Dr. Charles Giles Focused on Quality

Breeding Thoroughbreds initially attracted Dr. Charles Giles more than 20 years ago as a more affordable way to acquire higher quality horses for him and his father to race. When the foals Giles raised began attracting attention, he discovered new opportunities in the commercial market.

Lately his eight-mare breeding program has been on a roll, having produced two graded stakes winners in as many years. His most recent graded stakes score as a breeder came July 23 at Del Mar, where Mokat won the San Clemente Handicap (gr. IIT) by 3 3/4 lengths. Last year his star was Acapulco, who won the 2015 Queen Mary Stakes (Eng-II) during Royal Ascot and is expected to start next in the Aug. 19 Coolmore Nunthrope Stakes (Eng-I). Giles got his first graded stakes winner in 2005 when Unbridled Energy won the Marine Stakes (Can-III) at Woodbine.

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"Mokat is quite impressive," Giles said. "(Jockey Kent Desormeaux) had a ton of horse under him coming out of the turn. I know why they switched her to dirt earlier, because I think they wanted to aim her for the (Kentucky) Oaks, but I think she will be a really nice turf horse."

Giles, 56, got introduced to racing when he was 14 through his father, who raced claiming and allowance horses throughout Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia. The family built its own training track and ran a lot of horses off the farm. Giles said they didn't make a ton of money but ran a largely profitable venture.

"Eventually I got a couple of mares and began thinking we could increase our quality a whole lot cheaper than going to sales and buying yearlings if we raised our own to race," said the internal medicine physician who has a private practice in his hometown of Columbia, Ky., and owns a 150-acre farm nearby. "I found the breeding side to be a more stable flow of income than the racing side of it."

Giles has kept the numbers low and the quality as high as he could afford.

"After we saw the commercial appeal of some of our foals we were raising, I decided this was a good end of the business to be in," he said. "Also, I'm interested in pedigrees and my background in college was in genetics, so I find the breeding aspect intriguing."

For the past 20 years, Giles has worked closely with Pat Payne, Taylor Made Sales Agency's vice president of sales. Together they've made some savvy purchases, such as Flashy Frolic, the dam of Mokat.

An unraced daughter of Premiership, Flashy Frolic was offered by Taylor Made at the 2009 Keeneland January sale, where her final bid of $105,000 failed to meet the reserve. Giles wound up buying the mare privately.

"We had not been able to pick up a mare in the price range I wanted to buy, and Taylor Made had consigned this mare that was a graded stakes producer," Giles recalled. "I went and looked at her and was really impressed. She had a terrific body. She had a deep shoulder and was a well-balanced mare with good bone that looked like she could throw quite a bit of speed."

Two weeks after Giles bought Flashy Frolic, the mare got a significant pedigree update. Her seventh foal—Frolic's Dream—raised her status from graded-placed to graded stakes winner in the Forward Gal Stakes (gr. II) at Gulfstream Park.

In 2012 Giles and Payne decided to breed Flashy Frolic to first-year sire Uncle Mo  .

"I like a precocious sire, one that could run as a 2-year-old, and Uncle Mo was obviously one heck of a 2-year-old," he said. "I saw him two or three times at the track, and I was impressed by his athleticism and his desire to win. He was a game racehorse, and I liked the way he moved across the racetrack. Physically, Uncle Mo compliments Flashy Frolic quite well. They are very similar types, actually."

The mating with Uncle Mo resulted in Mokat, one of nine graded stakes winners the young Ashford Stud sire would get in his first crop.

Flashy Frolic has a weanling filly by Verrazano   this year and has been bred back to Competitive Edge  . The mare is now back at Giles' Columbia farm, but his mares and his foals have been boarded and raised over the years at Taylor Made and at Neal Clarke and Conor Doyle's Atlas Farm.

Giles does still race one or two horses a year.

"I usually sell the better ones and race the ones I can't get sold," he said, noting that placing in a stakes is the best he's done as an owner. Because Giles has a couple more mares than he's had in the past, he might change his strategy a bit and keep a couple of the better bred foals from this year's crop. This change, however, has more to do with keeping his breeding program strong than any kind of seller's remorse.

"I never second-guess that," Giles said about selling his top-shelf horses. "As long as I still own the mare, I am always happy. Where there is sellers remorse is when you no longer own the mare and fortunately that hasn't happen to me yet."