Rangal Park’s Buttler to put broodmares through online auction
Long-time Victorian breeder Eric Buttler, who raced and later stood Group 1-winning sprinter Keltrice (Kenmare) as well as Palace Music (The Minstrel) among others, will close his Rangal Park Stud owing to ill health.
Buttler, 81, yesterday revealed that he had been diagnosed with cancer, prompting the decision to sell the Euroa property he had owned for three decades and disperse his Rangal Park broodmare band, yearlings and weanlings in the coming months.
Forty Buttler-owned lots, including Listed winner Scratchy Lass (U S Ranger), Aquada (Flying Spur) – dam of the promising sprinter The Astrologist’s (Zoustar) – and Across The Ditch (Savabeel), a granddaughter of Group 3 winner Northeast Sheila (Keltrice), will be offered unreserved through the Inglis Digital January (Late) Online Auction. The catalogue will be released today.
“All the mares will go through on the 27th, a lot of them have foals at foot. We have our yearlings in at the Premier and at Easter and then there will be a few weaners go through in June and that will bring Rangal Park to a conclusion,” Buttler told ANZ Bloodstock News yesterday.
“I don’t have any other option: when the doctor tells you to get your affairs in order, you haven’t got much choice but to do just that.
“I have been diagnosed with cancer and the doctors haven’t given me a great length of time, so they have given me a push to wind things up.”
Rangal Park Stud’s four-strong stallion roster of Soul Patch (Shamus Award), Danerich (Danehill), Boom Time (Flying Spur) and Cliff’s Edge (Canford Cliffs) are all expected to relocate to Cornwall Park in time for the 2021 breeding season, with Buttler’s 530-acre Euroa farm already sold to a local cattle breeder.
“At this particular stage, it will close as a horse stud and he’ll run cattle on the property,” he said.
“It’s a highly fertile sandy loam and the grass takes off with a little bit of rain. That is what endeared him to the property, the grass production on it.”
Buttler also yesterday reflected on his time in racing and breeding, which included breeding and racing top-class two-year-old Northeast Sheila, who later became the dam of stakes winner Jacqueline Rouge, a filly by another of Rangal Park’s stallions Ne Coupez Pas (Nureyev).
“The highlights have been getting involved in Keltrice and North East Sheila and, of course, we were very unfortunate with a horse called Ne Coupez Pas due to his fertility,” he recalled.
“He bombed out totally but his credentials were unbelievable. I think he only had a handful of foals in his first year but he was champion first season Victorian sire and, of course, as a broodmare sire he had Pippie, who won the Oakleigh Plate, and Special Diva, who was stakes-performed.”
On Keltrice, who he acquired before he won the 1994 VRC Lightning Stakes (Gr 1, 1000m), Buttler said: “He was rather unique as far as he had no Northern Dancer, no Mr Prospector, no Star Kingdom or no Sir Tristram blood, so he was a total outcross to everything.
“He’s sired quite a few decent winners as a broodmare sire. He was more of a bread-and-butter sire, of course, but he did look like he was going to be outstanding earlier on but he didn’t quite go on with it.”