‘Calculated bets’ behind the rise of Newgate Farm
It has taken just over a decade for Newgate Farm to sprout from little more than a patch of grass and a pipe dream into a colossus, hitting the top end among consignors and hosting a roster of the country’s fastest young stallions.
Reaching such targets has required expertise and no shortage of ambition, with the restless nature of managing director Henry Field and his team of partners and shareholders meaning they now have an eye trained upon success outside their established jurisdiction.
To have reached such a position of influence in a vibrant Australian scene is a remarkable achievement, with Newgate now subsuming vast acreage in the Hunter Valley, standing 11 stallions and producing plenty of smart winners.
Field is very much the public face of the organisation and its driving force. An early graduate of the Darley Flying Start programme, he gained technical credibility with five years of experience working for Coolmore and Ballydoyle. However, it is his skills as a people person which seems to have been key to Newgate’s rapid rise.
He attracted two significant partners to the business in Australian educational entrepreneur Matthew Sandblom and another compatriot in Gavin Murphy, one of those people of sentient computer-level intellect operating on Wall Street whose SF Bloodstock, a thoroughbred investment business run with agent Tom Ryan, has bought into the likes of US stars Justify and Authentic.
Through watching the scene together, they refined a strategy to identify stallions.
“We found that when these colts have won a Group 1 race and they’re ready for stud, the Australian market would nearly be the strongest in the world as far as what the value of these horses are sold for when they retire,” Field explains.
“A few years ago we underbid [top stallion] Pierro for huge numbers, huge numbers, and we were very deflated after we got beaten for him, but from that point on we decided to take a different approach, started trying to develop racehorses, buying them as yearlings or when lightly raced.
“We take calculated bets on buying younger horses with more upside, and trying to get more right than we get wrong. That’s really been the making of Newgate.”
Other investors such as New Zealand transport tycoon Sir Owen Glenn have also been involved, allowing Field to bolster his own list of employees. He encouraged long-serving Coolmore stud manager Jim Carey to join, alongside director of bloodstock Bruce Slade and former Goffs UK man Williams.
“Finding an unbelievable powerhouse team of young guys who have huge energy to keep building Newgate, that’s been the most important part of our success,” says Field.
“If you look at every great business, it’s the people that are really the key to it; we’ve managed over the last decade to build what I would look at as an all-star team from the stud manager to the finance part.
“I do believe if you get the people right, your partners and your core team, then the horses will follow.”
Newgate’s roster includes the country’s most expensive advertised stallion in the fertility-challenged Extreme Choice (Not A Single Doubt), whose fee for 2022 has been set at $275,000, as well as young sires Capitalist (Written Tycoon), Flying Artie (Artie Schiller), Deep Field (Northern Meteor) and champion first season sire elect Russian Revolution (Snitzel).
While shuttle stallions from Europe to Australia have long proven a successful venture, Field and his team have looked at the options for promoting their flourishing stallions abroad, and have toyed with setting up their own stallion shop around Newmarket in order to showcase some of their other names, although this is nothing more than a distant idea at this stage.
“[Australian stallions] have probably performed better than the market gives them credit for,” he says. “Exceed And Excel was around a long time, Starspangledbanner has done an excellent job, Fastnet Rock more than pulled his weight.
“There haven’t been that many come up. We’ve horses like Extreme Choice, the best young stallion in the southern hemisphere, Deep Field, champion sire in Hong Kong, and Capitalist, who’s just a gun two-year-old sire. You’ve always got to keep looking at the options and possibilities and I do think there’s a place for our real Australian speed sires in Europe to inject that prepotent-type speed into the broodmare band.”
On Saturday, Newgate will hope their Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Artorius (Flying Artie) can improve upon his eye-catching third in the Platinum Jubilee Stakes (Gr 1, 6f) at Royal Ascot. Click here (subscription required) to read the latest on him and Prince Of Wales’s Stakes (Gr 1, 1m 2f) winner State Of Rest (Starspangledbanner) in the Racing Post Bloodstock’s Big Read.