In today's Rowe On Monday, bloodstock agent Sheamus Mills explains how he started working for Charm Stone's owner Heath Newton, Guy Mulcaster on his excursion to the Tattersalls Autumn Horses in Training Sale and a promising Hong Kong result for Rosemont Stud.
Newton’s perseverance paying off through Charm Stone
More than 10 years ago, NSW Riverina businessman Heath Newton, one of the major suppliers of prime lamb to Woolworths supermarkets, was burning cash on his racehorses.
And more than that, with a top-heavy portfolio of mostly slow geldings, Newton wasn’t enjoying his racing pursuits as much as he should have been.
That’s when, on the insistence of his industrial relations advisor, who had a small share in a horse with trainer Mick Price, he cold-called bloodstock agent Sheamus Mills for help.
Fast forward to Moonee Valley on Friday night and Mills, Newton and Price were toasting a Manikato Stakes victory with their prized dual Group 1-winning mare Charm Stone.
Before Charm Stone, they had Odeum, the 2020 Thousand Guineas winner, but Charm Stone’s success is a reminder of just how far they’ve come.
After Mills completed the “tidy-up job” of Newton’s horses, selling off those that had little prospect of making it either on the track or as broodmares, he was instructed to head to the sales.
A Hard Spun filly was purchased, but she didn’t reach any great heights, or none at all.
“She was probably the slowest horse I think I've ever bought and I did make a comment to Rochelle (Adams, bloodstock assistant), ‘well, this will be the shortest-lived client we've ever had’, but it actually fuelled his drive,” Mills recalled.
“He said to me the following year … ‘stop messing about and go and buy me a good horse’.
“And the next horse I bought him was a filly called See Me Exceed who was very talented. She placed at Group 3 level and we probably never saw the best of her due to a couple of little issues, but certainly the talent was there.”
See Me Exceed was a $105,000 buy, but Mills and Newton began to up the stakes; Odeum was $420,000 and Charm Stone was $1.55 million.
There’s been other seven-figure buys in recent years, such as Humming and Queen Of The Green, who didn’t reach the mark like Charm Stone and Odeum but they do form part of the Newton-Mills broodmare band.
“We've been ticking along with enough stakes horses, I guess, to feed the machine. I think we've got a pretty good broodmare band already and it'll only get stronger when some of these fillies retire like On Display and Charm Stone,” he said.
“It'll hopefully look, it'll look, it'll make sense in a few years' time when the first progeny of these horses come out.”
An example of that was a “beautiful” Extreme Choice colt born on Monday morning out of Odeum, the Written Tycoon mare’s third foal.
“That's the archetype of what we're trying to do, buy a filly, win Group 1, go to a gun stallion and put colts on the ground,” he said.
Mills will be forever grateful that he took that call from Newton.
“I was very lucky in the fact that he potentially was hardened up a bit by the time we met, he'd ridden enough of those bumps,” he said.
“Being exposed to everything that you can be in this game, you need a fairly hard nut on you or you're in the fetal position relatively quickly.
“From my point of view, he’s just a dream owner and we’ve become pretty good mates, I suppose.
“It's funny how fate works, but I was pretty lucky to get that phone call.”
Mulcaster chasing more Tatts luck come October
Of the first 20 horses in the early betting market for Saturday’s The Metropolitan, just three are Australasian-bred - Half Yours, Piggyback and Golden Century.
That will be a surprise to no one who has even paid a cursory interest in the bloodlines of the country’s middle-distance horses over the past two decades.
For that reason, agents such as Guy Mulcaster will be in the UK between Cox Plate and Derby Day for the Tattersalls Autumn Horses in Training Sale in search of the next top-class horse capable of winning Metropolitans, Caulfield Cups, Cox Plates and Melbourne Cups.
Last year’s sale topper Sir Delius, a 1.3 million guineas (A$2.79 million) colt by Frankel, was sold by Coolmore to Go Bloodstock’s Sir Owen Glenn and Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott.
He’s since won two of his three starts in Australia and was victorious last start in the Group 1 Underwood at Caulfield on his way to the Cox Plate and Melbourne Cup.
“We are just trying to buy three or four nice horses that can come over and develop over time,” said Mulcaster, who works in tandem with champion trainer Chris Waller.
“We'll just take them along quietly and hopefully they end up in a big race next year.
“Sir Delius was the big horse at the sale last year, but 1.3 million pounds was a little bit out of our budget.”
Waller and Mulcaster ended up with three horses out of last year’s sale: Tazima, a winner on the Kensington track at Randwick in August, Hutchence and maiden horse Man Of Worth.
“You're dealing with a catalogue of 2000 horses, so you just have to go through and try and work out which ones might suit, which ones won't and look at them and physical types,” Mulcaster says.
“We've been lucky over the last 15 or 16 years to get some pretty good horses out of there, but it doesn't happen every year and it's not always a sale topper.”
Rosemont’s rising Premier Star in Hong Kong
In Hong Kong on Sunday, with racing back at Sha Tin after Typhoon Ragasa, Starspangledbanner gelding Packing Phoenix went some way to justifying his purchase price and the early promise he’d shown in barrier trials.
Bred by Rosemont Stud and sold out of its Inglis Premier draft in 2023 for $560,000 to agent Andrew Williams, Packing Phoenix was educated in New Zealand, where he won three barrier trials, before being exported to Hong Kong.
The four-year-old, who is trained by Francis Lui, won his first start over 1200m at Sha Tin on Sunday with premier jockey Zac Purton in the saddle. He’d won four trials in Hong Kong leading into his anticipated debut.
Rosemont has a yearling sister to Packing Phoenix at its Geelong stud in what will be Starspangledbanner’s second-last southern hemisphere-bred crop.
In contrast, the well-travelled Tomodachi Kokoroe, trained by David Hayes, also scored on Sunday, his fifth win in Hong Kong.
A seven-year-old by Written Tycoon, he raced as Bank Bank Bank in Australia, starting off his career in Melbourne for the late Mike Moroney and Singapore owner Jayven See before being on-sold to North Queensland trainer Ricky Ludwig.
Bank Bank Bank won six from six at Cairns and Townsville for Ludwig, who then took the private offer made to him through Magic Millions’ David Chester in late 2022.
There may well be more wins in store for Tomodachi Kokoroe, who was ridden by Harry Bentley.
