Amo Racing are branching out into the National Hunt game through their share in Diligo who is now trained by Max Comley.
The well-bred son of Wootton Bassett had two starts for Joseph O’Brien before heading to the Newmarket July Sales, where things didn’t exactly go according to plan.
Kia Joorabchian told Tuesday’s Nick Luck Daily Podcast: “It’s quite a funny story. We owned the horse with Al Shaqab and the trainer at the time said he probably has ability to go long distances but may not be the kind of horse that ourselves and Al Shaqab would be looking for on the Flat.
“He was entered for the sale because Al Shaqab wanted to sell their share, and we decided we wanted to keep our share. We were considering buying them out and whilst I was on the phone the consignor made a little bit of a boo-boo, to be fair he’s not a consignor I speak to often, so he didn’t understand me and I didn’t understand him, and he was bought by a jumps trainer.
“So we approached the jumps trainer and said would you like us to stay in with our share? and he said ‘I don’t have an owner for this horse, I’d love for you to stay in'. So we ended up with our first jumps horse.
“I’m quite excited about it. I got a lovely video of him this morning knocking down a few poles because it was his first time but he looks great.”
And Joorabchian isn’t ruling out expanding his jumps team from within the current Amo squad.
“I have a couple in my yard that I feel would do brilliant as jumping horses and of course, I can’t forget that I sold a horse to Tony Bloom, Poniros, that ended up going to Cheltenham and winning a Grade One on his first start. That kind of got me thinking this might be fun.
“Come the winter season you’re always desperate for something to run and I have a couple of group chats with a couple of other owners and we say through the winter ‘god we can’t wait for the Flat season to start’.
“So having three or four jumpers might not be the worst thing in the world just to have a bit of fun with.”
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