Rowe On Monday – Digging for diamonds, Pinatubo’s strong spring and session plans for Magic Millions
In this week’s Rowe On Monday, G1G’s Gary Diamond on buying, selling and trading future and current stars, some second-season spring joy for Pinatubo and some food for thought as Magic Millions prepares its January catalogue.
Digging for diamonds – the G1G model unearthing regular Group 1s
On any given weekend, G1 Colts and Breeding will have an array of runners across the eastern seaboard.
The private partnership of about eight members, headed up by Gold Coast-based Gary Diamond, plays a numbers game that provides them with racetrack enjoyment and a commercial return.
It’s a model that has won them 28 Group 1 races, starting with Fiorente’s 2013 Melbourne Cup win, and morphed into a business focused on the lucrative colts market. It also netted them two two-year-old Group 1 wins during the autumn.
Ahead of this spring, G1G had also won 40 Group 2s, 71 Group 3s and 69 Listed races. All up 19 per cent of the partnership’s wins had been in stakes races. They’re impressive numbers indeed.
Golden Slipper winner Capitalist was the first colt and it’s continued on from there, with ongoing relationships with James Harron Bloodstock, the China Horse Club-Newgate Farm group and an array of other relationships with leading trainers.
To illustrate, on the Saturday just gone, G1G Colts James Harron Bloodstock-owned Lafite ran third in the $500,000 Tapp-Craig at Rosehill, while it also had runners in Brisbane and a winner at Albury.
Such is the breadth of its investment, G1G takes small shares in about 100 yearling colts each year, with a decision made as to when to best sell them to maximise their return.
Last week, G1G traded a 1 per cent share in Everest contender Ninja, a four-year-old gelding by Farnan, for $55,000 via Inglis Digital. During the autumn, Diamond and co sold their interest in Todman Stakes-winning colt Paradoxium to Yulong.
“What we generally do is, when we have a good horse like Fireball and Campione D’Italia, the one with Henry (Field at Newgate), when it comes time to sell, we generally only sell half our share and the other half we keep,” Diamond told this column.
“When they go to stud, we’ve got an interest in the stallion. But when Paradoxium was sold I was very happy with the price and the deal, so we sold the whole lot.”
Paradoxium set a hectic tempo in Saturday’s Roman Consul Stakes at Rosehill, tiring late to finish fourth.
As for Ninja, Diamond determined that last week was the best time to sell the small share in the Michael Freedman-trained sprinter.
“When he was a yearling, we were actually meant to get 2.5 per cent of him, but when the MyRacehorse people bought in, they must’ve taken a bigger chunk, and we actually got cut back to 1 per cent,” he said.
“We should’ve got more, but it didn’t happen, but when you’re doing it with lots of different people, they sometimes increase your share a little bit, or decrease it, depending on who else is staying in the horse.
“And that’s how I can deal with so many different people, because I’m flexible like that.”
Despite offloading the share in Ninja, G1G will still be connected to The Everest through their share in the James Harron Bloodstock syndicate, which has been part of the slot race since its inception in 2017.
“We’ve already won The Everest twice and we have at least one runner every year in it, because of James, but there was one year we had three horses in it,” he said.
“For us, it’s not about just having a runner in The Everest, it’s about turning a profit for the partnership.”
Meanwhile, Diamond also revealed that G1G had expanded its portfolio by racing a group of fillies, which has seen the partnership take shares in about a dozen yearlings for each of the past two years.
“We bought shares in 12 fillies in the first year and 10 or 11 this year, but next year, we’re going to do it bigger, maybe look at that 30 to 50 range,” he said.
“Most of the people in our colts will go in the fillies, but some prefer the colt side of it and the fillies don’t bring you huge dollars (like $20 million colts), but if you’re buying nice fillies with a good page there’s residual value.
“But if you get a gelding that can’t run, you’re giving him away for free as a show jumper.”
A red-letter day for Blue Army
Blue Point sired an interstate stakes-winning double on Saturday, but it is another Darley shuttle stallion who shouldn’t be forgotten.
The southern hemisphere-bred progeny of Pinatubo, an unbeaten champion two-year-old and Horse of the Year, could have been expected to show their wares as juveniles (he did have one stakes winner, Voynichese, last season), but it’s as spring three-year-olds that they’re starting to excel.
Global Goal, who was bred by Arrowfield and Johnathan Munz and raced by the latter, landed last week’s Group 1 Flight Stakes and seven days later, the progressive Sequinned won at Caulfield.
It wasn’t a stakes race for the Godolphin homebred, who is trained by Chris Waller, but based on that performance it’s only a matter of time.
Pinatubo has sired 13 southern hemisphere-bred individual winners since August 1 (12 in Australia and one in New Zealand).
His 12 Australian winners put him one behind Wild Ruler (who has sired 13) on the Australian second-season sires’ table and he holds the same position via prize money earnings, behind Sword Of State whose fortunes have been due to Golden Rose and Caulfield Guineas winner Warwoven.
On Blue Point, his offspring Point Barrow and Gerringong both won Group 3 races at the weekend.
Super Session under review?
In about a month’s time we can expect Magic Millions to release its 2027 Gold Coast Yearling Sale catalogue.
Letters of offer to breeders and vendors have already been sent out and Barry Bowditch and his team could “lot” the horses prior to Derby Day.
It is then that any important black-type updates are included from Cup week at Flemington before the go button is hit by the printers.
What will be interesting will be whether Magic Millions persists with its Friday “Super Session” of 290 lots or disperses those extra yearlings across the four days of Book 1 to even the spread.
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