Slipper victory caps rapid rise for Kingstar Farm
Cook overwhelmed as operation breed winner of Rosehill feature just five years after inception
In the vast expanse of the Hunter Valley’s fertile soil, the area of land, three-quarters of the way up Dalswinton Road, just off the Golden Highway in Denman, was largely undeveloped in 2016, with just Amarina Farm a little further along the way, across the road.
Yet within the five years since, the development to around 650 acres of land has seen it transform into a state-of-the-art thoroughbred farm that, following Saturday’s Golden Slipper Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) victory for Stay Inside (Extreme Choice), can lay claim to a thoroughbred stamped with the crown and star having been foaled, raised and sold on its pastures, setting the foundation for the colt in becoming the winner of the world’s most valuable two-year-old race.
Kingstar Farm is the investment, foresight and, indeed, passion of former publishing entrepreneur Matthew Sandblom, who in Adam Cook he has entrusted as farm manager for his fledgling operation.
“It means the world,” said Cook to ANZ Bloodstock News yesterday, with Saturday’s events evidently still not quite having sunken in.
“The amount of text messages and phone calls I got and the support from industry people was amazing and look, I was in tears for an hour after that race.
“To get a Golden Slipper winner in the first five years of operation, it’s not underestimated whatsoever and I feel very lucky and privileged to be involved. There are a lot of farms that have been doing this for a lot of years and have never done it.
“It’s been a rapid growth, but it’s been nothing but a pleasure. Anyone that knows Matthew Sandblom and anyone that’s worked for Matthew Sandblom, he’s an amazing bloke to work for.
“It was all built on relatively unestablished land. We had to build the lot. Everything is new; new pasture, new fencing, new irrigation lines, everything.”
Stay Inside is out of the winning Anabaa (Danzig) mare Nothin Leica Storm, with the mare becoming part of Sandblom’s passion for thoroughbred breeding when purchased for $90,000 in foal to first season sire Extreme Choice (Not A Single Doubt), himself a member of Sandblom’s breeding empire through the 25 per cent ownership he has in Newgate Farm.
Kingstar Farm now plays host to around 130 broodmares, with over $5 million invested in broodmare stock from public auction since 2016. However it’s the ‘off-the-field’ investment that Cook says has been a crucial factor in achieving their extraordinary early success.
“Nothin Leica Storm was purchased in the first 12 months of our operation at Kingstar Farm and she foaled down in the second year that we’d been going,” said Cook.
“The mating (with Extreme Choice) is very, very good and that was part of the buying process. Extreme Choice with the Anabaa (mare), that was perfect.
“Matthew confides in Duncan Ramage, he confides in Henry Field, myself. We go around and look at mares and say ‘I like this mare and that one’, but Matthew is very good on his pedigrees himself.
“The majority of the staff have been here since day dot. We employ very good staff here at Kingstar Farm and there’s a reason why a horse like Stay Inside is a ready-made racehorse and that’s because he’s been handled the right way from day dot.
“Henry has got it right, we got it right, Michelle Harris and Kristy Marsh, who do a fantastic job at Hollymount Stud for us, have got it right on multiple occasions. There’s all these people with this wealth of knowledge and, when we get it right, hopefully we get a result like we did yesterday in the Golden Slipper, which is the pinnacle of Australian breeding, and Kingstar Farm got it right.”
Stay Inside was foaled in 2018, in the midst of construction at Kingstar Farm and, along with several other produce from their 2018 crop, he was sold at the weanling sales in 2019 where having initially passed in, sold for $60,000 to Newgate Farm before heading back through the ring as a yearling where he was purchased by the Freedman Brothers and Rick Connolly for $200,000.
“He was just a nice foal, the whole way through,” said Cook. “One of those horses that never got injured, never got a cold. He was born and never had any problems all the way through until we sold him. I think that’s what makes good racehorses.
“Early doors we were selling as weanlings as we were a young farm making a lot of investment and in order to pay the bills we had to keep the turnover going,” he added.
“He was passed in and I said to Matthew ‘I like this foal, let’s not worry about it’. It could have been a market that wasn’t overly confident in Extreme Choice having seen that he was a bit infertile.”
Yet, as has been experienced by many in the thoroughbred industry, to get it right every step of the way is a rare occurrence, and last year, as the extent of the impact from the emerging Covid-19 pandemic was as yet unknown, Cook listed Stay Inside’s dam, Nothin Leica Storm, for sale in foal to Russian Revolution (Snitzel) on the Inglis Digital platform in April and the mare’s story, at Kingstar at least, was almost up, however she passed in with a reserve of $75,000.
“What a disaster that would have been if I had sold her,” said Cook.
“We’d pulled our weanlings out of the weanling sale and Matthew asked if we could find half a dozen or so mares that we could put online to turn over a bit of money during this hard time.
“We put up Conducir, Fighting Rose, Cuban Gold and Nothing Like A Storm and two of them I didn’t really want to sell. Cuban Gold – who we sold – she was a beautiful Teofilo mare that had produced a $100,000 Bull Point yearling at the Magic Millions sale this year. I was sad to see her go. Nothin Like A Storm was another one. She had produced nice foals and was a good looking mare, so I thought she would generate a bit of money.
“Thankfully no one believed me.”
The resulting filly foal by Russian Revolution is among the leading weanlings the farm have bred this year according to Cook and, with Nothin Leica Storm having missed to Extreme Choice and then Cosmic Force (Deep Field), she’ll be first in line to revisit Extreme Choice this year.
“She’s got a cracking Russian Revolution, she would be among the top ten per cent of foals we’ve got on the ground and she’s a great advertisement for the stallion, who’s now got a half-sister to a Golden Slipper winner.
“And I guess we’ll have first crack at Extreme Choice in September 2021.”