Blue Gum Farm, a Victorian stud rich in racing history, can finally bask in Royal Ascot glory.
Almost two decades after Elvstroem, part-owned by Blue Gum, was beaten into third placing in the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes when the royal meeting was transferred to York, the northern Victorian farm is in the international spotlight thanks to Asfoora’s triumph in the Group 1 King Charles III Stakes.
Long part of the landscape of the Victorian thoroughbred industry, Blue Gum is home to Asfoora’s sire Flying Artie.
While the stud has changed ownership since Elvstroem enjoyed a successful globetrotting campaign in 2005, its historical links can never be broken.
Blue Gum has been home to an array of leading sires through the decades.
The most notable of them was champion stallion Encosta De Lago who stood his first season at Blue Gum in 1997 and sired 15 of his 26 Group 1 winners off the stud before his transfer to the NSW Hunter Valley under a 50 per cent ownership deal involving Coolmore.
Cox Plate winner Rubiton, Fly9ing Artie’s damsire, also stood at Blue Gum, as did champion first-season sire Noalcholic as well as Rancho Ruler and Umatilla.
Elvstroem, part-owned by then-Blue Gum principal Philip Campbell as part of a stallion deal worth $15 million, also retired to the showpiece property.
Now, Flying Artie is part of a new era for Blue Gum, situated on 800 acres of prime thoroughbred country near Euroa in northern Victoria.
Changing hands in late 2022, Blue Gum was purchased from the Campbell family by Trilogy’s Jason and Melanie Stenning and Sean and Cathy Dingwall of Caithness Racing.
Flying Artie was the first sire announced to take up residence under the new ownership banner and Asfoora’s heroics promise to be a boon for business.
Winner of the Coolmore Stud Stakes, the son of Artie Schiller bowed out of racing in 2017 and is preparing for his seventh season at stud when he will stand for $16,500 (incl GST).
Flying Artie stood his first five seasons at Newgate Farm, receiving healthy books of mares before his numbers dropped from 201 in 2021 to 40 the following year.
On a Newgate roster brimming with emerging sires, maintaining first-crop momentum made it hard for Flying Artie to compete with stallions such as contemporaries Capitalist and Extreme Choice, who like him had Group 1-winning two-year-olds in their first crops.
Following his relocation last year to Blue Gum, the Newgate Flying Artie partnership remains heavily involved in the stallion’s career. He covered 44 mares but things are looking busier for this year off the back of Asfoora’s win.
Blue Gum principal Sean Dingwall admits he's had to be patient for Asfoora to deliver on the racing's biggest stage after near-misses in the Oakleigh Plate and Moir Stakes.
"We've always hoped and dreamed that Asfoora would reach the pinnacle and win a Group 1," he told The Straight.
"Any result where you get a Group 1 win is a great result. And interestingly Flying Artie is the only Australian stallion to have two runners at Royal Ascot.
"He's a horse that doesn't always get a sale type, so while they're great racehorses, if they're not commercial from a sales perspective, it makes it a bit harder.
"But there's a hell of a lot of upside with the horse, and Asfoora, to me, what she's done today just shows how good a horse he can get. And with a big crop to run for him now that they're rising two-year-olds, it's a great year to go in."
Henry Dwyer’s flying mare is Flying Artie’s second Group 1 winner.
His first was Artorius, who is now on Newgate’s roster after winning the Blue Diamond Stakes before claiming the scalp of Imperatriz as a four-year-old in the Canterbury Stakes.
Artorius campaigned twice in the northern hemisphere, including at Royal Ascot, competing with distinction for Platinum Jubilee Stakes and then also placing in he July Cup in 2022 before signing off from racing when fourth in the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes last year.
“If you said to any stallion master that their stallion, in his first crop that he's going to produce a King’s Stand Stakes (King Charles III Stakes) at Royal Ascot and a Blue Diamond winner, you'd say they would lock that in any day of the week,” Newgate’s Henry Field told The Straight.
“He’s achieved that and it’s a phenomenal performance.”
Field said building a business rapport with Blue Gum was central to the decision to relocate Flying Artie to Victoria last year.
“We very much wanted to support the Blue Gum team who have supported us in some of our racing partnerships,” he said.
“We wanted to support them with a good, proven stallion. We felt he was the right horse to send down to them.
“He’s a proven stallion who has produced two outstanding horses in his first crop and they are so hard to come by.”
Flying Artie now has 135 winners, eight of them at stakes levels from his first four crops.
“He’s a proven stallion who has produced two outstanding horses in his first crop and they are so hard to come by.” - Henry Field
He boasts a true outcross pedigree being free of Danehill, and his most successful nicks have been with sons or grandsons of that champion sire.
He has 11 winners out of Exceed And Excel mares and eight out of daughters of Snitzel and Fastnet Rock.
However, Asfoora is out of a daughter of dual champion sire I Am Invincible and gave the Yarraman Park star his first Group 1 success as a damsire.
