Cover image courtesy of Tweenhills Farm
Fully 10,000 miles from their birthplace at Tweenhills Farm and Stud, Qatar Racing homebreds Buckaroo, Middle Earth and Valiant King now face the most important two-mile test of their lives on Tuesday, with a place in history assured should one of them reach its end as a Melbourne Cup winner.
From Tweenhills to Flemington and the journey within
From the lush paddocks of Tweenhills to the manicured turf of Flemington, it's been quite the journey, both literally and figuratively. Between them the trio amassed 27 starts in Europe – Buckaroo (GB) (Fastnet Rock) and Valiant King (GB) (Roaring Lion {USA}) with Joseph O'Brien, Middle Earth (GB) (Roaring Lion {USA}) with John and Thady Gosden – but now Australia is well and truly home, chasing the sort of bumper paydays that simply wouldn't have been available to them on home soil.
Already Buckaroo has earned over AU$3 million (around €1.7 million) from 19 starts in Australia. A Group 1 winner in last year's Underwood Stakes, the son of Fastnet Rock has finished placed at the top level on seven other occasions, including when flashing home to pass the post just a short head behind Via Sistina (Fastnet Rock) in the latest running of the $6 million G1 Cox Plate, Australia's premier weight-for-age race.
Buckaroo (GB) | Image courtesy of The Image Is Everything
“He's been incredibly unlucky,” says David Redvers, Tweenhills owner and racing manager to Sheikh Fahad Al Thani. “He probably would have won three Group 1s with different rides, if not four. The rub of the green has gone slightly against him with poor draws and him having to come very wide and late. He's always getting there but on occasions not quite in time.
“If I'm honest, I thought the 10-furlong option on the Saturday after the Melbourne Cup (the G1 Champions Stakes) was probably the more sensible option, but then he could have won a Melbourne Cup last year with a different draw and a bit of a clearer run.”
Beaten less than four lengths in the 2024 edition, Buckaroo will be partnered this year by Craig Williams, who belatedly broke his Melbourne Cup duck in 2019, having been deprived of the opportunity to partner Sheikh Fahad's 2011 winner, Dunaden (Fr).
David Redvers | Image courtesy of Tweenhills Farm
“Craig should have ridden Dunaden to win the Melbourne Cup, but he got a late ban which is why Christophe Lemaire flew down,” Redvers remembers. “It would be just deserts if he could do it, but he's far from our only runner in the race – he's actually far from our best chance in the race, to be honest.”
Valiant King - the best handicapped horse in the race
Step forward Valiant King who, like Buckaroo, joined the Chris Waller yard from O'Brien late in 2023, both of them now owned in partnership with Ozzie Kheir, among others.
Valiant King (GB) | Image courtesy of Racing Photos
This time last year, Valiant King was a 90/1 shot when finishing 13th in the Melbourne Cup, most definitely not the immediate hit Down Under that was Buckaroo. 12 months on, however, and the son of Roaring Lion (USA) appears to be peaking at just the right time, having followed his breakthrough Australian win in Flemington's G3 The Bart Cummings Handicap with a staying-on third in the G1 Caulfield Cup.
“For me, he is the best handicapped horse in the race,” says a bullish Redvers. “When I saw him in July, I was frankly blown away by how he's done, physically. He actually looked the image of his father. He'd gone from being quite a shelly horse to suddenly looking very well-muscled and mature. Chris has been very, very patient with him and it's definitely paying off.
“For me, he (Valiant King) is the best handicapped horse in the race.” - David Redvers
“I wouldn't be worried about the ground softening up for him – in fact, it can do whatever it likes. Hopefully, he can repeat his Caulfield Cup run and get a bit of luck in running. Obviously, the favourite (Al Riffa) is a very, very good horse, but I would be optimistic that he can go two better than he did in the Caulfield.”
Middle Earth starting to find his feet in Australia
Completing the trio of homebreds in which Sheikh Fahad retains a significant share is Buckaroo's year-younger sibling, Middle Earth, who ran easily his best race since joining Ciaron Maher when last seen finishing third in the G3 JRA Cup at Moonee Valley.
“He's taken a bit of time to find his feet, but he seems to be finding them well now and the aim always was that he'd be a Melbourne Cup horse,” says Redvers. “Ciaron and his team have worked backwards from this race.
“He ran in blinkers the other day (in the JRA Cup) to try and get him to cop on a little bit, because he's slightly been going through the motions, and they seemed to work the oracle. He's crying out for this extra distance, so we're very much looking forward to seeing him run. Hopefully, he can keep up the family tradition.”
Middle Earth (GB) | Image courtesy of Qatar Racing
Certainly, it's quite the achievement for the Galileo (Ire) mare Roheryn (Ire) to have two runners in the Melbourne Cup, around 10 weeks after she also had two runners – Kihavah (GB) (Harbour Watch {Ire}) and Siege Of Troy (GB) (Siyouni {Fr}) – in Europe's richest Flat handicap, the Ebor. Just a few days before the Ebor, she also had her latest offspring, a colt by Siyouni (Fr), sell to Godolphin for €600,000 (AU$1.06 million) at the Arqana August Yearling Sale.
“She's been phenomenal,” Redvers says of the mare he purchased for $400,000 at the 2012 Keeneland September Yearling Sale. “She won a Listed race for us with Ger Lyons and she's one of those rare things in that she's done it for us both on the track and in the breeding shed.
“She has produced the goods time after time and was very worthy of being a broodmare of the year finalist (at the 2025 TBA Flat Breeders' Awards). She didn't have a foal this year, but she's in foal to Justify and I think she'll go to Not This Time next year, so the story is very definitely still being written.”
The bittersweet success of Roaring Lion
Sadly, for everyone concerned with Tweenhills and Qatar Racing, the story of Roaring Lion's (USA) stallion career was all too short, with the four-time Group 1 winner succumbing to colic after just one season at the Gloucestershire farm in 2019.
From the resulting 107 foals, Middle Earth and Valiant King already feature among eight individual stakes winners for their late sire, but a Melbourne Cup victory for either of them would be something else altogether.
The late Roaring Lion (USA)
“We've also got Saint George running on the card (in the Listed Kirin Ichiban Plate),” Redvers points out. “He is another Roaring Lion out there and the most beautiful horse, almost completely white now. He has been plagued with foot problems, but Ciaron Maher's superb farrier has now fixed them.
“He ran an absolute blinder at Seymour last time, in a Listed race over a mile. He's a definitely a mile-and-six-furlong horse, so we're excited to see how he progresses as he steps up in distance. We're looking for a big Roaring Lion double.
“The bit that I'm personally extremely proud of is that we've got four stunning-looking runners for Melbourne Cup day and they were all bred by Qatar Racing at Tweenhills, in our little corner of Gloucestershire.”
Why send these quality horses to Australia
But why send these four stunning-looking horses to Australia, when they could still have been running in – and more than likely competitive in – plenty of good races back home in Europe?
“With horses that obviously aren't going to become stallions, Sheikh Fahad has very much been chasing prizemoney,” Redvers explains. “I suppose it all started off with Selino. We had him here with James Fanshawe and he was running third in Group 3s at Doncaster and the like and picking up 15 grand. We then sent him over to Australia where he won a Sydney Cup and, suddenly, you've got over a million coming into the bank account. The prizemoney for these horses in Australia is obviously way beyond anything they could earn in a career's worth of competition here, let alone one race.
“Sheikh Fahad took the view that he would sell large chunks of these horses to Australian owners to race down there. Ozzie Kheir, through Matt Houldsworth and Matt Becker, has been buying into our nice horses, as have other people. And Sheikh Fahad is very happy to keep 50% to race in Australia because of the vast prizemoney – it's a policy which has paid off extremely well.”
The impact Dunaden's Australian success has had
If Sheikh Fahad has a deep love affair with Australian racing, then much of that is owed to the globetrotting superstar that was Dunaden, the first flagship horse for the owner's Pearl Bloodstock, the forerunner to Qatar Racing. His Melbourne Cup victory was the middle leg of a hat-trick which also took in the G3 Geelong Cup and G1 Hong Kong Vase in 2011, before he returned to Australia to win the Caulfield Cup the following year.
Dunaden (Fr) | Image courtesy of Sportpix
“He was a remarkable horse,” Redvers sums up. “It [the Melbourne Cup] was one of the most agonising photo-finish results I've ever been through, but also one of the most rewarding. I'm trying to pull together the same team that was there when Dunaden won for when we turn up on Tuesday.”
He continues, “I don't think it's been touted enough just how much Dunaden did for and British and French racing – and probably Australian racing as well. It wasn't just his victories in the Geelong, Caulfield and Melbourne Cups, it was the fact that he ignited a flame in the Qataris and made them realise that they could take on the Sheikh Mohammeds and the like.
“I don't think it's been touted enough just how much Dunaden did for and British and French racing... he ignited a flame in the Qataris and made them realise that they could take on the Sheikh Mohammeds and the like.” - David Redvers
“He ensured that Pearl Bloodstock turned into Qatar Racing and that a lot of investment came in through Sheikh Fahad and his brothers. For that, we should be pretty grateful to him.”
Qatar Racing as a business model
The strength of one Qatari investor, in particular, was again in evidence at the recent Tattersalls Autumn Horses-in-Training Sale. Here, the shoe was on the other foot for Sheikh Fahad as he sold his G3 Darley Stakes runner-up, Gladius (Ire) (Night Of Thunder {Ire}), to Blandford Bloodstock's Richard Brown for 950,000gns (AU$2 million). The son of Night Of Thunder (Ire) was bought on behalf of Wathnan Racing, the increasingly influential enterprise of Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar and a cousin of Sheikh Fahad.
“It was bittersweet, obviously,” Redvers says of last week's sale, which also saw the operation's homebred Grade 1 winner New Century change hands for 390,000gns (AU$821,730).
“You hate selling good horses and seeing them go on in somebody else's colours. But we have to run Qatar Racing as a business and, as a self-funding operation, we have to generate funds through sales and moving horses to other jurisdictions to chase the prizemoney.
“Gladius was part of a colts' partnership that involved David Howden and China Horse Club and he was always going to be sold at the end of his 3-year-old career. We would have loved to stay in him to go to Australia, but Richard Brown had picked the best horse in the sale and Wathnan wielded a big cheque. It was great to see him go to a good home. We will all be following his new career, and that of New Century, with great interest.”
Whilst able to reflect on a successful sale from a business standpoint, Redvers admits to becoming “more concerned on a daily basis” when it comes to the general health of British racing, dreading to think what the European sales would have looked like without the international buyers propping them up.
He says, “The cracks are being plastered over by the fact that the international market has been giving the impression that the bloodstock sales have been really strong. So many of these horses are being bought for export – you only had to look at the trade at the Horses-in-Training Sale last week. The export of our best horses abroad, whilst great in the short term, is very damaging in the long term.
“We are really struggling here and we're going to struggle as the economy continues to tank thanks to some rather dubious economic policies of the current Government. I think we're going to find domestic racehorse owners in shorter supply and the knock-on effect from that is less horses being bred for sale and to race. The whole thing has a snowball effect on field sizes.
“We're racing to the bottom quite quickly, until something is done to redistribute funds from the racing product more equitably and we can put more money into prizemoney.”
“We're racing to the bottom quite quickly (British Racing), until something is done to redistribute funds from the racing product more equitably and we can put more money into prizemoney.” - David Redvers
“You never stop learning, but Tweenhills seems to be running extremely well at the moment. We farm the land very lightly and very traditionally, we've got lots of cattle and a huge amount of acres per horse – and I think it shows.”
