The dynasties Eureka Stud

Andrew McAlpine founded Eureka Stud, on the Darling Downs, in 1935. Son Colin took it over in 1960, spending money, astutely, to become such a respected visionary of his industry that he was a 14-year chairman of the Thoroughbred Breeders Australia, and became a member of the Order of Australia.

And while the family fortune was, under that old saying, all Scott McAlpine’s to blow, Eureka has in recent years exploded into its most prosperous era yet.

It’s all thanks to a stallion with a perfectly fitting name, Spirit Of Boom (Sequalo).

Eureka is about dynasties. Scott’s three sons, Harry, Angus and Charlie are in the frame to succeed the 62-year-old, in running the place eventually. In tune with that theme, Spirit Of Boom was bred on the farm, with the McAlpines keeping 15 per cent of him as a racehorse with the idea of standing him at stud.

Wearing Eureka’s famous black and yellow stripes with red sleeves, the colt’s track career evolved superbly, ending with a crescendo when he won his two Group 1s, the William Reid Stakes and the Doomben 10,000, among his last five outings. He retired in mid-2014 with 52 starts for nine wins, 20 placings (five at G1 level), and $2.3 million in earnings.

But what’s happened since has blown everyone, and certainly not the family fortune away.

Spirit Of Boom landed in the breeding world in second place among Australian first season sires in 2017-18, with 18 winners and five stakes wins from 52 runners, and progeny earnings of $1.9 million. Some of his numbers read better than top-placed Zoustar, who had 10 winners and three stakes wins, but counted the brilliant Sunlight’s $2.9 million in an earnings tally of $3.2 million. Spirit Of Boom also ranked fifth among two-year-old sires.

Like discovering gold, Eureka had found its star.

But in the season just finished, things only grew better. Spirit, as he’s known on the farm, finished No.2 among second-season sires, with 62 winners, four stakes wins and $5.75 million in earnings, his Magic Millions Guineas victor Boomsara leading the way with $1.3 million. Again, Spirit Of Boom was shaded only by Zoustar, who had 64 winners, six stakes wins and $7.47 million earnings, of which Sunlight raised $2.1 million.

Clan McAlpine’s exciting stallion finished sixth among three-year-old sires, and was 27th on the overall list, a meritorious effort with just two crops racing. With a corresponding upswing in the mares he’s covered lately, such as Chautauqua’s dam Lovely Jubly, and Invincibella’s mum Abscond, mirroring a service fee rise from an initial $10,000 to $50,000, the boom time will likely go on for the family farm in the heart of Queensland’s equine heartland at Cambooya, just south of Toowoomba.

Adding to the buzz, former Godolphin speedster Encryption will stand at the stud from this season, alongside veteran Red Dazzler, and Defcon.

Gallery: Some of Eureka Stud's stallions

“It’s exciting times indeed,” says Scott McAlpine, who snugly fits another famous northern image, that of the cheerful, chatty Queenslander.

“Spirit’s the biggest star Eureka’s ever had. He’s the pinnacle of Eureka’s history.

“It’s obviously great to see him do so well, but the beautiful part is that we bred and raced his mother (Temple Spirit), and his grandmother (TempleTop), and we bred and raced Spirit of Boom as well.”

Andrew McAlpine didn’t just start Eureka stud from nothing. He started it from a large dash of disappointment as well. From 1912, when only 18, to 1945, he’d worked as stud groom at the nearby Banchory estate.

It’s bachelor owner, Lauderdale Ramsay, who had promised the place to McAlpine upon his death, but when Ramsay’s will was read, the directive was that it should be sold instead, with the proceeds going to the Church of England.

McAlpine still tried to buy Banchory, but finished as the underbidder. Just as well that a decade earlier he’d bought 640 acres nearby, which he called Eureka.

Through a succession of fairly performed sires, highlighted by the outstanding Martello Towers’ sire Gaekwar’s Pride (GB) and French-bred Djafar, the stud became successful. In 1960, pushing 70, McAlpine sold out to his son.

Under Colin McAlpine, the business continued on a solid footing. But in the late ‘60s he made a move which was nothing short of revolutionary, travelling to England to snare a stallion. While his budget didn’t quite allow for any champions, he made a carefully judged purchase of a stakes-winning grey horse, foaled in 1963, called Lumley Road.

He was by Grey Sovereign, by one of the great Nearco’s more famous sons, Nasrullah. The dam, Timid Tilly, counted Nasrullah as her maternal grand- sire, with Hyperion two generations back on her paternal side.

“Going to England back then was a pretty bold step, especially for a Queensland breeder,” Scott McAlpine says. “While father flew back to Australia, Lumley Road took a six-week trip by boat.”

Lumley Road quickly stamped himself as a sire of winners. Colin McAlpine soon returned to England to buy another, Emerilo, by a Brazil-bred sire in Emerson, who also helped Eureka strengthen its standing. There were others, such as Gallant Archer, Messmate, and Midnight Cowboy, but it was another brave move by the son of Eureka’s founding father that boosted the stud again.

In 1982 he bought a three-year-old colt with a funny name from an unusual place. Semipalatinsk, named after a nuclear weapons test zone in Kazakhstan, had had a decent stakes-winning career in Italy.

“It was a bit of an obscure buy, but he was by Nodouble, who was by Noholme, who was by Star Kingdom,” Scotts says.

“Dad was looking for a Star Kingdom breed with an outcross of an American sire. Plus the line of his dam, School Board, we really liked. There were about 70 winners from the first four dams of the pedigree.”

Australians had only just started getting their tongue around the name by the time Semipalatinsk (mercifully shortened to “Semi” in Australianese), began to have a sizeable impact on the country’s breeding scene, thanks partly to another shrewd manoeuvre for a Queensland stud. Colin McAlpine zealously sent some of his offspring to be sold at yearling sales in South Australia, from where they spread around the country, rather than just race in Queensland.

“In the end, Semi produced a stakes winner in every capital city of Australia,” McAlpine says.

Semipalatinsk’s flag was perhaps best borne by Just Now, winner of the 1986 AJC Oaks and VRC Turnbull Stakes, and by Memphis Blues, the Colin Hayes- trained dual winner of the G2 Queen of the South Stakes in Adelaide.

“Semi really exceeded all expectations and got us going, then he went on to be a good broodmare sire as well,” says McAlpine of the “lovely natured” stallion, a three-time No.1 sire in Queensland, who lived on until the grand old age of 28 at Eureka, where he’s buried.

In that time, others to build the Eureka name, such as the successful English shuttle stallions Puissance and Piccolo, and Brave Warrior, who’s promising career, he sired four-time Group 1 winner Show A Heart was cut short by a fatal accident in 1998 after just two stud seasons.

But now it appears Eureka has the best sire of its 75-year history, and one who keeps the farm’s succession mode going, with Spirit Of Boom’s grand-dam, Temple Top, a daughter of old Semi.

“I see a lot of Semipalatinsk in Spirit Of Boom, temperament-wise and structural features,” says McAlpine, who has dropped Spirit’s service fee to $40,000 this season while awaiting his first Group 1 winner.

Eureka’s human dynasty is in safe hands as well. Eldest son Harry had worked in England, and in Sydney as an auctioneer and bloodstock analyst for the Inglis group, but has returned to the farm to help with the boom time. In fact, in a delicious bit of symmetry, he lives nearby on Banchory, the McAlpines having leased a large swathe of that estate to meet their expanding needs.

“Yeah, it’s a very exciting time, and probably the best is yet to come when the foals of these good mares Spirit has covered hit the track, which should be in 2021,” says Harry.

He’s thrilled to be working with his dad, who he regards as “a phenomenal horseman”, though he’s not averse to the odd bit of cheek.

“The best part is that he’s a phenomenal horseman,” Harry says. “The worst? I guess he doesn’t like too much radical change. We’re working on him!”