Bet Bet Creek gamble pays off as Stonehouse strikes $520,000 Premier high
Ryan Arnel had a hunch he was doing the right thing in 2014 when he bought a property near Eddington, between Ballarat and his home town Bendigo, on which to produce racehorses.
For a start there was a babbling brook running through it, and he liked the sound of it in more ways than one. It was called Bet Bet Creek.
And for a man whose initiation to the game came through watching races with a grandmother who managed Victoria’s first TAB, it all fitted together rather well.
“I bought the farm with a ten grand deposit and managed to bluff the bank to convince them to give me some money and away I went,” Arnel said of the farm, which he named Stonehouse Thoroughbreds.
In keeping with the name of that creek, Arnel doesn’t mind a bet or two. And that wager on the farm has been paying dividends of late for the affable, laid-back studmaster, who’s had a varied background on both sides of the sales ring, working both with stud farms around the world and with auction houses.
Two years ago, Stonehouse sold a Toronado (High Chaparral) colt for $460,000 at Inglis Premier. He was a half-brother to VRC Derby (Gr 1, 2500m) winner Extra Brut, and his price was a new personal best for the farm.
On Sunday at the same sale, they smashed it thanks to the same dam, with another half-brother by hot sire Ghaiyyath (Dubawi) selling to Lindsay Park for $520,000.
“I guess it is our new record,” Arnel told ANZ News minutes after the gavel fell. “I hadn’t thought of that yet, with everything going on.
“It’s a phenomenal result, really. We’re only a small crew on the farm but we get the job done.
“Like all small businesses, it’s a roller coaster. It’s just me. I don’t have any investors or backers. Melissa Jordan, my second in charge, is an absolute gem. It’s like working with family.”
Sunday’s sale of Lot 19 to one of Australia’s biggest stables was emphatically a triumph for the little guys.
The 200-acre Stonehouse runs up to 50 mares, of which about a dozen are the farm’s own, by Arnel’s best estimate.
“All I know is the accountant always says that my biggest issue is that I’m my biggest client,” Arnel said with a laugh.
“But we love the game, we love the horses. You always think you’re onto something, so I’m a sucker for buying the next mare.”
Also, like that Toronado half-brother Toronto Terrier – who won twice in Melbourne in a tragically truncated career for the late Mike Moroney – the Hayes Brothers’ new colt was bred by Andrew McDonald, a bathroom renovator from a dot on the map called Congupna, near Shepparton.
McDonald and partner Bek have three mares to work with in their breeding hobby, and this particular one – Dom Perion (Redoute’s Choice) – is now a rags-to-riches story of epic proportions.
They bought her when she was carrying Extra Brut at the Inglis Great Southern Sale of 2015 for $6,000. Her produce has now realised them just one grand short of $1.7 million – not bad for a mare who came their way through a fair bit of happenstance.
“We sold a Skilled filly at the weanling section of that sale for $14,000,” McDonald told ANZ.
“We had an $8,000 Street Boss service fee to pay – that was back when you could go to Street Boss for $8,000 – and so we only had $6,000 left over.
“We were looking for a mare, because we had just one other one at home, in-foal. So we hung around to buy another mare so we’d have a mate for the one at home.
“She [Dom Perion] was a winning Redoute’s mare, so it was a bit of a no-brainer. But still, I didn’t even go and look at her because I thought she’d be too expensive. I only saw her in the ring, and I managed to buy her.”
Ironically, the mare likely came cheap because she was carrying a future VRC Derby winner.
“I think it was because she was in-foal to Domesday,” McDonald said. “No disrespect, he can get a good horse, but he wasn’t really fashionable.
“But she’s just the most beautiful mare. She’s not a big mare – and she also didn’t look too happy to be at the sale, so maybe that helped us too. But she’s done everything right for us. She leaves a cracking type.”
McDonald was delighted with Sunday’s sale, especially after “a couple of ordinary years when we were selling fillies for $15,000 or taking them home”.
“That soon cuts into your margins, so this is a huge result for us – a big catch-up,” said McDonald, who’s sending a three-year-old Lonhro (Octagonal) filly out of Dom Perion to Grahame Begg, and will be keeping a sister to Sunday’s Ghaiyyath colt.
“So we’ll have two fillies out of the mare, and then you don’t need any more broodmares really, especially if those two do something. I also bought a three-quarter sister to Dom Perion online last year, and she’s in-foal to Nicconi.”
Arnel was delighted for McDonald.
“It’s the result we all hope for, for people like that. It shows that in this industry, you don’t have to be right up there in terms of size to be in it, and be a part of it. They buy a mare for six grand and this is a result they’ve got,” said Arnel, who brought 25 yearlings to his local Victorian sale.
“As we’ve gone through the week, the inspections have been through the roof. On the stats on who’s looking at horses, this is arguably the best sale. It just keeps getting stronger and stronger.
“To bring a horse of this quality here, we had the utmost confidence the buying bench would find it, and it’s worked out in our favour.
“By all reports, he’d be in the top two most popular horses on the complex. He was very well received and as a horse he just handled it immaculately. He was brilliant.”