THATS MY HORSE!

WRITTEN BY GLEN LATHAM

He was ahead of the IT curve when it came to office computers in the 1980s. His keen interest in the patterns behind linebreeding could best be expressed with arrows. His introduction to his good friend and business partner, Steve Grant, a circle that starts and ends with a galloper called Bahroona Sahib. Then dotted throughout would be plenty of road signs all pointing to the township of Quirindi.

Whether it is racing as the Carpe Diem syndicate with its involvement in the Newgate stallion partnerships, racing and breeding as Grant Lowe Bloodstock, or successfully selling as a 50% shareholder in yearlings offered under the banner of Grant’s Silverdale Farm, Ken’s success in both racing and breeding leaves the impression it all happened rapidly. He will readily tell you that he is a newcomer to the industry who is trying to learn at a brisk rate, but then his family had strong ties to the inception of the Quirindi Jockey Club in 1946, with his grandfather Pat Lowe acting as honorary secretary. Ken’s own involvement as we know it today had its genesis with a modest investment in a New Zealand horse import when playing football in the mid 1970’s.

Ken’s parents grew up in Quirindi on the road north out of the Hunter Valley. They moved to Sydney during the war and rented at North Sydney. “Dad was a race lover and always had the radio on Saturday morning listening to Ken Howard, Clarence the Clocker and all those people. As a family, I can remember going to the Wallabadah Cup on New Year’s Day, but I didn’t go to the races regularly with dad as I played a bit of football and that was on Saturdays.”

‘Playing a bit of football’ led Lowe to his first brush with racing as an owner. “My first involvement in racing was through the North Sydney Bears Rugby League Club when, in 1976, somebody was offering shares in a horse which had a value of $4,500, so I took two ninths of the ownership. He was registered as Bahroona Sahib (Bahroona), we nicknamed him Bruno, but it wasn’t until the horse had done well that we found out the purchase price from New Zealand was just $1,000!”

As mark-ups go on face value that looked a little on the high side, but it would turn out to be a shrewd investment. “Bruno ran third in the Canonbury Stakes on debut for Ken Tresize, before breaking his maiden the following August at Randwick in the Bank Holiday Handicap. Ken then took him to the Gosford Classic over 1600 metres against Saturday class three-yearolds where he sat last throughout before joining in late, winning, running away, as a 12/1 shot. In those days a $20,000 race was very good money.”

Bahroona Sahib’s victory that day would play a significant role in the long term fortunes of Ken and his family. “I met my wife Maree when I was teaching at Enmore Boys High, and we decided to backpack through Asia. We landed in Kuala Lumpur then travelled through Malaysia, Thailand and then Burma (now Myanmar). Then when back in Kuala Lumpur, we were married at the kitchen table in the presbytery of St John’s Cathedral with the priest, his assistant and two witnesses who didn’t speak English! By the time, we got back to Sydney, all I had was a Valiant Charger I’d bought for 500 bucks at the auctions, a racehorse and definitely nothing in the bank. We were looking for $25K properties around Enmore, Dulwich Hill and Newtown, before they became trendy, which was all we could afford with a small deposit. But winning the Gosford Classic was a life changing moment for the prizemoney. $400 on at 12/1, allowed us to buy a semi-detached house at Clovelly near Gordons Bay in the eastern suburbs. We couldn’t see much water, but we got the sea breeze!”

Bahroona Sahib’s knack of changing Ken and Maree’s fortunes didn’t stop there. “Bruno ran in the Canterbury Guineas, the Rosehill Guineas and acquitted himself well but it was extremely hard, taking on the likes of Belmura Lad and Luskin Star. He ran in the Champion Stakes for three-year-olds (now the Spring Champion run in September) on Doncaster Handicap day, a race in which I managed to get a trifecta that paid $3200. On the proceeds, Maree and I took leave without pay and backpacked around Europe through their summer. At one stage Bruno was favourite for the Epsom Handicap but he developed a heart issue that required a twelve month

spell. One of the other part-owners knew Gary Grant, who had a five-acre property at West Pennant Hills when it was pretty much all small farms and took Bahroona in while he recovered. Gary fed him a daily molasses potion that did the trick!”

When eventually, Bruno came back we gave him to John Rosenthal who didn’t gallop the horse on the training track, but he got him fit enough to win three open company races in a row. He was good enough to run third in the Doomben Cup behind Golden Rhapsody and won over $85,000 in prizemoney which would be over a million in today’s money. When he retired, we gave him to the strapper and that was the last we heard of the horse, for some time at least. But Bahroona Sahib would re-enter the story as we will see later on.

The fact that Ken has the time and resources to invest in what is now his passion traces back to decisions that he and Maree made in the early 1980s when there were three (soon to become four) young children in the Lowe house. A science teacher by profession, he combined his teaching skills and an interest in the then fledgeling computing industry to offer after hours courses at the local TAFE for some extra cash. That interest would morph into a small computer import business that grew and grew, eventually becoming ASI Solutions, a hardware provider with key contracts with various government departments Australia wide. “In 1991 we became the first Australian computer company to go down the Quality Assurance route which made a huge difference when it came to tenders for Federal and State Government contracts. We grew the business wherever we went so when we won contracts to supply to government authorities in, say, Queensland and the Northern Territory, we would open an office there. In New South Wales we won contracts with the Department of Health, Police and Education, on the back of which the business grew quite quickly.”

Probably ASI’s major achievement came when working with Kevin Rudd’s Federal government. “In 2007, a wonderful man we had employed to run our Canberra office approached me saying he had the opportunity to build a data centre there and would we like to be involved? From around 2001 we had been supplying technology that focussed on energy efficiency and that became the basis for our ‘clean and green data centre’ in the capitol. The Federal Government became our tenants using a purposebuilt facility that was energy efficient and had redundancy. What we had designed was really state of the art.”

Over the next five years the data centre grew and required more funding. The Commercial Manager from the bank involved came to Canberra to approve the purchase of property and asked if we would be interested in going to the Darwin Cup in 2013. He arranged for three couples to go, one of those couples was Steve and Eliza Grant. During a casual conversation between Maree and Steve while in Darwin, the subject of horses cropped up and she mentioned we had only really had one galloper and that was Bahroona Sahib, to which Steve replied, ‘I own that horse!’ The story was the strapper hadn’t been able to afford the horse, so she passed it on to Gary Grant who gave it to his brother… Steve! So, the Bruno ‘circle’ connects some 30 years after he last raced.

“At the time the Bank Manager had taken a 10% share in a horse that Steve had bred called Court Martial

Miss (War Pass), but I originally declined Steve’s offer to take up a share myself. On arriving back from Darwin, I had to have eye surgery for a detached retina, and the recovery process meant I had to lay face down for a couple of weeks. With nothing else to do I opened up a TAB account and got into having a few small wagers. In the end, I sent a text to Steve to ask if the 20% was still available? I took it up and she did well, winning five races for Liam Birchley.”

That blossoming friendship with Steve began an exciting new chapter for Ken. “That Bank Manager started a 20 person group called the Dirty Grey Syndicate which Steve and I joined. The idea was the syndicate would buy 10% of four horses but that they had to be grey. The first purchase was 10%, of which we had just 0.5% each, of a grey Sebring yearling up at Widden Stud owned by Bloodstock Agent Louis Mihalyka of Laurel Oak Thoroughbreds. I went to Widden for their annual stallion parade and while there saw this colt, from which I bought the 20% Louis had left for sale. The horse was later named Sir Bacchus who went on to win eight races.”

“Steve and I met up for a coffee one morning and he mentioned that Richard Pegum had offered him shares in a number of horses and I said I’d bought 20% of the Sebring colt. So, we did some horsetrading and I wound up with a share in Dance of Heroes (Danehill Dancer) that did well for us as I’d get a pay cheque from him every two weeks or so.”

That bit of horse-trading would lead to an experience only a handful of Australians have been lucky enough to enter - the winner’s enclosure at Royal Ascot no less. “Among those horses was Kinema (Galileo) who was racing in England. I wasn’t going to go but Richard kept ringing me every two days explaining that Royal Ascot was the Olympics of racing and not everybody gets to have a runner there, you have to go. It was only a week before the race, so I bought two air tickets and we headed over, and for me it has to have been the most exciting win so far. The Duke of Edinburgh Cup is over 2400 metres, the horse was last into the straight, made his run out wide but eventually finished on the inside rail causing some interference as he went past. There was a protest, conducted on the most gentlemanly of terms, and fortunately it was dismissed. It was Ralph Beckett’s first winner at Royal Ascot, and we went back to the car park afterwards and partied while Ralph and the chap who sold us the horse had their chauffeurs or butler’s serving us drinks! There was lots of food and drink going around and we got to sip from the Cup itself. I also loved the singing and entertainment after the last with the crowd banging out Sweet Caroline, something that should be introduced in Sydney to keep the crowd there for a while. (Given the reception at this year’s The Everest, Ken might get his wish!) Royal Ascot was such a wonderful experience and for anyone who hasn’t done it, it should be on top of their bucket list!

Ken and Steve have also been on the fantastic ride that Newgate Farm have enjoyed through 2021. “We were invited to join Henry’s (Field of Newgate Stud) group which has been outstanding. It is focused on him getting his next crop of stallions, is extremely well managed with great people to be associated with, all so friendly and nothing is a problem. Ironically, Fred Moses was Henry’s great, great grandfather on the maternal side and he and my grandfather were foundation members of the Quirindi Jockey Club. I only found out they would have been on the Committee together when I contacted the Club and said I was going to be in the area. The Club arranged for me to meet three people from the same era as my father who would have known my grandfather. I was given copies of documents from the time and when I showed them to Henry we realised our forefathers would have been mates having a couple of beers together just as we were doing at that moment.”

From there the friendship with Steve grew even stronger with Grant creating Silverdale Farm in the Southern Highlands. “I suppose it was only three years ago that he put his mind to bulldozing all the paddocks and putting in the irrigation. I don’t own a cent of Silverdale but I do have 50% of all of the bloodstock on the farm.”

Since making his initial investment in breeding stock, Ken has tried to soak up as much knowledge as possible when it comes to learning about that side of the industry. “I come from a science background and find it fascinating to look at the genetic makeup of superior horses and then match that with statistical data on stallions. I’ve also been studying the works

of Leon Rasmussen on linebreeding. That it has not been ascertained for certain whether the factors that produce a top quality horse are passed along via the mitochondria or through the other materials present in the DNA I find fascinating.”

Ken and Steve had a significant share in the Laurel Oak raced multiple Gr.1 winner Rebel Dane which led to one of last season’s more remarkable stories. “To support Rebel Dane I’ve been buying mares and I purchased the Bernadini mare Caves for $1,000. I hadn’t even seen her before she went into the ring, but she was big, the type of physical I wanted to go with Rebel Dane. The subsequent first foal out of that mare is Subterranean who won the Gr.3 Ken Russell Classic which was a pretty big thrill. It also put Rebel Dane on the map and as a result he has a good book this Spring.”

Like all good horses Subterranean has a story behind him and in this case, it relates to Ken and Quirindi. “We sent Subterranean to Matt Dunn with the instruction we wanted to sell half of him for A$15,000 to cover our expenses. One morning a chap called Mitch Lowe was at the track to watch his three-year-old run and our, then, two-year-old kicked its brains in. Mitch is a syndicator and when Matt explained 50% was for sale he said he’d take the lot. Then one day at Randwick I got talking to Mitch’s dad Steve and we found out not only did we share the same surname, but both our sets of parents came from Quirindi. It turns out we were related.”

Anyone who has experienced the excitement of having a runner in a major race will tell you it can work the nerves over a bit, but in Ken’s case this year’s Golden Slipper was quite different. “The syndicate had bought into Stay Inside, Profiteer and Artorius and had bought Captivant as a yearling so had four runners in the Slipper and it was a case of which one to keep your eye on. Winning any Gr.1 is a thrill, and this might sound a bit arrogant, but I just expected to win the Slipper as we had three out of the top four in betting and would have been disappointed if we hadn’t. The only question was which of the quartet would win?”

2021 has also been a landmark year for Silverdale Farm and the bloodstock partnership of Grant and Lowe. Ken explained “This was the first year that we sold through Magic Millions in our own right. Previously John Muir of Milburn Creek sold a few on our behalf but at our first go, we finished as the second leading vendor by average (5 lots sold at an average of $535,000) which I thought was an amazing achievement. We had one lot that held us back a little and that was a Shalaa colt who undoubtedly would have made more if he had sold after Shaquero had won the 2YO Classic. Amongst the draft was Pantonario (Not A Single Doubt) which we stayed in after we sold it and she ran third on debut in this year’s Gimcrack Stakes (Gr.3).”

Ken clearly has the taste for being part of the excitement Magic Millions sales generate. “Selling on the Gold Coast was fantastic; it was like winning a race every couple of hours! We didn’t have any grand expectations on prices, and they were all there to sell, but when there were bidding wars going on I kept thinking ‘how good is this!’” For this January, we plan to have six to eight excellent quality yearlings for sale.”

The upcoming Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale will be just another step on Ken and Maree’s journey that has taken in Rosehill, Royal Ascot, the Gold Coast and many fascinating places in between, but has at its foundation Quirindi and paying ‘overs’ for a horse named Bruno.