Building of Rosemont takes another step forward in 2023-24
Future of Victorian farm positive as stallion roster’s progeny prepare for racecourse glory
Rosemont Stud is by no means the new kid on the block of the Victorian breeding industry.
Yulong has in the past decade, and five years particularly, become a colossal international giant and petroleum magnate Eddie Hirsch has taken over Woodside Park Stud and Widden Stud has a Victorian arm.
The fertile land of Blue Gum Farm has also been purchased by Trilogy’s Jason and Mel Stenning and Sean and Cathy Dingwall, also new players who are helping reinvigorate the southern state’s stallion ranks and broodmare population.
For Rosemont owners Nigel Austin and brother-in-law Anthony Mithen, the Geelong farm is at an intriguing and important juncture in its evolution with Cox Plate (Gr 1, 2040m) winner Shamus Award’s (Snitzel) first Victorian–bred crop just turned three, while unproven sire Strasbourg’s (I Am Invincible) first crop are two-year-olds.
Brilliant two-year-old Hanseatic’s (Street Boss) first yearlings will hit the sales in 2024 and another electrifying sprinter in Extreme Warrior’s (Extreme Choice) first foals are being born this season.
Throwing open the gates last week for the annual Rosemont stallion parade, Mithen was excited about the future of the stud and its property, which is about 4,000 acres near Geelong after the acquisition of a further parcel of 1,000 acres about 12 months ago.
“There’s a long time-frame in this game when you think Shamus Award seems to have been around here at Rosemont and part of the family for such a long time, but his oldest bred here are only just turned three-year-olds, so the best of those horses are still to come,” Mithen told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“You’ve got Strasbourg to look out for with his first two-year-olds hitting the track, they’ve gone into some great homes, and I think he’s surprised us, really, at premium yearling sales to average $80,000 we were particularly pleased with the market’s support for Strasbourg and the numbers are ticking over nicely and for an $8,000 stallion.”
The Rosemont property has its own private football ground and cricket pitch, enclosed by a perfect white picket fence, and it was the oval where the first crop yearlings by precocious Group 3-winning Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) runner-up Hanseatic were paraded.
“We wanted … to show breeders the quality we’re seeing in our paddocks and we paraded six but it could have been more but we ran out of handlers, to be honest,” the enthusiastic Mithen said.
“We put on a bit of a Japanese foal sale type arrangement and showed them on the lawns. The half (brother) to Krone and Tycoon Tara’s yearling (colt were amongst them), so there’s some really well-bred ones out there.”
Buying and finding commercial stallion prospects is not only difficult, but increasingly expensive, which has led to a plethora of stallion syndicates following the model set up by agent James Harron a decade or so ago.
The Rosemont Alliance, a partnership of investors chasing the dream of turning a colt into a highly commercial stallion, is in its third year having been established in 2021.
It’s a fine line between the ultimate success – as rival colts funds have done, for example, with dual Group 1 winner Home Affairs (I Am Invincible) (Coolmore) and Militarize (Dundeel) (Newgate-China Horse Club) – and the near misses.
Mithen and his merry group of investors started promisingly, Brereton (Zoustar) won the Maribyrnong Plate (Gr 3, 1000m), Millane (Zoustar) won the Festival Stakes (Listed, 1000m) on debut and Doull (Snitzel) was the early favourite for last year’s Coolmore Stud Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m), all members of the Rosemont Alliance’s first crop, but for various reasons none have landed the knockout blow required to end up on the roster at the Geelong stud.
The second crop now three-year-olds, too, have yet to show their hands and a lot rests on the shoulders of the unraced John O’Shea-trained colt Schwarz (Zoustar), a $1.25 million Magic Millions graduate.
“It’s not for the faint-hearted (racing colts), so I think what you’ve got to do along the way is enjoy the ride and we’ve got a bunch of partners who are really enjoying the experience and enjoying racing a nice quality horse, albeit expensive, but when you break that down to smaller percentages and you spread it across what is this year 17 two-year-olds that we’ve bought at the yearling sales, it’s really exciting because you only need one to pay for the slow ones,” Mithen said.
“That’s just the nature of this game, there will be slow ones, but we need to make sure that there’s a fast one in there. We’re buoyed by the early reports on a few of these (two-year-olds).”
The Alliance’s third crop includes the Blue Point (Shamardal) half-brother to Western Australia’s own Group 1 winner Amelia’s Jewel (Siyouni), who has been named Bosustow and is in training in Sydney with Annabel Neasham.
“Hopefully he can get to an early trial and there’s a few others squirrelled away who trainers have got lofty ambitions for already and we’re only in August,” he said.
“There’s enough to give us a bit of hope.”
The year older Schwarz is close to barrier trialling for the first time in his new preparation – he had two public hit-outs in Sydney in June for a win and a second – and Mithen didn’t hide his enthusiasm for the colt’s prospects.
“You know what they say, ‘you never throw yourself under a bus with an unraced anything’ and Schwarz has shown John O’Shea enough,” Mithen said.
“He was a seven-figure horse and John has still said to me as recently as (a fortnight) ago that ‘I’d still rather the horse than the money’, which is a good sign when they’ve got that sort of price tag.
“He’s got a lot of faith in that horse and he’s just building up for a three-year-old spring campaign that hopefully sees him line up down the straight at Flemington on Derby day (for the Coolmore Stud Stakes), which would be particularly exciting, but we’ll take baby steps first.”
Rosemont Stud also has some lightly raced three-year-old fillies sporting the distinctive red with white gatecrasher silks who could be spring players, particularly unbeaten Anzac Day Stakes (Listed, 1400m) winner Legacies (Justify) and Treasurway (Starspangledbanner), the winner of the SA Breeders Stakes (Gr 3, 1200m).
“Legacies has been a pin-up for Moods [Peter Moody] and then Treasurway on the same day won a Group 3 over in Adelaide for Jason Warren who has been one of our trainers from right at the start of the journey of Rosemont, so it’s nice to see him rewarded with a nice filly like her and he’s got lofty ambitions for the daughter of Starspangledbanner,” Mithen said.
“Legacies is on a pathway to probably the Flight Stakes first and then we’ll pick a path from there, whether she’s going to stretch out.
“She’s out of quite a stout European family, a beautiful family, so plenty of horses in there who get a trip, so we’ll be mindful of that and Peter will make the right call whether we freshen and go to the 1,000 Guineas or stretch out to an Oaks trip, time will tell.
“It’s nice to be talking about those kinds of races with a good filly like that.”
At the Rosemont parade, Mithen also labelled the unraced Moesha (I Am Invincible), a $650,000 half-sister to dual Group 3 winner Argentia (Frankel) and Hong Kong Group 3 winner Thewizardofoz (Redoute’s Choice), as a potential “superstar”.
Of the filly raced in partnership with Tweenhills’ David Redvers and Hannah Wall, he said: “We’ve got a lovely filly called Moesha who won a trial (last) week (at Cranbourne) and she’s beautifully bred, being by Vinnie (I Am Invincible) out of Princess Coup, so we’re hopeful she might measure up to stakes racing through the spring.”