Dwyer goes global as Asfoora success opens door to Newmarket base

Cover image courtesy of Henry Dwyer Racing

Travelling Asfoora (Flying Artie) was an adventure. When Henry Dwyer first took the Flying Artie mare to Royal Ascot two years ago, the mission was straightforward enough: find the right race, in the right jurisdiction, for a mare who had become awkwardly placed at home.

What followed was not just a G1 King Charles III Stakes win, but a two-year European campaign that also delivered the G1 Nunthorpe Stakes, the G1 Prix de l’Abbaye de Longchamp and the title of European Champion Sprinter.

Now, that one-horse adventure has become the foundation for something broader, with Dwyer establishing a Newmarket satellite stable designed to test and develop selected European purchases before they are brought back to Australia.

A hub for a few selected horses

Dwyer is clear this is not an attempt to recreate Ballarat in England.

The Newmarket stable will be small, selective and seasonal: a base for Australian-bought European horses to be educated, raced and assessed before travelling south, rather than an open-ended expansion into the British training ranks.

“It’s a bit left of centre, but it's something that's evolved a little bit organically. I've been offered the old horse here and there to take over there,” Dwyer said.

“I don't really want to be filling a stable over there and running a business all year round with unraced horses and having a stable like I've got here because it's obviously a very expensive exercise and a lot of work.

“The main aim of (the satellite stable) is a nursery for our Australian-trained horses. I can buy tried horses there to put through their paces over there before they come to Australia when they're fully mature, and the other side of it is it gives our owners the experience that I've had for the last couple of years.

For Dwyer, the timing is as much about maturity as opportunity.

“For the last few years, we’ve purchased four to six tried horses from over there. And that’s probably going to increase to eight to 10 in the next few years,” he said.

“The horses we are buying are largely breeze-up horses, yearlings, and a few lightly raced 3-year-olds, so it makes sense for them to race over there rather than here because they’re six months behind.

“If they can have a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old preparation over there, and then come over here as a late three or an early 4-year-old, when they’ve caught up maturity-wise, it makes sense to me. It means we get a gauge on if they’re good enough to come over in the first place.”

One of those recent purchases, Paradise Storm (Fr) (Masked Marvel {GB}), demonstrated Dwyer’s ability to travel horses when he went to New Zealand this summer and won the G2 Auckland Cup.

“If we're going to have them in work over there, it would make sense that they'd be under our care.

“I've got an assistant trainer who loves being over there for the summer in Simon Morrish. I've got the connections from my time over there in the last two years who are willing and able to help, and I know a lot of people, a lot of bloodstock agents, a lot of riders over there that makes it easier as opposed to if I’m just Tom, Dick, or Harry over in Australia thinking about the idea.

“I don't envisage myself spending too much time over there other than their summer. It's been a pretty well-worn path for Ballarat trainers to have a satellite stable in Queensland (over our winter) to get out of the cold.”

A unique experience for owners

Newmarket dates to 1605 when King James I decided the region was the perfect place for his hobby of racing horses. The Jockey Club was founded in 1750, 38 years before the first fleet arrived in Botany Bay. Modern day Newmarket Heath consists of 2500 acres with 50 miles of gallops.

“It's a model that works financially for me, and it means I can test horses (bought in England), and I can give everyone an experience that they wouldn't have had otherwise,” said Dwyer.

“It just blows people's mind walking around the gallops of a nice summer's morning at Newmarket and watching horses work at Warren Hill. It really took my imagination away with me, and it's grown organically because it just started with Asfoora and then the other two horses that I bought over there. I couldn’t train them as I only had the visiting licence, so I thought I’ve got to get the full trainer's license.

"It'd be nice to think that we can have up to nine horses there, six months a year, win some races, and if they are good enough bring them back to Australia. I'm not trying to break any records over anything, but it's more of a filter stable for here with a few added benefits along the way.

“Being at Newmarket is a money can’t buy experience, but now people can buy it.

“I’ve got a heap of owners coming over for Ascot this year, and they've all gone into horses that I've purchased there whether it be tried horses at the horse in training sale last year or breeze up horses in the last couple of weeks, and they're all pumped about it.

“It's something that they haven't felt able to do before because they haven't had the connections and through me, they now have the connection. It’s not just Royal Ascot, you have Glorious Goodwood and the Ebor festival at York and the July Cup meeting and Arc day.

“Goodwood is amazing - with the races and the Goodwood ball the night before, it's epic.

“Last year, they had the visiting trainers and all the luminaries and connections there, and they put on a track morning. They bring in two or three Rolls-Royces, two or three Ferraris, a couple McLarens, that sort of thing, and they put your helmet on, and you jump in the driver's seat, and you've got the instructor next to you, and you're fanging around the track there. I'm not a car person but it was pretty fun.”

Putting horses through their paces

Purchasing at the tried stock sales for horses suitable for Australian staying races has become more competitive in recent years, as the popularity of the concept rises.

Sir Delius (GB) (Frankel {GB}) topped the 2024 Tattersalls Horses in Training Sale at 1.3 million gns (AU$2.7 million) and he’s since won the G1 Turnbull Stakes and G1 Queen Elizabeth Stakes for his Australian ownership group and trainers Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott.

“This year, we bought one at Tattersalls at the Craven Sale and two at Goffs at Doncaster. We're paying a full-time staff member from over in Australia to look after Asfoora which is costly for the owners. I thought, ‘Why don't we have another couple of horses there to distribute the cost a bit more evenly?’, and it started as simply as that.”

In 2026, Dwyer purchased a Kodiac (GB) filly at the Tattersalls Craven Sale for 72,000 gns (AU$142,900) and at the Goffs Sale, he purchased a St Mark’s Basilica (Fr) filly for £205,000 (AU$387,000) and a Too Darn Hot (GB) colt for £300,000 (AU$566,000).

“I bought two horses at the Tatts Horses In Training sale last year called Synners Kid and Skiathos, which have both been in work in Newmarket for the last four months leading up to this (English) summer.

“Synners Kid will go towards a race like the Golden Gates Stakes on the last day of Royal Ascot. He’ll have three or four runs over the summer over there, then come back to Australia at the end of year. That's the model we're trying to do.”

“If we are buying tried horses, why wouldn't we buy them a year or two earlier at the breeze ups or the yearling sales, and then put them through our system over there rather than someone else's system when you don't know what's happened to them (during their earlier career). You don't know any injury issues, you don't know if they can breathe or not. You don't know if they've ever bled, you don't know if they've had knee chips.

“If we've got the ability to do it, it makes sense to have them under our care over there rather than shopping blind. Having had them in our system is obviously a big head start before they get back to Australia.”

Sending Australian sprinters north

Given that Asfoora is the benchmark horse for Dwyer, it is interesting that the key focus of this satellite stable is focused on preparing horses to come to Australia in the long term. But when asked the question about sending sprinters to England, the answer was obvious.

“For most sprinters and most horses, there's so much prize money here (in Australia) that you wouldn't dream of taking them over there when you can win The Everest,” said Dwyer.

“Asfoora was a unique case. In her situation, you had a horse who had no races here. She was stuck between a rock and a hard place, because she couldn't get 1200 metres. She was restricted to 1100 so the only race she could really run in was the Oakleigh Plate or the Galaxy.

“With the AJ Moir and the Lightning, every time you go to them, you run into a Nature Strip or a Black Caviar. She was always the 3rd or 4th best 1000 or 1100-metre horse, but she was never the best, and she didn't quite get 1200, so that made it hard for her.

“We saw an opportunity over there for her that made sense. We had a horse that had no other option, either retire or go over there, and I had an owner that was happy to pay for it, and a horse that coped with travelling well. You need a lot of factors to go your way when taking a horse over there.

“I wouldn't take a horse that wasn't a sprinter over there because I don't think we train stayers as well as (English trainers). If I did take horses back, it'd certainly be sprinters, but it'd be a lot easier for me to do it than other people doing it the first time, having seen what I've seen the last couple of years over there and knowing the people that I know now.

“But it is an expensive exercise. With Asfoora, I had a very supportive owner who was willing to do it and going over to Ascot is one thing, you fly in the week before, you fly out, but what we did last year was train her there, which is a whole different kettle of fish. It's been a tremendous experience, and I know a lot more now about it than I did previously, which is why I'd love to train a few sprinters there, but I wouldn't be taking it on with (Australian) stayers.

“I think the way their market's going too, if you look at their yearling sales and their breeze up sales, they've got almost as many sprinting sires as we do, they've gone away from the staying pedigrees, and they're going towards the sprinting ones, which I think opens up an opportunity for me, if I was to train horses over there commercially.

“I think I’d be mixing it pretty well with them in terms of how we train sprinters. So if the market is trending that way, which it is, it makes sense to be involved on the ground level.”

It’s all about the people and the systems

The idea of training horses from the other side of the world still seems extraordinary, regardless of how Dwyer paints the picture. But technology makes it more accessible.

“We've got a base there on Hamilton Road with Amy Murphy and Lemos De Souza, who have looked after us unbelievably well the last two years and they've said if we want a few boxes there, we can have them,” said Dwyer.

Lemos De Souza trains from the Liberty Stables at Newmarket, in partnership with his wife, Amy Murphy. Asfoora will run in his name for her first up run on Friday, until Dwyer’s licence is finalised.

“I've got a staff member (Morrish) who wants to be there and they (England) don't have the staff shortages we have here. It’s actually easy and you probably couldn't do it 20 years ago, but now we've got E-Trackers and videos.

“In Ballarat, we trot up every horse for the vet every Wednesday afternoon. That's the routine, just to make sure I don't miss anything, but over there, I'm actually seeing the horses more than I do here. We're getting trot up videos every morning.

“We're watching them work on videos. We've got heart rate monitors and speed monitors on them every morning so I can watch them in real time walking all over Newmarket.”

It’s not all straightforward, as Dwyer had a slightly embarrassing realisation this week with a horse heading to the gallops.

“The other morning, we had a horse going up to gallop on the other side of town, and I thought they rode them over there.

“So I'm watching the replay of the GPS and the e-tracker, and they put the e-tracker on the horse before it's gone on the truck, and turned it on, and I thought this horse was bowling up the high street of Newmarket at 14 to the furlong, and I was having kittens, because I thought it was loose! Then I realised they were putting them on trucks to go over there.

“That’s the perils of the tyranny of distance, I suppose. By and large, it’s pretty easy to manage things if you've got someone capable on the ground there and you're getting all the data back here and the videos and everything.”

When asked if data management was becoming a core focus of a trainer’s daily life, Dwyer was circumspect.

“I think it can be overemphasised at times. It can just confuse you if there's too much going on and if you're not matching it with what you're seeing, but, as I said, if you've got someone good on the ground there and you've got the data to match up with what they're seeing and you're seeing videos as well, then it's easy enough to do."

The state of prizemoney in England

England has a reputation for poor prizemoney on a global scale. In Australia, across the 28,616 individual runners in 2024/25, the average earnings were $36,400. By comparison in Great Britain in 2025, the 18,082 runners had an average earnings of £10,552 (AU$19,900).

“There's a bit of doom and gloom about (English) prize money, but I'm here to tell you the prize money's good enough for the major races and the festivals and it's not all about the prize money, it’s about the experience you have over there. It's probably more valuable than any prize money,” Dwyer said.

“To be fair, we're buying horses for a bit of money, so we're going to be racing at the better festivals and if they don't work out, then we're not bearing the expense of 50 grand to import them plus GST and all that sort of stuff, which is a pretty major expense for a horse that's too slow to win races.

“There's not a huge financial risk. It's easier for me to sell horses that I buy over there with a view to coming here. People love the idea of having runners over there, so I'm bringing a new market to British racing from owners here that haven't had the opportunity to be in horses over there before. And the costs over there are not dissimilar to here.

“There’s always a perception that the prize money is not as good over there, but when you're racing in the better races, which is what we're hoping to do, it’s good.”

Prizemoney for the Royal Ascot carnival will be a record £10.65 million (AU$20.08 million) in 2026. All eight Group 1 races will have a minimum prizemoney pool of £700,000 (AU$1.32 million) with two at £1 million (AU$1.89 million).