from the outset
02:34to everybody what the shareholders are going to do for the horse. You know, the quality alone,
02:40I think there was 22 mares bought across all the partners. We're going to be showing him at the
02:48parade at Tassels in a couple of weeks, again, for those that couldn't make it in December. So
02:53we're just incredibly excited about the whole project.
03:03So
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