How Bjorn Baker built a Sydney powerhouse

Cover image courtesy of The Image Is Everything

Three Group 1s, over $23 million in prizemoney, a statewide strike rate of over 22 per cent, and the current third spot in the New South Wales trainers’ premiership; to not acknowledge about the shooting start status of Bjorn Baker’s stable is to be in denial. In a breakout season for the Warwick Farm-based Kiwi expat - now a full Australian citizen - Baker remains quite humble about the extent of his success.

“We've just been lucky with some of our results,” he said, taking a moment during trackwork - on a fast work day, no less - to speak to The Thoroughbred Report.

“We've only been winning by small margins, and I think you're going well as a trainer when you look at your firsts, seconds, thirds and fourths, and you tend to have a lot more winners than second places, and more second places than thirds. So from that point of view, we've got things right.”

All of the pieces seem to have slotted neatly into place a season which has featured such highlights as juvenile fillies O’ Ole (Ole Kirk) and Within The Law (Lucky Vega {Ire}) becoming millionaires, two Group 1 wins within eight days over the autumn carnival, smashing a Randwick track record that had stood for half a century, and Overpass’s (Vancouver) back-to-back triumphs in the G1 Winterbottom Stakes in Perth.

Where did it all start going right? For Baker, that tale takes off running on four legs.

Credit to the horses

“Obviously,” as Baker puts it, “it starts with the horses.”

If you can’t get your horses to run, your name will fade from relevance, particularly in the competitive sphere of Sydney metropolitan racing.

“I'm lucky enough to probably have a few top liners and a few horses that have really kept me relevant during the carnival over the last three or four years,” Baker said.

“In particular, Overpass and Arapaho, and then we’ve got some really nice young fillies like O’Ole and Within The Law. Stefi Magnetica - she's a mare that is high class, and she got the luck in the Doncaster when she needed it.”

The 4-year-old Stefi Magnetica (All Too Hard) thrust her name into everyone’s blackbooks last season with a breakout victory in the G1 Stradbroke Handicap, defeating peerless racemare Bella Nipotina (Pride Of Dubai) in the process.

After a spring where she seemed to be relegated to bridesmaid status - including a heartwrenching 2.34l ninth in the G1 Everest - she burst through again in the autumn in the G1 Doncaster Handicap. A brave second in the G1 Queen Of The Turf Stakes capped off an autumn to remember.

Baker paid just $140,000 for her, in conjunction with Cunningham Thoroughbreds and Clarke Bloodstock (FBAA), at the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale, and she has injected over $3 million into his stable’s prize pool this season alone. Despite her price tag, she is emblematic of the improving quality of the stock in Baker’s stable.

“Definitely the quality of bloodstock has gotten better. With my association with Jim Clark, I've been able to purchase better horses and probably have a slightly bigger budget, and that's followed on into this year.”

Being able to buy better at the sales is important - but so is being able to hold onto those horses.

“I’ve been in Sydney close to 14 years, and for the first 10 years, with all my promising horses, the first thing I'd do is probably sell them to Hong Kong,” Baker admitted. “I guess that comes from my New Zealand background.

“But in the past few years, with the increasing prizemoney, it's gotten harder to sell promising horses. There's less of a business case to sell them to Hong Kong, particularly (with prizemoney increases) in Sydney. So, I have sold a lot less, and those horses are now coming through and performing really well.”

In the past, some of the stable’s most consistent performers - like eight-time winner Cinque Torri (I Am Invincible) and 10-time winner of over $1 million Iknowastar (Star Witness) - might have been first on the plane for the right offer, but being able to maintain that depth of horse has gone a long way to keeping the stable’s strike rate up.

At the time of writing, Baker's stable is just under 20 wins behind the state leader - with less than half the starters.

Darby’s force of nature

Another big contributor of horses to the stable is Scott Darby’s Darby Racing, with whom Baker has established a long and fruitful relationship.

“They just buy good horses and they buy them regardless of the price,” Baker said. “They buy at all levels, and they buy sprinters, stayers, 2-year-olds, Europeans as well. They have been remarkable.”

It has been well touted that Within The Law was a bargain Inglis Classic Yearling Sale purchase for the syndicator at just $30,000, and some of their best hits this season have been import Our Anchorage (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}), who began his autumn with four straight wins, and Ingham Racing-bred Robusto (Churchill {Ire}), who vindicated his $160,000 Inglis Digital purchase price with victory in his breeders’ namesake race, the G2 The Ingham, in December.

Their relationship started with Baker approaching Darby himself; “It must be close to a decade ago, I approached Scott and I said, ‘I'd love to train for you’. And since then, we've just had a remarkable run together.”

One of the partnership’s biggest successes has to be the now 6-year-old Overpass, who has won the first two editions of the $5 million The Quokka and added back-to-back Winterbottoms to his record in December.

“Funnily enough, he (Overpass) only just won his second start at Orange,” Baker shared. “He's been remarkable. He's done it since he was a 2-year-old, every autumn, every spring. He tends to run really well during the carnival, so he's been a very special horse for Darby and for myself.”

Assembling the team

Baker credits the quality and abilities of his groundstaff, as well as his riders and administration, for the team’s shift into brilliance. He has also employed the services of Dr Stephen Duren of Performance Horse Nutrition to craft the stable diets, and Stephen Head as the stable farrier - “without sound horses, you're going to be up against it”.

Someone he has particularly relied on for support is racing manager Luke Hilton.

“He’s definitely opened up my thoughts a little bit and that’s been good for me, too. We work together on a lot of different things and (have been) sorting out our race tactics a lot, too, which Luke is obviously a huge part of.”

Come the yearling sale season, the trinity of Dr Allan Frogley, stable veterinarian and part-owner in O’ Ole, bloodstock agent Jim Clarke, and Client Relationship Manager Georgia Griffin is where Baker places his trust to select his next superstars.

“Jim works very closely with Allan Frogley, I'm lucky to have Georgia Griffin as part of my team,” Baker said. “She does a lot of the selling (of shares), so she knows what works for us and what doesn't. So the three of them really work together, and I pretty much leave them to it now so I can concentrate on training the horses, which has actually been extremely beneficial.

“They know what stallions I like and what I like in terms of a horse. It makes the sales a lot easier for me than they used to be. I trust Jim, Georgia, and Allan implicitly, and I trust them to buy the right horses.”

Sometimes a new stallion can muscle their way into the established formula; Baker indicated that Newgate Farm's Stay Inside has impressed him the most amongst this year's first season sire, so much so that he has spent $410,000 across two fillies by the G1 Golden Slipper Stakes winner. When asked if that was because of the quality of stallion's stock or name, Baker replied, "both!"

Baker was also quick to thank his wife Andrea as an integral part of the team; “she does all our social media and that's definitely helped in terms of being able to buy the horses that we want to buy and that we think we need to be competitive in Sydney.

“It's tough going, Sydney, but I think at the moment we're definitely buying the right kind of horses. We've got the whole team working together, and working towards the same goal of getting nice city class horses that can hopefully step up and compete during the carnivals.”

The greatest influence

Another aspect of that team - although he isn’t based on Australian shores - is Baker’s father Murray.

“We were in partnership together for three years, and afterwards he traveled a lot to Sydney and had a lot of luck staying out of my stable,” Baker said. “He's definitely been the biggest influence on my career. A lot of it is just about routine, routine, routine. Being consistent.

“Also, he's very big on fitness; particularly when you're at the top level, you(r horses) need to be fit to compete against the very best horses, and that (fitness) will carry you a long way.

“We are training athletes, and the better the athlete, the more work they can handle, and the more work you have to give them to get out of their comfort zone - which is where they will be when they're in those very good races, so he's always been big on that.”

His father’s love of Australian racing has more than rubbed off on Baker, and that love - particularly for Australia’s staying races - has made Arapaho’s (Fr) (Lope De Vega {Ire}) victory in the G1 Sydney Cup at the weekend all the more special. Aside from Arapaho smashing the Randwick 3200-metre record that has stood since 1973, it was also a race that Murray Baker won in 1992 with Eagle Eye (NZ) (Grosvenor {NZ}).

“Winning it (the Sydney Cup) 33 years later, it was very special,” Baker shared. “Particularly as I'm probably more renowned as a bit more of a sprinting trainer in Australia, where he (Murray) was definitely more of a staying trainer, so the roles have reversed somewhat. I think he'd be very proud of how things are going at the moment.”

A remarkable horse

Purchased in 2020 for €140,000 ($249,000) at Arqana’s Deauville Autumn Mixed Sale, Arapaho is perhaps the biggest testament to Baker’s patience when the right horse comes along. It’s well documented that the rising 9-year-old took longer to adapt to Australian conditions than one would home, but he has since rewarded connections with two Group 1 victories, the latest one reigniting hopes of another G1 Melbourne Cup tilt.

“He’s one of the stable stalwarts,” Baker said. “As he’s gotten older, he’s gotten a little bit stronger with every preparation.”

Having to be tipped out prematurely last season has contributed to the gelding’s longevity, Baker believes, as has the association of regular rider Rachel King.

“She's (King) done a lot of work on him,” Baker said. “It’s very special to see him win one of the majors, he's been a great horse. I'd like to think he can come back as a 9-year-old, and, if not slightly improve, then hold his form.

“He certainly ticked the two mile box on Saturday.”

Arapaho and Stefi Magnetica have headed up to the Hunter Valley to spell at Ridgmont ahead of what Baker hopes can be just as lucrative a spring; Stefi Magnetica will be set for the G1 King Charles III Stakes, whereas Arapaho will try to thread the needle from the G1 Caulfield Cup to Flemington on the first Tuesday in November.

Knowing what works

“I've invested heavily in our infrastructure at Warwick Farm over the past two or three years,” Baker said. “I bought the closest individually owned stables to the Warwick Farm track, and so I've been able to redevelop those to improve airflow and horse health.”

The coveted proximity to the track and the swimming pool, as well as investment in a new treadmill, provide the perfect home base for Baker’s team. An increasing rarity amongst the metropolitan trainers is that Baker only has the one training base - Warwick Farm - with no satellite stables. Every horse heading to trackwork passes under his eye every morning from the trainer’s tower.

The location itself has always “just made sense” to Baker.

“You can go north, south, east and west easily, so from a logistical point of view, it's very good,” he said. “The facilities at Warwick Farm overall are fantastic and I’m very lucky to be there.

“And the quality of tracks that we’ve been racing on, particularly over this season as a whole, have been great. We've really had pretty good weather overall, and we're being allowed to utilise the tracks at their best.”

While Baker is not opposed to new technology or ideas, he endeavours to look at the whole horse instead of focusing on one piece of data or another - a method that has treated him well over the recent years.

“I know what works for me,” he said. “I've tried other regimes, and they just don't seem to get the same results. So particularly with the good horses, you stick to what you know and you stick to what you know works. There’s maybe three dozen trainers at Warwick farm, and everybody trains differently.”

Something that has really solidified in recent seasons are his techniques for juveniles; millionaires O’ Ole and Within The Law, both also the first stakes winners for their respective first season sires, are proof his system works.

“One of the first yearlings I bought was Unencumbered, and when he won the Magic Millions, I thought, ‘how easy is this?’

“But 2-year-olds are tricky. They're very individual and it's about having the consistency, the routine, and just giving them that stable time, which I think is so very important.

“Giving them a really good grounding, making sure they're happy and healthy, and more of a slow, gradual build up than probably what I've done in the past. I think that’s paid off this year.”

Looking at where Baker sits in the trainers’ premierships, it would be hard to argue with that.