Passion For Racing: Ken Lowe

Image courtesy of Bronwen Healy

Ken Lowe would be the first to tell you that Lady Luck has often been on his side when it comes to owning racehorses.

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The ex-science professor has enjoyed tremendous success as a member of the Newgate-China Horse Club colt partnership, and even before his inclusion in one of Australia’s most potent ownership ventures, Lowe found himself involved in several handy equine stars.

The last 10 years aside, however, and Lowe’s involvement in the industry can be described as somewhat of a slow burn, particularly for someone whose interest in racing can be traced back as far as the 1970s.

Trips to Quirindi races and its sadly ill-fated neighbour Wallabadah provided the early catalyst, ensuring that Lowe’s affection for racing was born from more humble beginnings than the major racedays he is now accustomed to.

“My grandfather was the honorary secretary of the Quirindi Jockey Club, and I remember when we used to go up to Quirindi for Christmas, my grandmother would have all of the saddle cloths hanging on the clothesline,” he recalled.

“I’d been and had a look at the track, and we ended up going to the Wallabadah races on New Year’s Day from memory, that was a bit of a picnic day held every year. There was a bit of fun there but I was very young when all that happened.

“My dad was interested more from a punting point of view rather than owning any horses or breeding them, but I never really adopted that. I don’t think I had enough money to be punting and losing money all the time, so I didn’t go down that path.

“There has always been an interest there, but it hasn’t always been a passion as it is today.”

That passion has brought about large-scale investment by Lowe and his wife Maree, whose extensive bloodstock portfolio of yearlings, mares and stallions, complement shares in a band of hugely talented racehorses.

But when asked whether a young Lowe would ever have envisaged investing in racing and breeding to this extent, the response was unequivocal, even in spite of some early success.

“Never, absolutely not,” he laughed. “I had an interest in a 2-year-old back in 1976 and I was very lucky with that one - It ended up winning the Gosford Classic and raced in the Canterbury Guineas and the Rosehill Guineas.

“It won three open 2000-metre races in the city and ran third in the Doomben Cup. It definitely had a great influence and helped Maree and I buy our first house.

“After that, I didn’t go into racing much at all. I was a schoolteacher and you don’t have much spare cash doing that.

“In 1985 Maree and myself started the IT business. We also had four kids, which were our focus, so racing wasn’t of any great interest. I wouldn’t go to the races very much at all.”

That all changed just shy of a decade ago when the Lowes were introduced to a couple who they now not only consider friends for life but with whom they share the majority of their racing and breeding interests.

It was a bank manager who played matchmaker, and the rest is history.

“We had a man from Commbank who looked after our account - He invited myself and Maree, and Steve and Eliza Grant up to Darwin for the Darwin Cup back in 2013,” Lowe recalled.

“I used to only go to the races by invitation when the Commbank used to invite us down to the Melbourne Cup. That used to be enjoyable, but I’d be lucky to go to the races three or four times a year. It was the introduction to Steve and Eliza that really started it all off.

“Steve had bred a horse and the man from Commbank said he was in for 10 per cent. The horse was called Court Martial Miss. We ended up taking 20 per cent of the filly, and I think she ended up winning six races, so there was a bit of fun there.

“We ended up getting into Sir Bacchus and having equal shares, and he went extremely well. Then we got into a horse called Kinema.”

At the time Lowe invested in April 2016, Kinema (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) was trained in the UK and was moved into the care of Ralph Beckett, for whom he won at Goodwood on stable debut.

The son of the late breed-shaping stallion Galileo (Ire) was then sent to the Duke of Edinburgh Stakes over 2400 metres at Royal Ascot, where he provided his trainer and an ecstatic group of owners with a first winner at the royal meeting. But not without causing a stir.

After being involved in some scrimmaging as his jockey weaved a passage from the rear of the field, Kinema had to survive a protest, which Lowe described as a “very gentlemanly affair”, before officially being declared as the winner.

The stewards’ announcement over the tannoy prompted some wild celebrations from Lowe and his fellow owners, celebrations that would have taken place much closer to home than the Ascot winner’s enclosure had it not been for some last minute spontaneity.

“People say that you have to go there because just having a runner is very special, but I just thought that flying all the way over to England for a horse race was absolutely ridiculous,” he said. “I wasn’t that interested, but four or five days before the race I committed to a fare and Maree and myself jumped on a plane.

“We celebrated Eliza’s birthday the day before, then the next day we went to the races and it was just an amazing day. People who have been to Ascot will be familiar with how good it is, but it blew me away. The pageantry, The Queen coming up the straight very slowly with all the horsemen. It was a spectacle.

“The English loved their Queen and I had never experienced that passion before. I found it a bit mind blowing. It’s an amazing place, Ascot, and winning over there is something special.

“Stemming from that Steve and myself started to buy more fillies and mares, racing them and trying to get black type.”

Feeling the burn

That burgeoning friendship with Steve and Eliza Grant has blossomed into a joint ownership venture, with Lowe now a 50 per cent shareholder in all of the mares and resultant progeny owned by the Grants’ Silverdale Farm.

As all breeders can attest to, not every broodmare purchase and subsequent mating is a success story, indeed far from it, and Lowe is grateful for the guidance he has received from the likes of Grant and his senior staff at Silverdale.

“We have had some amazing success and we have been extremely lucky,” he said. “I think it’s because I have been surrounded by extremely good people because I am not knowledgeable - but I am learning.

“Steve has had a very big influence on that and we have a very good farm manager down at Silverdale, Rob Petith. We are now buying better broodmares, black-type mares, so the quality has risen enormously from where we started. That’s been the direction of both Rob and Steve, and they have taken me along for the ride, which I am very grateful for.

“We have constantly culled the bottom part of the group of mares, which has come at a price, and we let go of quite a few mares that were sent to Rebel Dane. We bought a lot of mares to give him a chance and there was no way that we could keep on racing all the progeny.”

Undoubtedly the most high-profile member of that group is last year’s Champion 2-Year-Old Fireburn (Rebel Dane), with Silverdale selling out of the G1 Golden Slipper S. heroine before her illustrious racing career began.

Lowe is still able to see the positives, however, which is no mean feat given that Fireburn was sold for just $9000 to Laurel Oak Bloodstock’s (FBAA) Louis Mihalyka, with whom Silverdale had purchased her dam Mull Over (So You Think {NZ}) a few years earlier.

“Tongue in cheek he said that’s all he could afford!” Lowe quipped. “We bred her (Fireburn) and she was foaled down at Silverdale.

“With her finding her feet it has really given Rebel Dane a boost. We were on struggle street for many years, but he’s getting a winner every week now and he’s had such small crops over a four-year period.

“His achievements are amazing and he’s producing winners out of extremely ordinary mares. I went down to the sales and bought four broodmares - out of the four, every offspring from Rebel Dane has won a race, in some cases two or three, and I only paid $500, $1000 and $5000 for the mares. I think there is more to come there and he’s looking at around 130-plus covers this year.

“It really shows that when you get a good stallion that can throw more to him than the mare, then you get a very positive outcome.”

Family ties

Someone who knows a thing or two about getting positive outcomes with stallions is Henry Field, and Lowe was delighted to discover recently that his connection with the Newgate Farm supremo stretches beyond his inclusion in the Newgate-China Horse Club colts partnership.

Lowe’s grandfather Paddy served on the committee at the Quirindi Jockey Club alongside Field’s great-grandfather Fred Moses, and there is little doubt that both men would be extremely proud of what their respective grandsons and great-grandsons have gone on to achieve in racing.

Given the success they have had together through the likes of Captivant, In The Congo and Wild Ruler, it is hardly surprising that Lowe is effusive in his praise for Field and his fellow members of the colts partnership, which has provided an immense source of enjoyment over the past few years.

“Henry has put together a very good team to race and Maree and myself absolutely enjoy that,” he said. “It just gets better and better.

“It probably occupies more of our time than anything else these days and it’s extremely rewarding. It’s great to get that adrenaline flowing through the body - How good!

“I know some people come in and they might get waylaid, but we have been extremely lucky with the people we’ve been involved with - we have met some amazing individuals and couples.

“I think that’s what I find most beneficial and I think that Maree would agree with me, it’s meeting great people that are in the industry and enjoying their company.

“Everything else is a bonus. The excitement of winning and the excitement of selling really nice horses that you’ve bred, that’s all in the mix, but I think the people are the most important.”

Lowe has certainly done his fair share of winning on the track, and his increasing involvement in the breeding industry yielded a handsome reward this time last year, when Silverdale Farm sold its $1 million lot at the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale.

There is once again great optimism heading into this year’s curtain raiser, and Lowe feels that much of that is down to the work that Racing NSW boss Peter V’landys is doing back home in his home state.

“You’d have to give V’landys a pat on the back,” he said. “I think racing in NSW is in the best state that it has ever been in.

“Looking at what he has done with the prizemoney and what he has created with both The Everest and the Golden Eagle, he’s been able to attract all these 20-year-olds to the races in their droves.

“Being out there with the younger crowd and seeing everyone enjoying themselves, belting out Sweet Caroline, it reminds me a bit of Ascot in that people love to participate in that. They’ve got the bands after the last race to keep people there and enjoying themselves - I think that it’s an extremely good product at the moment and I can’t see that waning.

“Now, I think NSW is more of a racing state than Victoria, and Queensland would run third. He (V’landys) has definitely put NSW on the map.”

Lowe is hoping that his latest stallion prospect will put himself on the map in this weekend's R. Listed Magic Millions 2YO Classic, in which he part-owns the two market principals as things stand.

The odds suggest that yet another of Australia’s feature 2-year-old races beckons for Lowe, but it remains to be seen whether Lady Luck will once again be by his side on the Gold Coast.