Any racehorse can provide ownership experiences. But if you want to dream about following a horse to the highest level, you need to choose your horses carefully.

At OLBG Racing, we don't want to simply wait for horses to become available at the sales and then compete with everyone else for them. We are building our own pipeline of racehorses and working proactively with our partners to find the best horses we can within the budgets available.

Proactively Sourcing Our Horses

As partners with Harry Derham Racing and Ed Bailey Bloodstock, OLBG has access to a network of racing contacts.

Ed Bailey is regularly at point-to-points, sales, racing yards and bloodstock farms looking for opportunities. Harry and his team have their own network throughout the industry.

That means a horse doesn't necessarily need to reach a public auction before we have the opportunity to buy it.

We can identify the type of horse we want, set our budget and work with our partners and contacts to find it.

Building Our Own Horses From The Beginning

Alongside sourcing horses ready to go into training, we are taking a longer-term approach through the OLBG Academy.

We are purchasing carefully selected National Hunt prospects as foals and raising them at Ed Bailey's bloodstock farm, working with the excellent team at Chris Barber Racing for their pre training, before they will join the team at Harry Derham Racing. 

The principle is simple: start with the best ingredients and give the horses the best possible opportunity to develop.

We are bringing together proven National Hunt stallions, high-quality mares and specialist horsemanship, with the aim of developing horses that can begin their racing careers from the age of three.

This approach takes inspiration from the successful French model of developing jump horses earlier and should allow our horses to take advantage of Britain's expanding programme of Junior National Hunt Hurdles.

The Academy is already growing.

Our first Academy horse is approaching three, with another five soon to become two-year-olds. Over the coming seasons, the intention is for suitable Academy graduates to progress into OLBG Racing syndicates and clubs.

For our well-bred fillies, there is another chapter to the story. After their racing careers, the ambition is for suitable mares to return to the breeding paddocks and begin their second careers as broodmares.

We're not just looking for any horses to own.

We're building a racing operation designed to create horses worth dreaming about.

If following the OLBG Academy and watching these young horses develop sounds like your kind of racing journey, the OLBG Racing Club is the best place to get closer to it.

Golden Horn x Put The Kettle On Filly (nickname Polly) -  An exceptionally well-bred two-year-old filly bought by OLBG as a foal. Our racing club members have been enjoying following her journey.