Gooree Park principal Cojuangco dies at 85
Stud manager Baddock pays tribute to the Filipino businessman who devoted four decades to Australian racing and breeding
Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco Jr, an Australian Racing Hall of Fame inductee who developed Mudgee’s Gooree Park into one of the leading operations in the country, died on Tuesday aged 85, it was announced yesterday.
His death was announced by San Miguel Corporation, for which he was the chairman and chief executive officer. He died late Tuesday night in a Quezon City hospital.
A glance at the obituaries for Cojuangco shows the sheer number of hats he held in both his native Philippines and his adopted Australia – food and beverage magnate, empire builder, kingmaker, tycoon, Marcos exile, basketball patron, business and sports visionary and car enthusiast, among many others.
However, one of his primary areas of focus was on breeding and racing in Australia, which began in the late 1950s and peaked during the 1970s when he was often the leading buyer at thoroughbred sales across the country.
“He loved Australian racing and he loved the challenge of the whole thing and was just passionate about it,” Gooree Park’s stud manager Andrew Baddock, who has spent the last 35 years at the farm and has been instrumental in the operation’s success, told ANZ Bloodstock News yesterday. “I think the best example of his thoughts of Australian racing was that he did a five-year $40 million sponsorship of Australian racing and the Sydney racing carnival and that was basically done for Australian racing and built up from nothing. The last people to be told about it were the directors of San Miguel.
“He basically went to them and said, ‘I hope you guys like racing, because guess what I’ve done.’ He was a character and he loved racing and that was a thank you, and an investment in Sydney racing, because Sydney racing was struggling at the time. It was falling behind Victorian racing and it was a massive injection into the industry. He was from the Philippines but he saw Australia as his second home. He loved coming out here because he could just be one of the guys. He loved nothing more than going around the farm here and looking at his mares and foals.
“I’ve been with him from all the way through and, yes, it was a big shock to everyone. He’s been breeding here for four generations and produced a lot of good horses and put a lot into the industry.”
In 1979, Cojuangco established his Gooree Park operation, which came into being when he purchased Gooree Stud from the Foyster family. He also bought Biraganbil Stud from Stan Fox and Galambine Stud from the Whites, amalgamating the three farms under the Gooree Park banner.
It became his refuge in 1986 when he was forced into exile following the ousting of his political ally, long-time Filipino president Ferdinand Marcos; Cojuangco was allowed to return to the Philippines in 1989.
While the Mudgee property also has pastoral interests like Wagyu cattle and sheep as well as vineyards, it is the thoroughbreds that have been rolled out from Gooree Park that have been its greatest product.
Top horses to have sported the red and black stripes include Desert War (Desert King), Northern Meteor (Encosta De Lago), Don Eduardo (Zabeel), Snowland (Snippets), Hallowed Crown (Street Sense), Smart Missile (Fastnet Rock), Your Song (Fastnet Rock), Prized Icon (More Than Ready), Swift Alliance (Don Eduardo), Dreamscape (Choisir), Needs Further (Encosta De Lago) and Tempest Morn (Thunder Gulch).
On the world stage, he also bred and raced 1986 Breeders’ Cup Turf (Gr 1, 12f) and 1987 Arlington Million (Gr 1, 10f) winner Manila (Lyphard).
“Even though he was a man of significant wealth, he loved the challenge of breeding and racing and saw it as a great leveller,” Baddock said. “He loved the highs and saw the lows as character building and it was always a great challenge for him. He used to say, ‘just because we’ve got the wonderful white fencing and the lovely big paddocks – it’s what we are producing inside them that counts’.
“I think one horse in particular brought him some of his highest moments and then one of his lowest moments. He bred and raced Northern Meteor who was a stand-out colt from day one, with the pedigree and the looks. Invariably, for whatever reason, those sort of horses never quite get there and he won the Group 1 at Flemington, established himself as a stallion, was an immediate success and then, ironically, passed away on the night he was crowned champion first season sire
“I never forget getting that call and I then had to give that call to him, thinking that this is the type of thing where he says, ‘I’ve had enough.’ It’s so hard to get a Group 1 colt like that as we know. And then to climb the mountain, get a champion first season sire – and then he dies.
“Amazingly, he ended up consoling me. That was just the type of guy he was. Along with Antony Thompson from Widden, we were shattered, and he was consoling us.
“Northern Meteor’s legacy has gone on through his sons, and now he has some grandsons standing this year. The legacy will go on for generations. He was very proud of that achievement and he had an uncanny knack for producing commercial stallions, there are probably half a dozen of them that were produced on this farm, which is incredible really. He could breed a tough, hard gelding like Desert War, and also all these commercial stallions. That was his aim, but he wasn’t obsessed by it.”
Baddock recalls that Cojuangco’s breeding regime was often unorthodox and proved a mental challenge that he relished.
“Quite often he’d breed out of left-field,” he said. “Because he was breeding to race, quite often he wouldn’t breed commercially, he would breed a little bit left of centre. If it matched up, he would breed to that stallion and people would often say he’d get a very good horse from either a stallion that had failed out here or wasn’t that commercial, but he got great pleasure in that sort of thing too. It was almost his own little invention.
“He was very hands-on. He was very involved in all the matings every year. And only recently he was planning ahead for this coming breeding season. Only two days ago, Gai Waterhouse was here on the farm, we’ve had so much success with her. We told him that she’d been round and he was thrilled that she was here looking at the yearlings.”
In 2015, Cojuangco’s dedication to the Australian thoroughbred industry saw him enter the Australian Racing Hall of Fame under the Associates category, a rare honour.
“He was quite a shy, quiet sort of man but he was very humbled by that, just to get the recognition from the industry,” Baddock said. “He’d been in it a long time and spent a lot of money. But that was very humbling to be acknowledged by his peers. I know that was one of his crowning moments. He really felt like he’d been accepted in this part of the world.
“Even though he was a businessman and a politician and had a lot of wealth, he just loved the challenge of the whole thing. In this day of trading and wheeling and dealing, he was a guy that would have fourth generation homebreds still on the farm, which is pretty rare these days. There were certain families that he’d had four generations of and, for some families, he had produced the whole page and it’s very rare that sort of thing happens.
“He was a farmer at heart and had a great sense of humour. Whether he ran a maiden at the provincials or a Group 1, he’d say, ‘It’s hard to win a race anywhere.’”
In fact, Baddock says that Cojuangco’s Australian endeavours allowed the billionaire – estimated to be worth AUD$1.6 billion – to enjoy anonymity and obscurity that he simply couldn’t find in the Philippines.
“He’d spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 40 years on the farm. His first love was the thoroughbreds but he loved the agricultural side of things. He loved coming out here and to the local town, Mudgee, and being a bit of a no one. He craved that sort of normality.
“I remember at a Tuesday meeting at Newcastle races, you’d be lucky to have 100 people in the crowd, and I never forget he was there, with a hot dog in his hand and the sauce was dribbling down his front. He said, ‘It doesn’t get any better than this.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and he replied ‘I couldn’t do this in Manila.’ No one cared who he was. Here he was, one of the biggest owners in the country, but he was just one of many there. That sort of summed him up. He craved a bit of normality actually.
“He wanted his horses to do the talking and they certainly did. He was quite unassuming really.”
Cojuangco’s death comes as Gooree Park was already preparing to enter a new phase in its history. It was announced earlier this year that the stud would shift from being a private racing and breeding operation towards a more commercial approach and Baddock believes that it was future planning on Cojuangco’s part that began this adjustment.
“Hearing the news today of his passing, this winding down of the bloodstock makes me think that he was a lot sicker than he made out to us and he was planning for the future,” Baddock said. “It’s a great challenge and it’s a great property and it’s the first time that we’ve been able to share it with breeders in general. After 35 years as a private racing farm, we haven’t had a client and we’re starting from scratch. We will promote the number of great horses that have come off the property and it’s now available to everyone to share and use.
“It’s got a great training facility here with its own track. It’s close enough to the Hunter. We’re starting from scratch and we appreciate it’s going to take time. It’s a new chapter and we’re very positive about it.”
Baddock is determined to honour Cojuangco’s legacy by ensuring this next phase is a success and says that stallions may return to the farm for the first time in three decades.
“We owe it to Eduardo and to his family to take care of this farm and move it forward,” he said.” There’s no doubt we can produce superior horses here. Being a racing and breeding farm is one of the hardest things to be. You’re only as good as your last winner. It’s like having a good football team and keeping it at the top of the ladder for generations. You’ve got to have depth to the team and we continue to do that year in and year out and we’re very proud of our record and I think everyone is really positive.
“We’re set up to take stallions. We’ve got to work on our client base first and foremost but I certainly wouldn’t rule out standing stallions down the track by any means. If the right stallion came along or we produced the right stallion, why not?”
Cojuangco’s link with the Australian racing industry continues through the endeavours of his granddaughter, and former Gooree racing manager, Monica Cummings.