RACING SYNDICATES AMONG BUSINESSMEN CEMENT FRIENDSHIPS AND SEAL DEALS
That the rich and powerful approach the turf with cutthroat ambition is clear when Melbourne property developer Lloyd Williams confides that the only time he ever disagreed with his closest friend, Kerry Packer, was over a bunch of highly pedigreed hayburners. It was the late 1980s and Packer, a gambling man without peer, was hell-bent on winning a Melbourne Cup. It rankled that Williams already had two on the mantelpiece (for Just A Dash in 1981 and What A Nuisance in 1985).
Over a period of three years, Williams entrusted the man widely regarded as the best bloodstock agent in the world, John Ferguson (now heading up Darley, owned by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum), to buy 40 proven stayers in the United Kingdom. It was intended that the most promising be shipped to Australia for the first Tuesday in November. Sizeable wads of cash were laid on the table. “I can say without doubt, none of them were any good,” Williams roars today. “There were several conversations started by Kerry that went along the lines of: ‘We’re not going to buy any more of those fucking English horses’.”
If the track is loved for its colour, it is primarily a rich man’s colour: the place where super-sized egos, big bucks and fast horses clash. It is the setting in which the biggest names in racing and business are joined and tested; a pastime that makes the well connected feel comfortable about opening up to the media paying each other out over the hilarity of a multimillion-dollar gambling loss or a good mate’s most expensive horse coming last in the field.
It’s the lavish playground where the wealthy gain critical insights into how their closest friends, business colleagues and rivals handle a roller-coaster ride, from giddy success to ground zero, and all within the space of a week. It’s invaluable for when they next sit down to business. Finally, it’s the ultimate exam in the delicate art of negotiation – from which races the horse should run and whether or not it should race overseas, to whose silks it should wear and at what point it should be sold to stud for a fortune or kept racing with the inherent risks.
Invariably involving champagne, gold cups and huge nights on the town, racing is the glue that cements some of the most powerful friendships, from Kerry Packer and Lloyd Williams to the famous trio of Robert Sangster, the Kelly family of Newhaven Park Stud and Bob and Jack Ingham. This hard-hitting syndicate raced the 1987 Golden Slipper winner Marauding. “For business people involved in racing, if they have a list of names to contact, the people involved in horses will come top of the list,” says the chief executive of QM Properties in Queensland, Jon Haseler.