How Matt Laurie’s gamble on a first-season sire can turn into a massive Blue Diamond windfall

Mornington trainer Matt Laurie is back in familiar territory, setting a valuable colt for a stallion-making target at Caulfield.

Three years ago, he was in a similar position with the racehorse Portland Sky, who dead-heated for victory in the Group 1 Oakleigh Plate and who, in doing so, sailed into contention as a valuable stallion prospect. Months later, Portland Sky joined the roster at Widden.

Laurie will send out the favourite, two-year-old colt Coleman, for Saturday’s Group 1 Blue Diamond Stakes and, should the horse win, he will become one of the most valuable sire prospects in Australia.

“There’s no doubt we got lucky,” Laurie tells The Straight. “Coleman is a very smart horse and I guess he is following on from Portland Sky. It was a thrill being able to get a Group 1 for that horse and see him go off to stud, and hopefully, this bloke will be able to do the same.”

In a juvenile season that has included the boom colts Storm Boy, Switzerland and Bodyguard, Coleman has earned his stripes.

In two lifetime starts, he has won the Listed Debutant Stakes and Group 3 Chairman’s Stakes, joining two others in the Blue Diamond field that remain unbeaten (including Bodyguard). 

Coleman is just shy of $250,000 in earnings, which will climb considerably if he wins on Saturday. However, it’s his stallion value that will rocket in the aftermath of a victory, and Laurie has been here before.

In 2021, when Portland Sky won the Oakleigh Plate, interest in that horse surged, even if part of his appeal was his Deep Field sireline. 

“Deep Field had been such a success at stud and, at that stage, I don’t think he’d had a Group 1 winner,” Laurie says. “So Portland Sky was of major interest when he started doing things, and certainly once he secured the Oakleigh Plate we had a lot of enquiries. He backed that up with a very decent performance in the William Reid.”

It’s anyone’s guess what Coleman will be worth if he wins the Blue Diamond. If he also wins the Golden Slipper in Sydney next month, it could be any figure north of $40 million.

The point of difference between Coleman and Portland Sky, however, is that Coleman isn’t by a proven stallion. He is by the Australian first-season sire Pierata, who now stands at Yulong after relocating from Aquis last year.

Pierata advertises a strong sireline, being by Pierro, but he is yet to be proven, with Coleman his only winner from 14 runners. Laurie says it was the sire’s profile that probably helped him to buy Coleman last year at the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale.

“If he was by a Snitzel or an I Am Invincible, he would have been a million-dollar colt, and that was my justification for jumping in on a first-season sire,” the trainer says. “It might have put a lot of other people off, I don’t know. 

“I loved the way he paraded out of his box at the sale. He was active and bright and he looked like he was handling the heat really well. He was just an attractive horse, and he stood out.”

Laurie paid $550,000 for Coleman, making the bay colt the third most expensive Pierata yearling sold last year. He wasn’t a cheap horse, but when compared to the seven figures routinely coughed up by the cashed-up colts’ syndicates, it might be a bargain.

“We’re not buying in big enough numbers at the sales where we can legitimately be thinking about buying future sires,” Laurie says. “You’ve got big groups banding together now and buying multiple colts on the chance to be creating a stallion for later on, and it’s hard to compete with that. You’ve got to be buying big numbers.

“Coleman really stood out for me at the sales, but, as you can imagine, there are huge numbers at the Gold Coast and it can be a bit like throwing a dart at a board. Every second horse looks pretty good.”

Along with Laurie, Hong Kong-based bloodstock agent Justin Bahen appeared on the buyer’s ticket for Coleman. Bahen does a lot of buying with the trainer, but he says that the pair doesn’t routinely shop for future stallion prospects.

“The quick answer to that is no, we don’t,” he tells The Straight. “The end answer is that you hope they’re fast enough to end up at a stallion barn somewhere.”

Bahen deflects all the credit for Coleman to Laurie and his largest owner, the Melbourne businessman Robert Cummings, in whose colours the colt races. He added that none of them were shopping for a stallion on the Gold Coast last year, and that unless you’re a large colts’ syndicate, you’re just shopping for the fastest horse.

“And that’s whether it’s a filly or a colt,” he says. “If they end up being a Group-winning colt at two, they’re worth a lot of money. If a filly does it, she’s worth enough money but probably never worth the value of a colt, and that’s just a fact. It’s simple maths.”

In the Blue Diamond field this Saturday, Bodyguard is one product of the colts-buying agenda. He was specifically bought by James Harron for him and his clients to chase a stallion future, and his price tag at that same Gold Coast sale was $1.6 million. 

Harron has form in this space, buying the Golden Slipper winner Capitalist, who now stands at Newgate Farm successfully, as well as future sires King’s Legacy and Pariah.

“If he was by a Snitzel or an I Am Invincible, he would have been a million-dollar colt, and that was my justification for jumping in on a first-season sire.” – Coleman’s trainer Matt Laurie. 

According to Bahen, it’s unlikely that any stallion deal for Coleman will be done ahead of this Saturday though.

“More often than not, stallion deals are done post a two-year-old Group 1,” he says. “So whoever wins on Saturday, if they’re a colt you can be sure there are going to be offers made.”

Among the list of owners in Coleman are Trilogy’s Sean Dingwall and Jason Stenning. They are in for five per cent each, but this pair also owns Blue Gum Farm in Victoria, which stands Sejardan and Flying Artie.

Trilogy purchased Blue Gum in mid-2022, and the new owners made no secret of their intention to stand stallions. But Dingwall tells The Straight that he’s not sure they’d be in the running to put Coleman on the Blue Gum roster should the colt win the Blue Diamond.

Harron holds strongest hand as juvenile colt options dry up for studs

With a paucity of promising two-year-old colts genuinely on the market for studs, bloodstock agent James Harron once again finds himself on the right side of supply-demand dynamic.

The StraightBren O’Brien

“From a Blue Gum perspective, I don’t think we’d have the firepower to be able to compete against the larger operations,” he says. “But we will try if there is an opportunity to stand the horse in Victoria. 

“He’s Victorian-bred and basically Victorian-owned, so it would be just fabulous for the Victorian industry to get a horse like that if he was good enough to win it.”

Dingwall first clapped eyes on Coleman when the horse was a foal at Kulani Park. By the time he reached the Gold Coast Yearling Sale, circumstances were in the way because Trilogy had already outlaid significant money on two other purchases.

“Because we’re part of some of the stallion syndicates, we don’t get involved in bidding on some of the colts they’re potentially in,” Dingwall says. “But in this instance, the stallion syndicates weren’t on him because they weren’t going to risk Pierata being a first-season horse.

“We’d spent a fair bit of money by then, so we took a five per cent share for ourselves, and Jason and Mel (Stenning) said if we were taking a share then they’d take a share too. Between us, we haven’t got a big stake in him, but we loved the horse and unfortunately at that sale we just didn’t have the budget to buy him outright.”

Coleman is a market favourite for the Blue Diamond, hotly followed by Bodyguard. 

Should he emulate Portland Sky and deliver Matt Laurie a Group 1ne (the trainer’s third), there is every chance he will follow Pride Of Dubai, Extreme Choice, Written By and Tagaloa as recent Blue Diamond winners into the stallion barns.