Melbourne businessman Hirsch buys Rowsthorn’s Woodside Park Stud
Stallion venture to complement United Petroleum founder’s Tylden training centre
Mark Rowsthorn has sold Woodside Park Stud, the stallion farm which gave rise to this season’s soon-to-be crowned champion Australian sire Written Tycoon (Iglesia).
Woodside Park Stud, based at Tylden, has been purchased by fellow Victorian breeder and racehorse owner Eddie Hirsch who is adding the stallion arm to his growing bloodstock portfolio.
The deal, after months of negotiations, was finally completed late last week between Rowsthorn and the United Petroleum co-founder, who in 2019 also bought the nearby training facility from his fellow Melbourne-based businessman.
Foxwedge (Fastnet Rock), who was already owned by Hirsch and whose three-year-old son Lunar Fox won the Australian Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m) in February, Rich Enuff (Written Tycoon) and Tosen Stardom (Deep Impact) will remain standing at Woodside Park this year and beyond as part of the buyout.
However, Rowsthorn’s Morningside, an 1100-acre property on the Goulburn River near Nagambie, is not part of the Woodside Park sale, which has been under his ownership since 2012 after being founded by his father, Peter Rowsthorn Sr.
Long-time Inglis employee Mark Dodemaide, who left the auction house after three decades in April, has joined Woodside Park Stud while Hirsch also has former Darley employee Dave Collison on board as broodmare manager.
“It has been many, many months of work and that is why I couldn’t really say anything (before now) as I had to deal with other parties as well and shareholders in the other two stallions. There was a lot of dotting the Is and crossing the Ts, so to speak, to get it done,” Hirsch, 67, told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“I will be spending more time away from the (United Petroleum) business now and spending more time with the stallion operation side of it. I am just lucky to have guys like Dods and David Collison and those people around me to guide me through it.
“Getting these quality people into the organisation is a big winner for me.”
Dodemaide said: “I don’t want to be getting too carried away and saying it’s the rebirth of Woodside, but Eddie’s got a passion for breeding. From the barn having a new lick of paint, to trying to get a new stallion, it’ll be the whole thing.
“A lot of people get into racing purely for the racing side of it, but Eddie loves the breeding side at least as much.
“He’s enjoyed watching all those Foxwedges run and he’s going to do the same with the Rich Enuffs and Tosen Stardoms.”
Former Caulfield-based trainers John and Frank Salanitri, who won the Wangoom Handicap (Listed, 1200m) with Royal Island (Dubawi) in 2015 and Yarra Valley Cup (1950m) with Hard Call (Hard Spun) in 2017 among several other city winners, are now preparing horses from Hirsch’s Tylden property, Hirsch Park.
More than $3 million has been spent since its acquisition to improve the camber of the two training tracks and other facilities, on what is one of the few private training facilities in the state.
Hirsch has also made a concerted effort in recent years to upgrade the quality of his broodmare band of 30, which are now almost exclusively stakes-performed or stakes producing mares, in an investment he hopes starts to pay dividends on the racetrack and in his support of the Woodside stallions.
“I am in the petroleum business, that is the business I am actually in, but the horse side of the business has always been a passion of mine and I am starting to lean over a bit more to that side as I am slowing down in the United world, so to speak,” he said.
“I decided that if we are going to go into this breeding, let’s just go with better broodmares.”
Hirsch added to his broodmare band this year with the $190,000 purchase of stakes winner Lady Melksham (Artie Schiller), who is in foal to Justify (Scat Daddy), at the Inglis Chairman’s Sale in May, while he bought two more mares at the Australian Broodmare Sale and three at the Magic Millions Gold Coast National Sale.
He also has Obsequious (Lonhro), the dam of this season’s Maribyrnong Trial Stakes (Listed, 1000m) and Talindert Stakes (Listed, 1100m) winner Ingratiating (Frosted), in his possession. She has a weanling brother to Ingratiating and Hirsch sent her to Russian Revolution (Snitzel) in 2020.
“If you talk about the top end of the market, I have been buying at the Chairman’s Sale now for three or four years and improving my band of broodmares, so we do buy at the top end,” he said.
“Also, I recently bought a few up at the Gold Coast Magic Millions sale. I bought a Frankel mare (Collection Privee, in foal to Too Darn Hot).”
While his focus has been on broodmares, now that Hirsch owns Woodside Park, which has the capacity for six stallions, he will be looking to add to the roster.
“Hopefully one of our own horses that we breed can become a stallion. That would be the icing on the cake if we could get some of the horses that I am racing to become stallions,” he said.
“But if the opportunity is out there to buy a stallion, we will be there negotiating, there’s no question about it.”
Hirsch has predominantly bred his own horses to race and, while that is likely to remain the mantra, he has also become more active in the weanling and yearling markets in recent years and plans to head back to the sales next year to add to his thoroughbred arsenal.
“I have got a couple of two-year-olds who look pretty good at the moment. The I Am Invincible colt (Mighty Hercules, out of Lonhro mare My Goodness) I bought at Easter and a filly who is a half-sister to September Run by American Pharoah (My Yankee Girl) is showing good signs.
“They are at the Salanitris’ and they are very exciting, those two.”
Hirsch also has unraced juveniles by Zoustar (Northern Meteor), Astern (Medaglia d’Oro), Choisir (Danehill Dancer), Kermadec (Teofilo) and Star Turn (Star Witness) on the books and, as a parochial Victorian, Dodemaide reinforced his new boss’s commitment to the state’s industry.
“The good thing about Tylden and where Woodside Park is, it’s ten minutes to Kyneton, ten minutes to Woodend, ten minutes to Trentham. The location is surprisingly good,” Dodemaide said.
“A lot of people have a go and say it’s a little bit cold, but horses are bred in Kentucky and Newmarket, and a lot of the best horses in the world are bred in a climate like this.
“Eddie’s not going anywhere. Put it this way, Woodside Park will be going for as long as Eddie’s going.”
Hirsch’s decision to dramatically scale up his racing interests has him excited about the future.
“I am looking forward to it. It is going to take a bit of time, but we will get there,” he said.
Hirsch happy to be in the background
By Tim Rowe
The spotlight is not for Eddie Hirsch.
The United Petroleum co-founder features on The Australian’s 2021 Richest 250 list alongside business partner Avi Silver but there are only sporadic references to his extensive entrepreneurial pursuits – and forget about finding regular stories or media bytes where Hirsch is quoted.
A Victorian racehorse owner and breeder for 30 years, Hirsch conducts his thoroughbred interests in much the same way he has with his professional life, preferring to keep a low profile and quietly go about his business.
His chosen trainer John Salanitri, a long-time Caulfield resident, is now based at the Tylden training property Hirsch Park near Woodend in central Victoria while rival trainer John Sadler, who is moving to Pakenham, is another Hirsch has supported for more than two decades.
If Hirsch had his way, Sadler would be heading west to Hirsch Park as well instead of east to Pakenham when he eventually winds up his Caulfield stable.
The Tylden training facility was purchased by Hirsch from Mark Rowsthorn in 2019 and in the past 18 months he has upgraded the then named Woodside Park property significantly including altering the camber of the track in the mould of Moonee Valley.
Salanitri and Sadler, in particular, played a key role in ensuring the redevelopment was state-of-the-art and ensured the best possible surfaces and layout to train horses.
Dodemaide sees the training facility and purchase of Woodside Park Stud as the completion of a long-held ambition for Hirsch, completing a vision formed in the early 1990s with his late brother Jack.
“I would say, to a point, Eddie has always wanted to have his own training centre and the Woodside pre-training centre came up,” Dodemaide said.
“The tower over at Hirsch Park (the new name for the training centre), you can see the (Woodside Park Stud) farm. Eddie just thought, with his mares down at Yarra Glen, that he could have everything in the same spot.
“He can have them a kilometre down the road, he has his racehorses and he can enjoy them.
“It’s all right to … be a businessman in Melbourne and have all your mares and yearlings in the Hunter Valley, but that’s not really for Eddie – he wanted to enjoy them.”
In speaking to ANZ Bloodstock News last week, Hirsch was extremely welcoming and polite but the self-made billionaire, whose life story it could be suggested would warrant an ABC Australian Story profile, was happier leaving it up to others to portray him in the public sphere.
It will be much the same in his approach to managing Woodside Park Stud where he will leave it up to others to be the public face.
“We don’t talk much about ourselves. We’re pretty quiet about it all. That’s just me. I like to be in the background, so to speak,” Hirsch said.
“I won’t be shouting from the rooftops. We’ll let our stallions do the talking. They don’t need to hear from me.”
But it has been clear that loyalty is a character trait he values highly and he agreed when it was put to him.
“For 25 years I have basically been with two trainers – the Salanitris and John Sadler – and I still have horses with Johnny Sadler,” he said.
“Loyalty is the biggest thing of all. As people who know me will say, I am very loyal.”
Hirsch’s passion for racing was shared by his brother Jack and it was their love of the sport which led to them breeding horses, 2001 Australian Oaks (Gr 1, 2400m) winner Rose Archway (Archway) among them.
Rose Archway was sold for $12,000 by the Hirschs at the 1999 Inglis Melbourne Autumn Yearling Sale. Her on-track success prompted them to focus on breeding to race.
“My brother was very passionate about the breeding and the wine side of the business. We noticed that when we went out to Yarra Glen (at Dixons Creek in 1990) that everyone was growing vines, so my brother grew a few vines and started a vineyard there as well as breeding a few horses,” Hirsch said.
“Jack used to spend countless hours at night looking at the breeding. He was a massive Tesio (pedigree) fan and read all the books and that rubbed off on me a little bit later on.”