The countdown to the Golden Slipper could prove pivotal to the commercial fortunes of Kooringal Stud’s Sandbar as the prospect of rival stallion farms attempting to buy him looms large.
Good stallions are hard to find.
For the smaller breeders, the odds are even more heavily stacked against them, statistically at least, by the virtues of scale and the sheer costs of acquiring them.
So, when Spirit Of Boom emerged out of Queensland with a bang early in the 2017-18 season courtesy of a flurry of two-year-old winners, Eureka Stud’s Scott McAlpine telephone was running hot.
The big commercial studs of the Hunter Valley came calling, wanting to get hold of Spirit Of Boom and market him to the largest pool of broodmares in the southern hemisphere, and they were prepared to pay mega bucks.
They were figures that for many would be considered life-changing but McAlpine resisted the temptation to sell Spirit Of Boom.
Rebel Dane, another Group 1 winner retired to stud without the commercial fanfare, sired 2022 Golden Slipper winner Fireburn. With that, he suddenly went from covering books of 11, 14 and then 50 mares in Victoria, to 111 at Widden Stud in Victoria.
Rebel Dane’s owners moved him to the Hunter Valley and Widden rather than selling him.
But there’s another family-owned stud, which is also not located in the nation’s breeding heartland of the NSW Hunter Valley, that could be about to have numerous phone calls to answer and plenty to ponder.
The Lamont family’s Kooringal Stud has Sandbar, a son of Snitzel and half-sibling to Farnan who is so far with his two winners from five runners in his small first crop proving to be well above average and in doing so beating the odds.
Shaggy aims to make it four starts for as many wins in Saturday’s Skyline Stakes at Randwick and a victory for the Allan Kehoe trainee would be momentous for not only Kooringal but also for Sandbar given the race’s Group 2 status.
Another unheralded gelding by Sandbar, the Tracey Bartley-trained Dusty Bay, won his first start by five lengths at Grafton on Monday. Connections are already considering significantly raising the bar by aiming towards next month’s Pago Pago and the Baillieu Handicap, both Group 3 races in Sydney.
For what might lay ahead for Golden Slipper contender Shaggy, Sandbar and the Lamonts, Eureka’s McAlpine can provide some context through his own welcome experiences with Spirit Of Boom.
"When Jonker won that Magic Millions qualifying race at Wyong (in December 2018), I was at home and I said to (my wife) Grania, 'you watch, the phone will start ringing here in 10 minutes',” McAlpine tells The Straight.
“It wouldn't have been two minutes and Colm (Santry from Coolmore) was on the phone, 'that stallion of yours', he said, 'we need to get him'. I said, 'why?' 'Oh, he's going to make the grade'. So, I said, 'good, in that case, I'll keep him'."
The overtures didn’t stop there. If anything, the interest in Spirit Of Boom intensified.
Arrowfield called and so did Newgate. Coolmore tried its luck again because, well, everything has a price, right?
By the end of February, Spirit Of Boom had sired 10 individual winners and four stakes winners including completing Brisbane’s Listed Calaway Gal and Phelan Ready double with Outback Barbie and Ef Troop not long before Jonker’s Wyong victory.
In that January of 2018, Jonker’s Magic Millions 2YO Classic chances had been wiped out by Ef Troop when that horse’s jockey Matt McGillivrary cut across the field and caused carnage. Jonker and Hugh Bowman almost fell, but Kinky Boom would soon appear in Melbourne, winning the $250,000 Inglis Premier two-year-old race, making her a single-figure chance for the Blue Diamond.
Yulong unsuccessfully attempted to buy the Tony McEvoy-trained Kinky Boom after her debut win. How times have changed.
At the end of the 2018-19 season, Spirit Of Boom had sired 18 winners, more than any other first-season sire that year, and eight more than champion freshman Zoustar.
His emergence was enough to lure son Harry away from auction house Inglis and back to the farm to work alongside his younger brother Angus and their father Scott on the famed Darling Downs property.
To this day, there are no regrets about rejecting the massive offers worth tens of millions of dollars.
The story, when told by others, often uses $50 million. Perhaps it’s exaggerated. McAlpine didn’t really want to know.
“Coolmore was the most serious. I mean, they just kept nagging away at me to a point where they said, ‘I've got the cheque, you just fill out the amount’,” McAlpine recalls.
“So, I told them to give me the cheque and I tore it up and said, ‘the amount is zero’.”
For the record, Spirit Of Boom hasn’t lost his lustre, siring eight two-year-old winners so far this season, again more than any of his Australian sire peers, and has juvenile filly Karinska accepted for the Group 2 Sweet Embrace Stakes at Randwick and Shining Smile, already a three-time winner in the Listed TAB We’re On at Flemington on Saturday.
From the outset, Eureka owned a 35 per cent controlling interest in the Group 1 William Reid and Doomben 10,000 winner. Spirit Of Boom was syndicated amongst breeders in a more traditional 40-share syndicate, ensuring the McAlpines would have the final say if any sale was the eventuate.
“You never know that it’s going to turn out like it did, but you always hope it's going to happen, so you need to make sure you have the controlling interest if it is to eventuate,” McAlpine says.
“If you get outvoted because you don't have a big enough interest in him then you're in trouble.”
Kooringal effectively owns 100 per cent of Sandbar, with a small number of breeding right holders in the son of Snitzel, so the destiny in the stallion is solely in the hands of the Lamonts.
A service fee increase from his $8,800 is inevitable but how much Sandbar’s nomination goes up won’t be determined until closer to the start of the breeding season on September 1.
“I've had offers from people wanting to buy shares and things in him, but I don't want to complicate it if down the track we did want to sell him,” says Lamont, who will be running a charity event at Wagga’s Murrumbidgee Turf Club in conjunction with the region’s Country Championships heat when Shaggy attempts to seal his Golden Slipper ticket in the Skyline on Saturday.
“We'll just wait and see, but at this stage, Sandbar will be standing here at Kooringal again.
“They (studs) can offer some crazy money sometimes, and that's the same with Dusty Bay. The phone's been running hot for him from Hong Kong (after Monday’s win).
“I had five or six agents calling yesterday and the day before about him, and they've put in substantial offers, which we've been mulling over.
“But, at this stage, it's a bit of a split decision. There are so many smaller shareholders. It's not really worth it if you've only got five per cent to sell out when you'd just be pouring it into another horse, or several other horses, and they might not be any bloody good.”
McAlpine will feel a sense of solidarity with the Lamonts if Shaggy and other stock by Sandbar can reach the heights they appear they may be able to in the knowledge they have beaten the odds of standing a top stallion and, at the same time, been able to fend off the almost irresistible offers from the big end of town.
“Kooringal’s a family business and you buy the horses for the purpose of that one day they might be ‘the one’ and when they do come along you then get enticed to get rid of them,” McAlpine says.
“But we would never have got the money out of Spirit Of Boom by selling him (compared to what) he’s made for everybody on this journey.”
