Patinack Farm acquires Swettenham Stud

Nathan Tinkler, Chairman of Patinack Farm
(Courier Mail)

Australia & New Zealand Bloodstock News reports that Nathan Tinkler has continued his financial commitment to the industry with the purchase of Swettenham Stud in the Hunter Valley.

Announcing the purchase yesterday, Patinack Farm Chairman, Nathan Tinkler said, “This property enjoys a well deserved reputation for rearing champions and we are looking forward to continuing this tradition. We look forward to working with the existing team and breeding many Group 1 winners in the years to come.”

This purchase gives Patinack Farm an established breeding property to run their broodmare band, which now stands at over 250, and sits alongside their initial purchase of the Alanbridge Stud, now known as Patinack Farm Segenhoe Valley, which will continue to be managed as a stallion complex, home to first-season sires Casino Prince and Husson (Chi) along with the proven Beautiful Crown (USA).

Nathan Tinkler has also spread the love in Victoria, with Patinack Farm entering into a sponsorship partnership with the Victoria Racing Club (VRC). Patinack Farm has signed an agreement to sponsor four Group races run at Flemington across both the spring and autumn seasons.

The races involved and their new names are:

• Patinack Let’s Elope Stakes (G3) – to be run on 6 September,

• Patinack Turnbull Stakes (G1) – to be run on 4 October

• Patinack Farm Classic (G1) – to be run on 8 November

• Patinack Farm Stakes (G3) – to be run on 14 March, 2009

The Victoria Racing Club’s General Manager Sponsorship & Corporate Development Brendan Ford said the Club was delighted to welcome “the new kid on the block” to its stable of sponsors.

“Patinack has made a huge impact in a short period of time and we are delighted that they have chosen to join in a partnership with us. They are doing things in a fresh new way and what better place than Flemington to make their mark in Victoria,” Brendan Ford said.

“As Patinack Farm continues to build a solid base for our future, we are looking forward to a long association with the VRC, one of the premier Racing Clubs in Australia,” added Nathan Tinkler.

So they've got a Galileo... we have three.

Galileo and Mick Kinane winning at Epsom
(Phil Cole/Allsport)

Anticipating that Galileo could wind up Europe’s Champion Sire for 2008 (and after Saturday, that looks pretty much a certainty,) the Summerhill team strategised that we should attempt to exploit the Aussie antipathy towards his progeny for the lack of precocity they’ve displayed in that speed-crazy country. And so we went to the Melbourne Classic sale in late February, and bought three of the five on offer, from two of Australia’s foremost nurseries, Swettenham Stud and Widden Stud.

And, we guess, there are those that would say we’re sitting pretty, though not for long, as these spectacularly bred animals will be part of the Summerhill draft at this Emperor’s Palace Ready To Run sale on the first Sunday in November. If only for it’s featuring the three Galileos, make a date now, because that’s a pretty unique feature. The stallion never returned to Australia after the 2006 season, so these will be the very last of his last Southern Hemisphere crop to go under the hammer.

MELBOURNE PREMIER YEARLING SALE : Patinack Farm pushes average up by 25%

Nathan Tinkler’s newly established Patinack Farm, which made a big splash at Karaka as leading buyer, continued the theme on the first day of the Inglis Premier Yearling Sale in Melbourne yesterday.

Patinack picked up 12 yearlings for AUS$1,895,000, helping push the average up by 25 percent and the median by 40 percent. Among six fillies purchased by Patinack was a much-admired daughter of Encosta de Lago (Aus) out of MGSW Royal Sash (Aus) (Royal Academy). Offered by Three Bridges Farm, she brought a co-session topping AUS$380,000. “We saw her as an outstanding filly,” said Tinkler’s agent, Roger Langley. “We are keen to develop a broodmare band from good quality black type families, and this a lovely filly-a great walker with good residual. We think she is a cracking type.” Langley added, “If we assumed this filly was going to either Magic Millions or Easter, I think we have bought particularly well on that basis.”

Patinack also gave AUS$230,000 for hip 27, a Flying Spur (Aus) filly from the Willow Park Stud consignment. “This filly was also accepted for Easter, but we kept her in our Premier draft because we sort of chose to be bigger fish in a smaller pond, and we are very happy with the result,” said Willow Park’s Glenn Burrows. Tinkler, 31, a former electrician who recently sold his Queensland mining company, purchased Alanbridge Farm in the Hunter Valley and Riverslea Farm, near Darley Australia in the Segenhoe Valley. Patinack has also acquired four stallions for stud duty, including MG1SW Husson (Arg) (Hussonet) and G1SWs Teranaba (Aus) (Anabaa) and Wonderful World (Aus) (Agnes World).

First-time consignor Monterey Stud’s Matt Brown was in a celebratory mood after his Exceed and Excel (Aus) colt was snapped up by trainer Gai Waterhouse for co-session topping AUS$380,000 early in the day. “He is a lovely loose colt with a lovely intelligent face and beautiful markings,” Waterhouse said. “I saw him and all of a sudden I thought, ‘there is the jewel.’ Brown had previously consigned 12 yearlings through his uncle’s Kilora Farm, and that draft has yielded no less than 10 winners, including five city winners and two stakes performers. The consignor confessed he’d had a sales eve nightmare that he missed the auction ring appearance of his star colt.

The sales-day reality was potentially worse-the laid-back colt, uncharacteristically aggressive during a pre-sales inspection less than an hour before he went into the ring, set about attacking trainer Lee Freedman. “The horse had just been bitten by a wasp, and he was kicking and trying to bite Lee,” Brown explained. “I thought, ‘there goes Lee,’ but I understand he was underbidder.” He added, “After selling under my uncle’s banner, we decided this year, with six yearlings, to do it ourselves and stay in Melbourne, and they say fortune favours the brave.” The colt’s dam Oubladee (Aus) was Brown’s first mare purchase, a AUS$35,000 buy.

Newcastle-based trainer Paul Perry went to AUS$210,000 to secure an elegant grey filly by Swettenham Stud sire (Aus) for AUS$210,000. The filly is a half-sibling to Saturday’s Premier Race winner Carnero (Aus) (Carnegie). Anthony Mithen, from Rosemont Farm, said the filly had been extremely popular even before Carnero’s success Saturday. “She is a lovely filly,” Mithen said. “She was out a lot, and then all of a sudden she became something extra special-they say timing is everything. She has a brilliant temperament, but she is a tired girl tonight. I don’t think anyone here at the sales has not asked to see her and she has been sensational, she just hasn’t put a foot wrong.”

Extract from Thoroughbred Daily News

From "our" man at the sales

Mick GossTrade at Tattersalls in breeding stock has reached unprecedented highs, with the dispersal and reduction of two of the world’s greatest private breeding establishments, the late Robert Sangster’s Swettenham Stud and the Niarchos family’s Haras de la Fresnay-le-Buffard. It’s no longer a rarity for regally connected broodmares and highly performed race fillies, to make in excess of 3,000,000 guineas (about R50 million). As usual, Sheikh Mohammed has been the biggest buyer at the upper end, while Sheikh Hamdan’s Shadwell Stud paid 2,000,000 guineas for the dual Group 1 winner INDIAN INK, which was knocked down to Angus Gold on Monday evening.

Summerhill has been mildly active, acquiring a HAWK WING filly from the Aga Khan’s family of Champion, AZAMOUR (which was the property of old friends, David and Diane Nagle), and an elegant daughter of the world’s greatest broodmare sire, SADLER’S WELLS.

Besides his attendance at the sale, Mick Goss has been locked in numerous meetings with people from a broad variety of nations. Networking is one of the reasons for the extensive international client base at Summerhill, which spans eight countries and seven time zones, and the December sale is something of a melting pot of people from across the globe.

Record Turnover at Tattersalls

An electric day’s trade at the Tattersalls December sale in Newmarket yesterday produced an aggregate of over 36-million guineas, the highest single-day turnover ever seen at a European bloodstock auction. No less than three lots made 3 million guineas or more, and two of the trio came from the Sangster family’s Swettenham Stud.

Ocean Silk (bbc)The 10-strong dispersal brought in a total of 8,555,000gns, including session topper Ocean Silk (Dynaformer). The seven-year-old, a listed winner and runner-up in the 2003 G1 Yorkshire Oaks, sold in foal to Pivotal (GB) for 3.2-million guineas. She was the subject of a duel between John Ferguson and Coolmore’s Paul Shanahan, with the Sheikh Mohammed team prevailing once again.

Ferguson went to a world-record $10.5 million for the Swettenham Stud mare Playful Act (Ire) at Keeneland November. Ocean Silk, a $190,000 KEESEP yearling purchase by BBA Ireland supremo Adrian Nicoll, is from the family of two-time European champion filly Divine Proportions and G1SW Whipper. The day’s co-second top selling lot also came from the Swettenham consignment. MGISW Angara (GB) (Alzao) was purchased by London Thoroughbred Services, agent for Waddesdon Stud, for 3-million guineas.

After the Swettenham draft went through the ring, Ben Sangster reflected, “It is a sad day, but we have to be delighted with the prices. There are a lot of memories—Ocean Silk was bought as a yearling by Adrian Nicoll and trained by John Gosden, and we bought Angara privately and had a lot of sport with the pair of them.” Sangster added, “We’ll let the dust settle and see what the future holds, but I will have several horses running in my colours and I have a younger brother with two farms in Australia.”

Click here to watch the duel for Ocean Silk.

Extract from TDN 5.12.07