Rowe On Monday – Blake Ryan celebrates stakes breakthrough, Magic plans for Scone carnival, Cressfield’s Bruce Neill reconnects with Pippie’s first foal

‘Pigeonholed’ Ryan proves he can match it with the best

Emerging Hawkesbury trainer Blake Ryan has carved out a reputation as a trader of horses, relatively quickly becoming one of Australia’s premier consignors of two-year-olds.

Preparing horses for the Inglis Ready to Race Sale helps pay the bills, but he’s all too aware that it can paint you into a corner and thus count against you when also attempting to build a business as a public trainer.

That’s why Queen Regent’s win in the Listed Woodlands Stakes at Scone – in front of many of Australia’s leading breeders – was an important one in the context of Ryan’s burgeoning training career.

“It’s good to have, you get pigeonholed a little bit, as just a trader and this and that and the other, so it’s good to win a two-year-old stakes race with a filly,” Ryan

“I think it’s pretty important up there in the Hunter. They’re all there, all the breeders, (Arrowfield’s) John Messara’s there, everyone from all the studs. It’s their day, so it’s good to win an important two-year-old stakes race in front of those people.

“They might take a bit of notice and if they threw me one (a horse to train) it’s not in vain.”

Queen Regent’s win in the $200,000 race at 150-1 (as much as 200-1 was bet) may have been a surprise to many, even for Ryan, but her vastly improved performance on the back of her fourth-placed debut effort at Hawkesbury did not shock completely.

“I was very confident that if we covered her up, that if she could show the ability she’s shown us at home, that she would not disgrace herself, and the idea was win, lose or draw, we’ll educate her, because I didn’t want to go to a maiden with her again, because if you get a six or seven-horse field, you end up in the same situation (in front),” Ryan said. 

“She’ll learn nothing, and I’ll learn nothing, and we’ll only be disappointed, so at least going there in a big field in a better race, and where she drew the middle, you can get that smother that we wanted, and it just turned out it worked.”

As for Wild Ruler, Ryan has had about five horses by the first season stallion through his stable.

“I sold a ripper at the last Ready to Run for $200,000 (called Pride Storm), and he’s won a trial like a good horse at the Gold Coast. Peter Robl’s got him, I sold him for Kingstar and he was bought by Upper Bloodstock,” Ryan said.

“He’s a nice horse, whether he’s going straight to Hong Kong now or not I don’t know, and I’ve got another gelding I paid $100,000 for at Magic Millions – and I am struggling to syndicate him, too; I’ve got 40 per cent left – who is two weeks off trial, and he goes OK I think. 

“Of the ones I’ve had, they’ve got good attitudes, and they’re trainable, so I’m not surprised to see him starting to creep his way up the first season sire ranks.”

Queen Regent’s older stablemate Lady Extreme, fourth in the Birthday Card at her last start in March, is set to race again next season as a seven-year-old for Ryan and her owner-breeder Luke Wilkinson.

“In the last 12 months I thought if I was going to get a stakes winner it would be Lady Extreme, so hopefully she can be the next one,” he says.

Page-Harvey spotted at Scone Cup

Last weekend’s Scone Cup carnival, run over the traditional Friday and Saturday at the weekend, drew a large crowd, particularly Saturday with the standalone metropolitan meeting reportedly drawing a bigger crowd than last year.

Cup day itself also drew more than 4000 racegoers, according to the club.

Arrowfield had taken over from Darley as naming rights sponsors of the main marquee while Magic Millions came on board this year as the club’s new auction house sponsor.

And Katie Page-Harvey, who owns Magic Millions alongside her husband Gerry Harvey, undertook a day trip to Scone on Friday to take in the racing and social scene. 

Magic Millions, we’re told, has big plans to up its support of the Scone Race Club and the wider breeding fraternity in the region, the southern hemisphere’s largest thoroughbred breeding region. 

The sponsorship deal between the club and Magic Millions was inked in early January, with the auction house taking over from rival Inglis.

Neill buys back into daughter of Pippie

Tasmanian breeder Bruce Neill, who owns Cressfield Stud in the Hunter Valley, has been through a bit in the pursuit of quality thoroughbreds in recent years.

Never afraid to put up his money to buy a high-class mare, Neill had Group 1-winning sprinter Pippie, Secret Agenda and Mid Summer Music, the dam of Stefi Magnetica, as members of the Cressfield broodmare band.

Alas, all three died prematurely through bad luck more than anything else, but all is not lost.

Pippie’s last foal, a brute of an I Am Invincible colt, sold for $1.35 million at the Inglis Easter sale in March to the China Horse Club/Newgate partnership.

Pippie’s second foal, an I Am Invincible filly bought by Satomi Oka and Japan’s Champions Farm for $1.4 million at the 2025 Easter sale, is already a winner at Kokura in January and is back in training.

“Empress K ran 1:08.4 (seconds for 1200 metres) against (more mature horses) in Japan with her head on her chest,” Neill told this column, noting Japan’s race timing mechanism is different to many other racing nations around the world.

“And I bought back into Samudra, who is the first foal out of Pippie. She’s already won a race and she’s back in work.”

Samudra, a filly by Snitzel, won her first start as a two-year-old for Te Akau’s Mark Walker before being transferred to Anthony and Sam Freedman last spring.

She is yet to race, having been given three jumpouts during the summer, for her new trainers and owners Kia Ora and Neill.

Samudra was a $775,000 Easter purchase by Te Akau’s David Ellis in 2024.