V’landys’ vast training plan for NSW taking shape with Bennett heading Bong Bong Farm
Accomplished horseman embraces long-term vision in return south to governing body’s Southern Highlands property
Renowned horseman Greg Bennett has been head-hunted by Racing NSW to lead its recently acquired Bong Bong Farm facility in the Southern Highlands which is part of the regulator’s long-term strategy to increase the horse population close to Sydney.
Racing NSW paid $22.5 million for the Paul and Angela Fudge-developed property, then home to the husband-and-wife’s Waratah Thoroughbreds, in a deal which was settled in August and Racing NSW chief executive Peter V’landys immediately sought Bennett’s interest in taking charge of the operation.
Bong Bong Farm will be a full-service pre-training business which will also allow Bennett to mentor young staff who have a willingness to learn on the job and become the industry’s trainers, strappers, track riders and jockeys of the future.
Racing NSW envisages a similar business model, albeit on a bigger scale, at Cessnock in the lower Hunter Valley which can also service provincial trainers at Newcastle, Wyong and Gosford as well as Sydney.
“Paul Fudge has had some magnificent work done down there at Bong Bong Farm and he certainly wanted the racing industry to have it. He put his heart and soul into it and we accommodated that request,” V’landys said yesterday.
“I don’t want to embarrass Paul or anything like that, but the amount of money he has spent on capital is over $50 million and we certainly didn’t pay anywhere near that.
“It is a two-fold (purchase) in that it is a great investment for the racing industry because Paul turned it into a world class facility and we want to take advantage of that by having it as a pre-training facility.
“This is part of an overall strategy where we are also building a very big pre-training centre at Cessnock and we’re going to spend tens of millions of dollars at Cessnock.
“Again, it will be a world class pre-training facility and the objective of all this is that, unfortunately at provincial and metropolitan stables, there’s a lot of horses that really are there either for pre-training, breaking-in or for education.”
When Bong Bong Farm was first listed for sale in April, a $35 million valuation had been placed on the 97.5-hectare property which contains four architecturally designed barns with 61 boxes, 1250-metre turf and sand training tracks, a hyperbaric chamber, equine spa, treadmills and horse walkers.
The property also had two fully renovated homes and three staff houses, four feed, workshop and machinery sheds, a quarantine facility, vetting and farrier amenities.
Prize-money levels might be booming in NSW for the state’s traditional races such as the Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m), now worth $5 million, and the Doncaster (Gr 1, 1600m), as well as the addition of The Everest (1200m), Golden Eagle (1500m) and The Invitation (1400m), but V’landys says Sydney’s field sizes are being compromised by a lack of stabling to accommodate all the horses who could be racing in the metropolitan area.
“They are taking up a stable for a horse that should be ready to race, so we want to migrate those horses that are in these stables that aren’t racing and producing revenue to places like Bong Bong and Cessnock where they can do all their pre-training and then come into the metropolitan and provincial stables when they are ready to trial and race,” V’landys said.
“That’s the grand plan and we believe that it will produce additional revenue for racing because improving field sizes always has an incremental effect on (wagering) revenues.”
In an interview with ANZ Bloodstock News, V’landys also revealed Racing NSW:
- Is still searching for a large greenfield site in the Southern Highlands to develop a training centre modelled on the UK’s famous Newmarket;
- Is close to beginning work on upgrading the industry-owned Cessnock racecourse to be used as a large-scale pre-training centre in the same way Bong Bong Farm will be;
- Is in the process of upgrading Kembla Grange and Newcastle with Gosford and Hawkesbury also in line for infrastructure upgrades; and,
- Already has funding approved, which was previously announced, for additional stabling to be constructed at Scone as well as an education centre based at the now industry-owned TAFE site in the Hunter Valley town.
Bennett trades in Maroons jersey
Bennett, along with his wife Wendy, made the move south in early October from Canungra in the Gold Coast hinterland where he had helped establish pre-training and breaking-in business Fenwick Farm.
“I had to hang up my Maroons jersey and get back across the border, which is nice for a new challenge,” Bennett told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“I’ve been tasked with the job of running the farm, which I am excited about because it’s 300 acres of beautiful country and it lends itself to not just horses but running a few cattle and utilising the property as much as I can. I’ve got to use every square inch of it.”
But the move to Bong Bong Farm will also see Bennett give away one facet of his skillset.
“At the moment, we’re going to be pre-training and we’re not going to be breaking in,” he said.
“There’s a lot of young blokes around half and a third my age who can carry on with that. I’ve been there, done that and I am ready to step away from riding buckjumpers.”
Bennett departed Fenwick Farm, which came after a brief period at Aquis Farm in mid-2017, after his most successful period since the establishment of the business in which he broke in, educated and pre-trained 2021 Magic Millions 2YO Classic (RL, 1200m) winner Shaquero (Shalaa), Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Artorius (Flying Artie) and Golden Slipper- (Gr 1, 1200m) winning colt Stay Inside (Extreme Choice).
Fenwick Farm remains operational, but Bennett, the respected face of the business, is no longer at the helm.
He admitted to having some reservations about returning to the “cold country” but his wife Wendy’s familiarity with the region, where she went to school, helped make the decision easier.
“We had its ups and downs to start with (in Queensland), but once we got rock-and-rolling with Fenwick Farm we had a lot of success in the last two-and-a-half years and I left it in a very good place,” Bennett said.
“The business that was built behind me, so there’s always going to be collateral damage when there’s a change, but all the staff have stayed.
“I think the people I have in place there to do the breaking-in, the pre-training and the management in the office side of it are all very good and they’re very competent and capable of taking up the new challenge with me coming down here.”
V’landys says Bennett was the only person he approached about implementing Racing NSW’s vision for Bong Bong Farm.
“It was important because Greg has a brilliant reputation and he is the perfect person to train the trainers,” V’landys says.
“When we bought Bong Bong, he was the first person I rang and sought out to see if he was interested and that’s how it all started.”
Bennett, who has guided apprentice jockeys such as Rachael Murray and Courtney Van Der Werf, is excited by the prospect of playing mentor as well as pre-trainer.
“Part of the job is the horses, and we can do that blindfolded with our arm tied behind our back with the right staff around me,” Bennett said.
“With the assistance of Racing NSW, who will be able to help out with finding young trainees and so forth, the plan for me and my senior staff is to recruit, educate and develop, grow and mentor the future participants of the industry to make them better at what they do.
“That’s not just riders and stappers, we’re looking for the future young trainer or foreman. They certainly don’t have to be riders, whether you want to be a jockey or not is another matter, but we will be able to guide them in that direction if they want to.
“As everyone knows, getting track riders and staff right across the board is a nightmare in this industry.”
About five years ago, Racing NSW funded the training of 25 greenkeeping apprenticeships and V’landys indicated a similar scheme could be introduced to entice a new wave of farriers and other skilled racing industry workers.
“We forecast that there was going to be a massive shortage of greenkeepers because golf courses were being sold; there wasn’t the demand for greenkeepers in the future, so we employed 25 apprentices as greenkeepers and paid for their development over the three or four years of their course,” he said.
“Most of those are now club curators at all our country tracks. If we hadn’t undertaken that exercise we’d be short of greenkeepers and track curators.
“We will probably do the same thing with farriers and it is what we are doing with trainers and stable staff where there is a pathway for somebody who wants to become a trainer.
“They can come in, learn with Greg Bennett and whomever is going to be at Cessnock and then they go from there to a metropolitan trainer and hopefully go out in their own right.”
Southern Highlands greenfield site still on agenda
V’landys, meanwhile, confirmed that the purchase of Bong Bong Farm will not compromise the further expansion of training centres and infrastructure projects to the south of Sydney.
“We are also looking down in the Southern Highlands for a thousand-acre parcel of land for a Newmarket style property, which we’ve announced in the past,” the chief executive said.
“We haven’t been able to find the right one at this stage, but Bong Bong will complement that big facility and Cessnock, again, will accommodate hundreds of horses once we get it up and going.”
He added: “We have got money set aside ready to go on (the Southern Highlands site) when we find the right property. It is a long-term plan, it’s not a two-year plan. We’ve always said Racing NSW is going to look 20 years out because we need to with the way things evolve over time. Unfortunately, 20 years comes very quickly and you’ve got to be ready for it.”
Cessnock could be operational in 12 to 18 months, while leading NSW provincial circuits Kembla Grange and Newcastle are also key planks in Racing NSW’s plan of increasing the number of horses in training which can feed metropolitan racing.
“We’ve got a lot of land around Kembla Grange to build the double-storey stables and we’ve already put a Polytrack at Kembla Grange and you can see the benefits already with the success the Kembla Grange trainers are having,” he said.
“We believe Kembla Grange meets all our criteria because it’s conducive to competitive racing. They’re wide turns, it has a long straight, and it is modelled on Randwick.
“We have also just approved a new Polytrack to be built at Newcastle. The club itself has got a major development in putting another 500 stables into Newcastle, so we are trying to build up all the infrastructure for training and we have put funds aside in order to do it.”
In June, with the then-NSW Treasurer and now Premier Dominic Perrottet in attendance in the Hunter Valley for the announcement, the state government committed $67 million towards infrastructure projects for the racing industry, $20 million of which has been allocated to new stables being built at Scone.
“We are also doing a master development upgrade at Scone, again putting new stables in, a new Polytrack, and we’re putting in a new education facility. We’ve bought the TAFE up at Scone and so we will be able to undertake our own (industry) education,” V’landys said.
“We will make it available for international participation once we have all the courses (up and running). That is integral to the overall plan to train the future workforce of the racing industry and to attract a new workforce.”