Rowe On Monday – US market’s rude health, speedy Schumacher, Bulk buys into Oaks winner and an Ace Aussie strategy

All planes lead to Kentucky

In a global bloodstock sense, Australia is sometimes considered its own island.

So, what can the Australian market take out of another booming season-opening Saratoga Sale?

It’s a top-end market that is underpinned by wealth but also huge tax concessions, which makes buying yearlings an attractive proposition for high net-worth individuals.

Next month’s Keeneland September Yearling Sale, particularly beyond Books 1 and 2, will provide a bigger guide as to the overall appetite from American owners wanting to invest in their local industry.

Strong yearling sales lead to buoyant breeding stock sales, and it’s in November in Lexington, Kentucky, for the Fasig-Tipton and Keeneland where the Australians will clash with breeders from around the world.

Aussie agent Will Johnson, who attended last week’s Saratoga Sale, believes the US broodmare market continues to be a good source for southern hemisphere breeders.

And this year shapes as being no exception.

“The currency’s improving around 70 cents on the (US) dollar,” Johnson said. 

“But as we’ve said in the last few years, the American mares have done well with the progeny on the track, so there’s no reason why Australians shouldn’t make the trip, given the strength and the depth of the catalogue.”

The success of the American mares in Australia could be on show again this spring, with $2.7 million Inglis Easter graduate St Gotthard being aimed at the Coolmore Stud Stakes by trainer Chris Waller.

The Snitzel colt’s brother Switzerland certainly proved adept down the Flemington straight, winning the coveted Coolmore Stud Stakes in 2024.

Like Switzerland, the Arrowfield-bred St Gotthard is owned by Coolmore.

Schumacher fast out of the blocks

With a name like Schumacher – and a $650,000 price tag – big things were always expected of the Stay Inside colt who breezed to an impressive first-start win at Kembla Grange on Saturday.

Trainer Michael Freedman and the colt partnership’s management team, led by James Harron, were patient with the three-year-old out of German Listed winner Schwesterherz.

Schumacher was purchased by Silverdale Farm for $120,000 as a weanling before being on-sold at the 2025 Easter sale, having been withdrawn from the Classic sale that February.

What’s more noteworthy about Schumacher, who is from the first crop of Newgate Farm’s Golden Slipper-winning sire Stay Inside, is that he had already been broken in when he was sold at the Easter sale.

Southern Highlands breeder Steve Grant, who owns Silverdale Farm, intends on continuing to have some of their yearlings educated under saddle prior to being sold at the yearling sales.

Grant uses renowned horse breaker Greg Bennett at Thenford Farm to educate the yearlings.

“We give them three days, then we look at them again. Before they go in, we take full x-rays and after three days, we get together and work out if some are not handling it,” Grant told us recently.

“We’ll shuffle them after three days and we might pull some out and, generally speaking, we know by then which ones are going to do well and it is just seeing how well they come on. 

“It’s putting no pressure on them whatsoever.”

The way Schumacher closed off the 1200m maiden, it signalled his professionalism and that there’s better races in store for the talented colt.

Lads’ Bulk Fireball Miss buy

One of our spies was quick off the mark last Wednesday, noting the identity of the buyers who purchased a 5 per cent share in Queensland Oaks winner Fireball Miss.

Bulk Bonus Bets – a topical alias used on Inglis Digital considering the ongoing political debate about Australian bookies using “generosities” to entice punters to bet – forked out $80,000 for the interest in Bennett Racing’s Group 1 winner.

Further in-depth research uncovered that Bulk Bonus Bets is in fact a genuine entity which is already associated with Bennett Racing, a syndicator who continually seems to have stakes class horses under its banner.

Five 5 per cent shares were traded in Fireball Miss, with the transactions valuing the daughter of Bivouac at $1.54 million.

As for Bulk Bonus Bets paying up, let’s hope Inglis doesn’t have to turn over the $80,000 multiple times before the auction house can pay out.

Ace start for Australian-breds in UK

Yulong’s vast bloodstock portfolio has allowed Zhang Yuesheng to bring high-quality international pedigrees, via broodmares and stallions, to Australia but it’s also worked in reverse.

Ace Stud, the UK-based operation run by Zhang’s son-in-law Harris Li and managed by Paul Curran, has a string of two-year-olds bred in Australia.

The group includes Hidden Beyond, a filly by Lucky Vega, who ran third at Kempton on August 10 for trainer Charlie Hills.

Curran told the Nick Luck Daily podcast last week that 15 two-year-olds were in training in Europe at present who were born in Australia by stallions including champion Written Tycoon.

“They’ve taken some time to come to hand. It’s quite a different thing to do. Obviously, not many do it,” Curran said.

“It was the middle of their summer and middle of our winter. They looked like they were ready to run straight away. They had silky smooth coats on them.

“They came up, obviously went into a couple of the pre-trainers and realised, ‘oh, well, this is a little bit colder than where I came from’.

“So, they started to put on a bit of their coats, went a little bit backward, but in the last five or six weeks they’ve started to come to hand.”

Curran revealed that Yulong had sent up foals this year, with a batch expected to arrive in the coming weeks.

“We’re trying something even more different. A lot of these that came were late yearlings, early two-year-olds,” he said.

“We want to send them up even earlier, just to give them a little bit more time to acclimatise to the atmosphere and the different climate up here.

“There’s a couple of nice ones and, as I said, if they can all run, as promising as the two fillies did the other day, we’ll be very happy with that.”