Matthew Sandblom’s focus will be split between Flemington and the Breeders’ Cup this weekend, as his homebred Stoli Bolli takes on the Coolmore Stud Stakes and Ramatuelle contests the Breeders’ Cup Mile.
The irony won’t be lost on one of racing’s most significant individual investors if the Coolmore Stud Stakes script doesn’t go to plan.
One of three Group 1 contests on Victoria Derby day to open the Melbourne Cup carnival, the Coolmore stands alone as the most important, in terms of future stallion value, across four days of racing.
In much the way that history and tradition dictate that the Melbourne Cup encapsulates an audience beyond everyday racing folk, the Coolmore will be the only race that really matters to the engine room of the Australian breeding industry.
And while there has been a smattering of Victoria Derby winners and placegetters this century who have turned their racetrack deeds into commercial success at stud, the three-year-old Group 1 sprint is the race where fortunes are made - if the winner is a colt.
Northern Meteor’s unbeaten 2008 spring campaign had its high point with his Coolmore win - the only Group 1 success in a brief racing career - but one that continued a generational influence on the modern-day version of a race that has existed for 161 years.
His sire Encosta De Lago was successful in 1996 before it was rebadged, upgraded and shifted to Derby day a decade later.
That move has created a production line of colts who have left their mark as breed shapers or as sires of influence after winning the 1200m sprint over the Flemington straight course.
None more so than Northern Meteor’s Widden Stud-based son Zoustar, the 2013 winner who sired the first three placings from his first crop in 2018 when the filly Sunlight defeated Zousain and Lean Mean Machine.
Zoustar also sired last year’s winner Ozzmosis, in further confirmation that he is now firmly entrenched in the upper echelon of Australia’s sires as he commands a $275,000 service fee.
Yulong’s Growing Empire is a warm favourite to give Zoustar his ninth individual Group 1 winner on Saturday among 11 colts, two fillies and a gelding who have accepted for the Coolmore. Australia’s last three champion stallions Snitzel (3), Written Tycoon (3) and I Am Invincible (2) have eight of the 14 runners between them.
Stoli Bolli is the outlier of the field as a gelded son of Deep Field who has been given his chance against the cream of Australia’s sprinting three-year-olds in a piece of programming by Lindsay Park’s Hayes brothers that presents an off-centre approach to the race for owner and breeder Matthew Sandblom.
An educational entrepreneur with an extensive industry business portfolio as a Newgate Stud Farm investor and the principal of Kingstar Farm, Sandblom has also widened his ownership interests to the northern hemisphere.
His name is associated with a high-powered syndicate brand that specialises in buying colts at the yearling sales in the hope they can become future members of the Newgate roster and the Coolmore is always a target race.
“Funnily enough, with the colts’ syndicate with Newgate, we’ve certainly thrown plenty of colts at the race over the years - and without a lot of luck,” Sandblom told The Straight.
Sandblom can claim a “technical” victory with Newgate buying into Ozzmosis before the colt won last year’s race but owning a Coolmore winner in his own right would deliver a personal reward to sit alongside the achievement of breeding the 2o21 Golden Slipper winner Stay Inside.
“It’s been unfortunate that the Newgate colts haven’t really come through as strong this year as most years,” Sandblom said.
“So I suppose it’s lucky that I have a runner in the race with a horse that has sort of snuck up from winning a provincial race at his first start in August.”
Despite being the first foal from the 2018 Debutant Stakes winner Champagne Boom, Stoli Bolli has been an under-the-radar horse since some imperfections on x-rays and scans derailed his sale as a yearling - and a potential career in Hong Kong.
“There were a couple of minor x-ray issues and the Hong Kong buyers weren’t interested in, so I just kept him,” Sandblom said.
“The Hayes boys actually looked at him as a yearling with the intention of sending him over to their father (David).
“I knew they had trained his mother so that’s why I decided to send him to Lindsay Park.”
Sandblom, no stranger to success on Derby day having owned 2016 Empire Rose stakes winner I Am A Star, has an inkling Stoli Bolli will run better than the horse is given credit for in Coolmore betting.
However, he will be half a world away from the crowd at Flemington.
Instead, he has flown to the United States and will be at Del Mar alongside an Australian contingent taking in the Breeders’ Cup meeting.
Sandblom has an interest in a French-trained three-year-old filly who is one of the favourites for the Breeders’ Cup Mile ahead of going under the hammer two days later.
Ramatuelle, a daughter of Justify, broke a sequence of Group 1 placings when winning the Prix de la Foret in rain-affected ground during the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe meeting at Longchamp and is considered the real deal in Europe.
It will be Sandblom’s first Breeders’ Cup runner as he joins other influential Australian bloodstock figures such as Antony Thompson, Colm Santry, Andrew Ferguson, Bruce Neill, John Muir and Mark Webster at the famous racetrack with a stunning seaside backdrop.
Sydney-based Rachel King adds further Australian interest when she rides unbeaten Japanese horse Satono Carnaval in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf race.
“Pretty much it is a true championship race and there’s nowhere to hide but in the turf races the Europeans have it over the American horses so we’re expecting Ramatuelle to run well,” Sandblom said.
Irrespective of how she performs at Del Mar, Ramatuelle will be one of the highlight lots to be sold at Fasig-Tipton’s November Sale, billed as the world’s premier breeding stock event that coincides with the Breeders’ Cup meeting.
“When the syndicates were put together, the deal was that at the end of their three-year-old season, they would go to the sales ring so she’s going through,” Sandblom said.
Ramatuelle’s sale will be an end note “to an interesting couple of days” for Sandblom when the best of Australian racing intersects and jostles for global attention with the drawing power of the Breeders’ Cup.
For Sandblom, as much as he would like to be, he can’t be in two places at once.
“Having my first runner at a Breeders’ Cup meeting means that takes precedence this weekend rather than an overlap with Derby day,” he said.
Bren O’Brien
