Byron Rogers - TrueNicks

TDN AusNZ: Where are you from and what is your earliest racing memory?

BR: I was born in Sydney, Australia, on the North Shore. I would say my earliest memory was going to the races with my dad at Randwick racecourse. I remember I put a dollar on a horse named Been There (Boucher {USA}) in a 2-year-old race and he won. I was hooked.

TDN AusNZ: Which is your favourite racehorse of all time? Why?

BR: I’d go with Let’s Get Physical (Oenjay Star). My family bred and owned him with Tony Cavanagh and sold him to Mike Willesee at the end of his 2-year-old career after winning the Blue Diamond. He didn’t really train on at three and was a useless stallion, but at the time I was just getting interested in the sport, and I thought he was a star. There are plenty of favourites after that, but he was the first.

TDN AusNZ: Do you have a favourite day on a racecourse? Why?

BR: It's hard to beat Royal Ascot. I had bought A’Ali (Ire) (Society Rock {Ire}) as a yearling and sold him as a 2-year-old and he won the Norfolk S. there on the Thursday last year. That was pretty special. Any day at Royal Ascot warms the soul as the class of horse racing is just unreal and it is all done so well. There is zero prizemoney in racing in England compared to Australia, but the events like Ascot, Goodwood or York are done so well.

TDN AusNZ: Could you tell us how you got into this industry, about your job now and what you love most about it?

BR: I started off my last two years of high school working summers at Arrowfield Stud. I knew John Messara through his daughter Louise, and my dad knew John as they went to school together. I went up to Arrowfield (the property that is now Coolmore) and was prepping yearlings and looked after wet mares. Peter Orton and Wayne Bedggood taught me a lot in a short space of time.

While I was at University I worked for Mark Read as well as Les Bridge and then I went overseas on a year off University to work at Coolmore in Ireland and then Paul Cole’s yard in England before a brief period in Hong Kong. When I got back from that I was ponying horses to the track for Gai Waterhouse and just before Christmas Les Bridge asked me if I wanted to be his assistant/foreman and John asked me to start in pedigrees with him at Arrowfield on the same day.

I spent one night out ‘on the sauce’ with James Bester, who at the time was working for Arrowfield and he convinced me to take the job with John. I later worked out why, as James left for Coolmore about a month after I started and I worked for John for almost a decade and it was great to be part of the team there.

Right now I co-own TrueNicks and also Performance Genetics. John Eberth runs Performance Genetics for me so, I am spending a lot more of my time now developing up a pinhooking syndicate that I am thoroughly enjoying working on. We are buying yearlings for the European breeze-ups as I think that works well for the type that I like to buy. We are making a bit of money doing it and its always interesting testing your own opinion on what you like in a horse, and then seeing if that horse has any ability, and selling it when you are giving the buyer a lot more information than you had to make the purchase decision.

I think that is the most interesting part of the industry that we have attached to the sport – testing your opinion, refining it and testing it again.

TDN AusNZ: Who do you believe to be a value sire for the upcoming breeding season? Why?

BR: It might sound a little strange given his fee, but if I were breeding to sell a yearling I would be breeding to Spirit Of Boom this year. He bred his best crop of mares in 2018 and they are now foals on the ground that will be selling as yearlings next January. He has another good crop of mares ready to drop foals this spring behind that also. You could look pretty smart bringing in a nice yearling by him in January 2023 with those two big crops racing in front of it. What do they say?... “Price is what you pay, value is what you get” I think he is good value.

TDN AusNZ: Is there a stallion that you consider to be under the radar?, and why?

BR: I generally steer away from older stallions, but Choisir just doesn’t seem to get the respect he deserves. A beautiful horse, gets a good sort and is coming up for 100 stakes winners. His fee is $16,500 (inc GST) for 2020 which is baffling when you consider a lot of the so called proven stallions out there at higher fees than him are complete pretenders and some of the unproven ones - we shall soon see - should have been gelded before they even served a mare. He should be the first horse booked full at Coolmore.

TDN AusNZ: Which stallion, ever, do you think was the best type?

BR: Snippets would be hard to beat as a sort. I don’t like big horses and I prefer the stockier, sprint type, so I would say Snippets is about as good a sort as you’d like to see. A more modern horse would be Siyouni (Fr).

TDN AusNZ: Which first-season sire (other than your own) do you believe is most exciting?

BR: Predicting stallion outcomes…what a minefield that is! Often it comes down to a stallion arriving at the right time in a population of mares that suit him. Blue Point (Ire) is a good sort, was genuinely a top class sprinter and has the pedigree to suit a lot of mares in Australia. I’d probably have him as the most exciting (although if Godolphin decide to bring down Pinatubo (Ire) next year, sell your first born child to send a mare to him, he is gorgeous). Another, possibly from left field, would be Zousain. Didn’t win a Group 1, but neither did I Am Invincible, Not A Single Doubt or Written Tycoon, and he is a terrific type. I’d like him also.

TDN AusNZ: What was your favourite weanling, yearling or mare purchase this year?

BR: I bought an American Pharoah (USA) colt at the yearling sales last year that I am selling shortly at the 2-year-old sales in Europe. He’s as good a type as I have ever bought. It looks like he has ability.

TDN AusNZ: Who do you think is a rising star within the industry? (Person not horse).

BR: Henry Field – James Harron – Sebastian Hutch – James Cummings – Adrian Bott….take your pick.

TDN AusNZ: What positive change would you like to see in the industry?

BR: A national body would be a good start, one that had teeth and control over the industry assets while retaining a certain amount of localism at a racetrack level which I think is important. Often the higher you go the more incompetence abounds, so I think that if you had localism in terms of the racetrack management and the carnivals around them, but got rid of the state level and just had a national body, it would be a more effective combination to deal with a lot of the issues we see.

TDN AusNZ: If you weren’t in this industry what would you do?

BR: Probably a data scientist.

TDN AusNZ: How are you keeping busy in isolation?

BR: I have a 4-year-old daughter. Working out how to avoid watching endless episodes of “Storybots” or “Mia and Me” keeps me busy enough.