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Sam Hayes has stepped away from the day-to-day running of the family’s Cornerstone Stud in South Australia to focus on the establishment of a real estate agency but, fear not, the famous racing name is as committed as ever to the thoroughbred industry.
Last week, Hayes informed clients that he would move into an executive director role at Cornerstone Stud, enabling him to pursue the new business venture, and that Sam Pritchard-Gordon had been promoted to the position of general manager. Ross Fuller remains as stud manager and it’s business as usual.
Hayes is an equity partner in start-up company Toop+Toop Rural, which has the backing of Gen Toop and Bronte Manuel, well-known figures in the South Australian real estate industry. The business aims to service high-end rural properties.
“All I am really trying to do is future-proof Cornerstone, so it can remain a generational business,” Hayes said yesterday.
“I was moving into more of an executive director role anyway, to be honest. That was the way it was heading and I was overlapping with Sam (Pritchard-Gordon) a fair bit and I just felt I wanted to do something else which would allow me to future proof the farm.
“(Wife) Emily and I are as heavily invested in the horse industry as we’ve ever been and this just enables us to [continue that]. If the business needs to buy better mares or if there’s ever a couple of tough years – we’ve had so many good years recently in the bloodstock industry – that we can afford to reinvest in it and keep it all going.”
Cornerstone Stud remains under the ownership of the Hayes family and business partners John and Tracey Frankhuisen.
Hayes, who intends on being in attendance at all of the major bloodstock sales while undertaking his “complementary adventure”, revealed he had last year reached out to Clint Donovan, a Magic Millions auctioneer who launched his own real estate business in 2021, about his planned career diversification.
“The (breeding) industry is smaller than it used to be, but I am passionate about South Australia and parochial about the Barossa Valley, so I want to keep the farm as my home, but also have a business which affords me that luxury and (Toop+Toop Rural) is that business,” he said.
“Not unlike Clint Donovan … our bloodstock network really lends itself to this (rural real estate) industry and I am partnering with one of the most well regarded real estate companies in South Australia.”
On the bloodstock side, Cornerstone Stud enjoyed success at last month’s Magic Millions sale on the Gold Coast, selling a Harry Angel (Dark Angel) colt through Cannon Hayes Stud for $400,000.
Hayes, along with clients Tony Kynaston, Johannes Risseeuw, Charlie Arthur and Jon Gerschwitz, bought Caesura (Exceed And Excel) in foal to Harry Angel for $80,000 from the Godolphin draft at the 2020 Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale.
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Much has been written and said about the extraordinary start to the 2022 yearling sales season, which unsurprisingly has seen some taking potshots from the sidelines about the rich getting richer, but the “little guys” of the industry have also had their time in the limelight at both the Magic Millions and Classic sales.
None more so than at Classic, where Mane Lodge’s Neil and Denise Osborne bred and sold their Extreme Choice (Not A Single Doubt) colt for $825,000, knocking off another small breeder in Bell River Thoroughbreds, who sold its colt by the same Newgate Farm sire for $775,000 the previous day. Both were record prices for a Classic sale.
The big studs and stallion farms certainly need their share of sale ring victories, but so too do the “one-man-band” breeders to maintain the aspirational appeal of the industry in which a battler with a couple of mares can compete against the corporate giants.
One prominent studmaster suggested to me that witnessing the joy the Osbornes’ and the Fergusons’ of Bell River experienced after selling such sought after, record-breaking yearlings was what was motivating him to keep chasing the dream of one day being in the vendors’ box achieving a similar thing.
The studmaster has sold many high-priced horses on behalf of clients, although none have been yearlings he has bred himself.
While the sums paid for these horses are life-changing for many, the money is secondary to the achievement because, as any industry participant knows, it is just so hard to breed a horse who meets all the criteria required to top a yearling sale.
Denise Osborne, the backbone of Mane Lodge, watched on from the side of the Riverside sales ring as the Extreme Choice colt out of To Dubawi Go (Dubawi) was auctioned. When he was knocked down to Newgate’s Henry Field for $825,000, she was understandably emotional because she was the one who foaled him down and helped nurture him during his early weeks and months of life.
“I just can’t believe it. It’s sad to see him go, but it’s very exciting,” she said soon after.
Valiant Stud’s Fergal Connolly is another vendor who is “having a go” and he was rewarded for stumping up the $77,000 service fee to send a mare to The Autumn Sun (Redoute’s Choice) in his first season in the hope of breeding an elite horse.
The mating of the Arrowfield Stud resident and Talimena (Lonhro) produced a filly who sold for $550,000 on Monday.
The sale of the high-priced filly will no doubt provide Connolly with the impetus to continue the development of Valiant Stud in the Hunter Valley.
His hard work can’t be questioned as he maintained a gruelling schedule, being one of the first to arrive at Riverside each morning to tend to his horses, while he was also one of the last to leave.
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The word value gets thrown around a lot at a sale, and it is certainly subjective, but I defy anyone to suggest that a $5,000 filly by Extreme Choice filly bought by Wattle Bloodstock’s Peter Twomey wasn’t just that.
At the Gold Coast in early August 2020, and just glad to get to Queensland, Twomey decided to put a female-only syndicate together – including his wife Georgia, as well as mine, Tanya – to race a Bowness Stud-bred filly by the then unproven Newgate Farm stallion.
Yesterday, the three-year-old Pretty Extreme, who turns out to be by an exceptional stallion, won her maiden at Wagga in southern NSW at just her second start. And she was $41 into $21, thank you very much.
Happy wife, happy life, they say, and mine certainly was last night, as were the other wives, girlfriends and significant others associated with Pretty Extreme … all thanks to Pete (and trainer Kerry Weir and jockey Kayla Nisbet).
Is it too early to plan a trip back to the Gold Coast next January for The Syndicate (1200m), the $1 million Magic Millions race for horses owned by a minimum of 20 people?
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Also at Wagga yesterday, Arrowfield’s young stallion Pariah (Redoute’s Choice) sired his first winner courtesy of Nalabelle, and whispers suggest there are a few more two-year-olds by him who are about to hit their straps just in time for the carnivals.
Hawkesbury trainer Blake Ryan, who is slowly building up his stable with young horses, also has a nice unraced son of Pariah, but he is taking his time with the colt named Separatist.
“I bought him at Magic Millions last year for $160,000 and he’s a lovely horse who has battled his shins a little bit,” Ryan said.
“He was in the Breeders’ Plate trials and he went shin sore in one leg the Friday before, so I erred on the side of caution. He came back in and had another little prep and went in the other leg. He is about to start work in another couple of weeks.”
Ryan also has another unraced juvenile who he rates, a colt named All Too Ausbred (All Too Hard) who is out of Ausbred Friend (Manhattan Rain), a half-sister to Hong Kong champion Able Friend (Shamardal).
“I was trying to have a sneaky target at the Wellington Boot with him. I wasn’t getting carried away thinking Slippers or anything like that, but he is a natural two-year-old,” he said.
“Being an All Too Hard and being out of that mare, I didn’t think he would be. He’s done everything right, but he just went a bit shin sore, so I stopped him. He’s had a month out now and he’ll have another three weeks out and then come back in.
“The Pariah is more of a three-year-old who I think will get a mile and the All Too Hard is one I think could measure up in some nice, sharp races.”
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Finding trade horses for two-year-old sales is no doubt providing increasingly difficult for those who do the groundwork at the yearling sales given the market’s enormous growth so far this year.
If precedent is anything to go by, the increasing prices of yearlings won’t keep pace at the two-year-old sales but in order to find stock, it means consignors will need to play their hand at the upcoming Premier, Karaka, Adelaide and Magic Millions March and Melbourne Gold yearling sales.
It can only add to the depth of the buying bench – and that’s good news for vendors.
Speaking of the March sale, the catalogue was released on Wednesday and as Queensland sires continue to punch above their weight – Spirit Of Boom (Sequalo), Better Than Ready (More Than Ready), The Mission (Choisir), et al – it should be another strong offering.