New dawn for Rowsthorns and Morningside after parting with stallion operation
End of an era at Woodside but family pledges to continue commercial breeding operation
The Rowsthorn name will not be lost to the Australian thoroughbred industry – far from it.
That’s the message from Will Rowsthorn, the third generation breeder, after his family sold off Woodside Park Stud, the business founded by his grandfather Peter Rowsthorn Sr, to Victorian owner Eddie Hirsch in a deal completed last week.
The selling of Woodside Park at Tylden, two years after Hirsch also bought the Rowsthorns’ nearby training centre, will allow Mark and his sons Will and Tom to focus on their new Victorian venture Morningside near Nagambie without the burden of managing a stallion roster.
As revealed in ANZ Bloodstock News yesterday, Foxwedge (Fastnet Rock), Rich Enuff (Written Tycoon) and Tosen Stardom (Deep Impact) formed part of the Hirsch deal and will remain on the Woodside Park Stud roster in 2021.
“The past few years we’ve spent a lot of time and effort sending all of our mares back to our own stallions, as you do as a stallion farm, but now we are quite excited to branch out a bit more and visit all these different stallions across the country and obviously invest a bit more in our broodmare band,” Will Rowsthorn said yesterday.
“For us, there will be a higher focus on trying to get into that top end of the sales over the next few years. That’s our aim.”
The Rowsthorns sold a number of mares and weanlings at the Magic Millions Gold Coast National Sale in May as it consolidated its bloodstock holdings ahead of the change in direction.
“Obviously, we had a really strong sale up on the Gold Coast in May with the partnership dispersal with Sheriff (Iskander) and a lot of that money has gone back into the business and will be reinvested through the purchase of high-quality mares,” he said.
“We’ve really enjoyed the stallion side, but I guess being able to downsize and have a bit more of a family run operation (means) we’ve moved from 35 staff down to about six or seven.
“There’s a few less headaches, I guess, but I think we’ll find the whole business a bit more enjoyable.”
The Rowsthorns stood soon-to-be-crowned champion Australian stallion Written Tycoon (Iglesia) from 2013 up until the 2020 breeding season when the pandemic led to him standing at Arrowfield Stud in the Hunter Valley.
This year, Written Tycoon was the centre of a bidding war between a number of major studs and it was Yulong who landed the deal for him to return to Victoria.
“It has been an unbelievable story, Written Tycoon, and we’re so excited that he is staying in Victoria,” Rowsthorn said.
“We were sort of planning for the scenario where he might end up in the Hunter and that we would have sold our breeding rights, but we’ve retained all of our breeding rights from the deal with Sheriff and with those we can keep supporting him and we will still be part of his journey in some way.”
While the move to Morningside – a 1,000-acre property with Goulburn River frontage renowned for producing high-class horses such as Efficient (Zabeel), Shocking (Street Cry), Zipping (Danehill), Silent Witness (El Moxie), Reset (Zabeel) and Divine Madonna (Hurricane Sky) – signals an end to the stallion operation for the Rowsthorns, the achievements of Written Tycoon are ones they are proud of.
“I’d love to be able to find the statistics on who sent the most mares to Written Tycoon over the past ten years because I reckon we’d be right up there,” he said.
“Even in the years when he was considered not much of a stallion, Woodside’s mares were going to him and selling for nothing.
“I remember selling nominations to him for $3,000 and that was dealing down. Peter Moody got one of those and he had a few nice horses himself (by Written Tycoon).”
Under the new regime Rowsthorn plans to have about 40 family-owned mares on the books. They have about 25 weanlings destined for the yearling sales next year, while during the sales season just passed they sold four yearlings at the Magic Millions in January at an average of $395,000, while Woodside were the leading vendor on average sales (with three or more lots sold) at the Inglis Classic Sale.
“The farm itself has quite a mix of operations. We grow all of our own hay on the farm, so we are not buying in anything, and we are able to run a couple of hundred herd of cattle which within our family we get a lot of enjoyment out of as well, so it’s an exciting time for all aspects of the business, really,” he said.
“These next 12 months is a bit of a feeling out period. My guess is that we’re going to sell under other people’s drafts next year and once we’ve got set up with the right amount of mares and get the staffing right … I envisage that we will prepare our own horses in time with smaller, select drafts.
“Maybe we will have ten for Magics, ten for Sydney (Easter) and ten for Melbourne, so you have a nice spread across the three major sales, I guess.”
The Woodside Park experience, Rowsthorn says, holds him in good stead for managing Morningside.
“We have had some amazing people who have come through and worked for us at Woodside,” he said.
“All the way back to Gerard Jones who is now at Rosemont. He was who I first started with, there was Matty Upton and Ben Gunn who is now stud manager at Yulong.
“Those guys were young, too, when I worked with them. To be with a young team, I have got a lot out of it.
“There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes and, this year, we had a couple of results that were almost touching a million dollars with some of our yearlings.
“Our aim is to hit that mark over the next year or two and get some serious results.”
Rowsthorn added: “We were lucky enough to sell the pre-training farm and now Eddie has got the stud as well. He’s got three generations of Rowsthorn businesses under their name now and we wish him all the best.
“We are really excited to start something new. It’s not a huge change in direction; it’s probably just minus clients and stallions.
“Morningside has such a great history. I don’t want people to think that we’re out. We’re more in than we’ve ever been.”