'We're in it for the long term': Corumbene Stud striding into the future

Cover image courtesy of The Image Is Everything

Twelve months ago, Corumbene Stud moved operations from Dunedoo to the historic Invermien estate in Scone, the result of a 10-year hunt for the right home in Australia’s heartland of thoroughbred breeding. Tommy Altomonte, grandson of founder George Altomonte, has spent the last year hard at work upgrading the 200-year-old property to a farm for Corumbene’s future.

“It’s definitely been a great move for us,” Tommy Altomonte shared. “It’s been very busy. Invermien has these beautiful ridge paddocks, which have been so good for the horses, they’re able to keep moving and condition while spelling.”

The Altomontes purchased Invermien in late 2023 and have faced a mammoth task; the property spans over 940 acres (over 380 hectares) of land and has required intensive work to bring it up to speed as a modern stud.

“We’ve pretty well redone 80 per cent of the fencing,” Altomonte said. “We’ve been using Duncan Equine’s Stallion Rail, which has been sensational. That was the first thing we did when we moved in, and then it’s been ongoing since. The place had the perfect foundations, but it needed a fair bit of work to get up and running to the standard we want it to be.”

A brand new serving barn is less than a month away from completion, ready for the return to service of Corumbene’s homebred Group 2-winning stallion Standout, who missed the 2024 season due to injury. He will stand for an unchanged fee of $5500 inc GST.

Altomonte is delighted with the change of locale for the stud, bringing them into Australia’s breeding epicentre.

“It's the ideal place to be,” he said. “At the end of the day, Dunedoo was very good land for the horses and they did well there, but from a long term perspective, you really have to be in Scone if you’re in New South Wales.”

Being situated two and a half hours west of Scone has long made seasonal logistics difficult and time-consuming, both for visiting stallions, outside mares, and even veterinary work.

“Particularly during the foaling season, if there's ever sort of an emergency or anything, we've been able to get onto it really quickly, which we didn't really have the luxury of in Dunedoo. It’s a massive, massive benefit.”

George’s lasting impact

George Altomonte passed away aged 89 in late July of last year, not long after Corumbene had settled into the new property, leaving a large hole at the centre of the stud’s operations. It has been all-consuming for Tommy to fill the role.

“It has been a big loss for us, and it's certainly made life a lot busier for myself and my father without him around,” he said. “A couple of months before that, he was up at the farm checking it all out, seeing what it was all like. He was always very hands-on in everything he did, and even until a couple of days before we lost him, he was sending emails out about the farm, about the horses, about the matings for the season, and all that sort of thing.

“He was just that sort of guy who didn't stop. He was a very impressive man in that sense. Just didn't really know how to take a rest.”

The elder Altomonte had long been mentoring Tommy as his eventual successor, and it had become routine for them to work on matings together. Most of the 2024 season’s matings had been configured already, with Tommy only left with last minute changes to make once the season got underway.

“I'd been doing the matings with him for probably the last nine or so years before that,” he said. “For the first few years, he showed me his system and the way he selects which stallion suits a particular mare. Then we would do them separately and then come together and discuss it, see where we'd align, see where we'd be different, and then sort of tweak it up and go from there.”

Doing it alone this year for the first time has been a challenge, but an exciting one as well.

“I think if I was sort of doing it on my own five or six years ago, it would have been a lot more daunting,” Altomonte said. “It's still not the same. If you’ve got two minds together, it’s always better than one at the end of the day. But because I've been so hands-on in it for a while, it hasn't been too much of a dramatic change.”

A quieter sales season

Corumbene’s broodmare band currently numbers 37, in keeping with the ideal range for the operation of 35 to 45, with approximately 100 horses on the farm at any one time. In addition, the farm continues the tradition from Dunedoo of running cattle - although back out west, the majority of the 16,000 acre Dunedo operation was beef, with the horses occupying a 700-acre corner of it. The farm also grows much of their own lucerne.

Many of the broodmare band are homegrown racefillies, including G1 Golden Slipper Stakes winner Overreach (Exceed And Excel) whose dual Group-winning son Lofty Strike now stands at Swettenham Stud. The operation usually tries to buy a good broodmare or two to add to the herd every year, but Altomonte noted that a particularly strong buying bench the last couple of years have made things tricky.

West Australian multiple stakes winner Miss Conteki (Eurozone) was the last addition purchased at public auction by the stud; she delivered her first foal, a filly by Russian Revolution, in the spring and returned to the same stallion.

“In the last couple of years, we haven't been able to get one just with the strength of the sales,” Altomonte said.

The Corumbene banner has also had limited outings as vendors at the sales this year, selling four out of five yearlings taken through the ring. Partly this is due to heavily supporting Standout and retaining more foals to race by him, and partly has been due to the all too common observation of a struggle to sell below the top end of the market.

“As a general feel, I think the nice horses are still making the money,” Altomonte said. “In fact, they're probably going for even more, sometimes surprising people with how strong the nice horses are going for. I think the middle to lower end is probably getting a little bit trickier at the moment, but that's just like anything. It always sort of comes in ups and downs.”

Altomonte was present at both major auction houses’ broodmare sales and again found the market incredibly tough for a desirable mare.

“That marker for those quality mares, those good racehorses out of those good families, those are the horses people want. Because at the end of the day, when you go to the sales, if you're selling yearlings out of those quality mares, you get the result.”

Of course, there are some titans in the game that are hard to bid against.

“Everybody at the top end is quite happy to just spend and spend.”

Standing out from the crowd

Standout’s first crop of yearlings this year saw three go to the sales, two which were offered by Corumbene, and all three found homes for an average of $31,200; a tidy return of 3.9 times his first season fee of $8800 inc GST. A full brother to Overreach, Standout has mostly been supported by Corumbene’s mares with the stud happy to put faith in his progeny.

In an interesting move, the vast majority have been retained to race in Corumbene’s colours, with Altomonte hoping that some will turn up at the first juvenile trials in September.

“We’ve had some very positive feedback from the breakers,” he said. Corumbene have been patrons of Tamworth-based breaker Luke Morgan - who started the G1 Everest-bound Private Harry (Harry Angel {Ire}) - for years. “It's obviously a gamble play at the end of the day, keeping a lot of the horses and not going to the sales, but it's our faith in the horse, his pedigree, his type, and the horses he’s throwing. He’s really stamping himself on the foals.”

Again, location matters; Dunedoo made it harder to attract outside mares, so Corumbene has sought to give Standout the starting point that every stallion needs. Amongst his first crop are foals out of a full sister to G3 Pago Pago Stakes winner Single Bullet (Not A Single Doubt) and a half-sister to Corumbene’s own Menari.

“Because we have such high faith in the stallion himself, we feel it will give him every opportunity to be able to go out there and have some nice runners,” Altomonte said. “Then hopefully people will then see that, and then he'll be able to get some more of those outside mares.

“You don't even have to be an expert in looking at a horse, but if you show someone Standout and then you drive around the farm, you can pick out almost every single Standout yearling or weanling that's on the ground, because he really stamps himself into them.”

Most outside mares have been from breed-to-race owners, which Altomonte readily welcomes.

“I think it’s a good sign,” he said. “He might not be a multiple Group 1 winner, but Gerald Ryan, who trained him, always felt he was a Group 1 standard horse, but he never quite got the opportunity.”

Altomonte is hopeful that Standout can follow in the hoofprints of the breed’s greatest sires.

“The best of them have started at a low base and made their own way.”

A shift in the industry

Altomonte recognises that breed-to-race owners and those selling yearlings at the low end of the market face similar challenges. Increasing costs, sometimes without increase in prizemoney, have seen a dip in last year’s foal crop, and another drop is anticipated this year.

“Stallions and yearlings at the lower end of the market are doing it quite hard,” Altomonte said. “Everything's very much about what's in trend when you go to the sales, which quite often ends up being not necessarily the ones that actually end up being the fast horses.”

Something Altomonte could envision is more prizemoney bonuses directly for breeders, more in line with the Breeders Awards available in the United States and the Great British Bonus Scheme for both flat and National Hunt horses over in the United Kingdom. Some Northern American states reward breeders for their horses finishing anywhere in the first four over the line in their state of origin.

“There's something that needs to be done. We are part of the business cycle where people are doing it tough, and it will turn at some point, but it’s an interesting question to address. At the moment, it feels a bit like what you see overseas where there’s a few big players and they control the market, what’s in fashion at the time, and everything else gets forgotten.

“I think we need to come together and sort of come up with something to definitely help that.”

Something else that Altomonte has noticed is the reduction in juveniles making it to the races, exemplified by a different winner of each of the juvenile Group 1s this season.

“It’s been a very open year,” he said. “It makes me think that it’s going to be very interesting to see what happens when they turn three.”

Aside from acknowledging that perhaps trainers are pushing horses less to race as 2-year-olds and the growing allure of races for older horses such as the $10 million Golden Eagle, Altomonte shared a theory on what could be contributing to the downturn in those juveniles showing up to the races and contesting more than one top flight event.

“The way that the Golden Slipper and the other Group 1 races are timed in the year, it’s often the more mature horse, not the classiest horse that wins,” he said. “And with the emphasis on 2-year-old ability, I suspect that when you breed from horses that weren’t actually the classiest of their generation as three and 4-year-olds, they’re maybe not passing on as much ability.”

Food for thought.

Looking ahead

The breeding season looms, and as Altomonte finalises his mating plans, his mind turns to the future for Corumbene Stud. The farm has no immediate plans to purchase more land in the area, but he wouldn’t be against it if the right parcel of land came up for sale.

“We're in it for the long term,” he said. “Which is why we've done what we've done, and spent the time and the money in terms of improving where we are now and getting it all up and running.

“Ultimately, the plan is just to really continue what we've sort of been doing, which is trying to breed quality fast, race horses, go to the sale with nice yearlings to be able to sell and keep the cash flow going, and try to breed the next champion horse.”

In an exciting development, Corumbene has also joined the Newgate syndicate that seeks every year to source the next hot young stallion who can earn himself a place at a Hunter Valley stud.

“That’s been a longer term focus for us in terms of having equity in stallions moving forward,” said Altomonte, although he was coy about Corumbene expanding to stand more stallions themselves. The current batch of Newgate 2-year-olds were their first investment, which includes the electric G3 Ken Russell Stakes winner Beadman (Snitzel) and $1 million Golden Gift-winning gem North England (Farnan).

“What’s special about him is that he was behind all the other 2-year-olds,” Altomonte said. “I was talking with Henry Field, he’s still a very raw animal. He’s not the finished product yet. So the fact that he did what he did the other day, I don't think necessarily surprised everyone, but it was pretty pleasing to see, because we suspect he's really more of a 3-year-old as well.

“He's been very exciting for everyone and a testament to Henry and his ability to be able to source these types, which is why we joined the syndicate, specifically because of the faith we have in Henry and everything he’s done.”

There’s a lot to look forward to - also not forgetting homebred 5-year-old mare Tashi (Sebring), who finished second by half a length in the G2 Dane Ripper Stakes at the weekend. Most of all, Altomonte can’t wait for the middle of September.

“Hopefully at the early 2-year-old trials, you'll see plenty of chestnuts coming out with the big white face by Standout, getting ready to get up and go.”