Gone are the days when young Hervé Morin, tall as three apples, strolled on racetracks with his father Jacques and his brother Philippe.
But the politician he has become, the current centrist president of the Normandy Regional Council and former Minister of Defense (2007-2010) under Nicolas Sarkozy, has not forgotten anything of this time.
“We barely knew how to walk,” remembers the one who supported the crack jockey Freddy Head.
Every now and then my dad, who ran a small masonry business, would give me a room to play, he continues.
I had won a pair at Clairefontaine thanks to Jean-Claude Rouget's father, who often traveled on this racetrack, with horses with big odds never far from the finish.
I bought myself my first camera like this at 15-16 years old.
And with Philippe, we thought we would one day be on the side of the owners.
"
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From there to consider being one day at the start of the Qatar Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe under his green jacket, pink sleeves, and blue hat… So Sunday, Hervé Morin, 59, knows that he will be won over by emotion during of the parade by observing
Chachnak
, a 3-year-old colt he bred and whose property he shares equally with Jean-Pierre Dubois.
The native of Pont-Audemer (Eure), surrounded by three of his four children, will inevitably have a thought for his dad who lives in nursing homes: “Sharing this moment with him would have been great.
He will undoubtedly also measure how far he has come since the end of the 1990s. It was at this point that the politician also became a horseman.
"Everyone told me I was crazy"
"With two friends, we bought a claim,
Poly Dance
, around 20,000 euros, on the advice of Jean-Claude Rouget, and we were lucky that he won about twenty races," he explains.
We then decided to spend a little bit of money on buying yearlings.
Jean-Claude proposed
Literato to us
in 2005. It cost me 13,000 euros to have a third party.
"
With a return on investment well beyond his expectations.
The gray thoroughbred wins 9 of his 11 races, including two Groups III, one Group II, and one Group I with the Champion Stakes, in Newmarket (England), for a total of 972,000 euros.
Its market value inevitably climbs, and a purchase proposal, estimated between 3 and 6 million euros, from Sheikh Al-Maktoum, Emir of Dubai, cannot be refused in 2007.
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Instead of filling his pockets, Hervé Morin decides to "reinvest everything" by setting up his stud the following year.
“Everyone told me I was crazy, but it was my dream.
There was everything to build on the 70 hectares, mostly fallow, ”he explains.
This is how the Ecurie La Vallée Martigny was born, in Saint-Sylvestre-de-Cormeilles, in the Eure region.
The person concerned spends a large part of his time there.
Hervé Morin opened Ecurie La Vallée Martigny, in Saint-Sylvestre-de-Cormeilles (Eure), which has 12 to 14 mares, including Tamazirte, the mother of Chachnak.
DR
“It is my place of appeasement, of healing.
Seeing the mist in the valley at dawn is one of my great moments of inner joy ”, confides the one who also puts his hand in the dough.
He
sometimes
cleans the boxes and feeds her 12 to 14 mares, including
Tamazirte
,
Chachnak's
mother
.
“I take care of the accounting, crossbreeding and marketing, I'm doing well,” he adds.
And when a foal is born, he wouldn't leave it up to someone else to come up with a name for it: "I spell it out loud and wonder if it would snap when the racecourse commentator would pronounce it.
Literato
, it slams,
Chachnak
, reference to the first Berber pharaoh, it slams.
When I see programs, I tell myself
how the owner could have given such a name, the horse cannot be in the straight line of the Jockey Club.
"
Finally, to those who would reproach him for having both hats, politician and breeder-owner, he retorts: "I don't steal money, I invest, I have four employees, no yachts, no cars. , just this passion and I was lucky to have the best horse in Europe.
Me, I have not forgotten where I came from, my name is Morin, I am not from… My grandparents were peasants, I keep my feet firmly anchored in the earth!
"