Tony Rider invests in New Zealand's future with purchase of The Oaks Stud

Cover image courtesy of Donovan & Co

Milan Park Stud’s Tony Rider has announced he has purchased The Oaks Stud, and will take over the farm’s operations at the beginning of the 2027/28 racing season. The purchase comes during a pivotal year for Rider, who parted with his triple Group 1-winning mare Provence (NZ) (Savabeel) for seven figures at the recent Inglis Chairman’s Sale, and is part of Rider's ongoing vision of elevating the entire New Zealand breeding industry.

Waiting for the right moment

Purchasing Dick Karreman’s The Oaks Stud had been on Rider's agenda for just over a year, and for no other reason really apart from a few health issues had the deal not happened, but as Rider explains, getting the deal done has been a relatively quick and smooth process.

“We looked at The Oaks Stud, it would have been roughly a year ago, but health-wise, I wasn't in the best of shape so the idea stayed at the back of my mind,” he said. “I've had a knee replacement, I wasn't in good shape at that point, and it’s taken me a fair while to come right. Some people are fine in a month, some are six months and I was talking to a guy and it has taken him 12 months and he's only just come right.

“Everyone's pain is different, and it really knocked me around. I got it done at the start of February and it is only in the last 10 days that I feel I have come good. I have had to rely on medication, so I haven't probably been in the best frame of mind to go through the process of buying a stud farm.”

Rider’s own nursery, Milan Park, adjoins The Oaks Stud, and seeing the farm every day further cemented the idea in Rider’s mind that he wanted to combine the two properties.

“I suppose I got to a point where it was a bit of a crossroads for me,” he said. “I see the farm everyday from where I am at Milan Park, I know how good it is, and I thought, ‘bugger it, if I don't go for it, I may regret it in time to come’.

“I actually saw (General Manager) Rick (Williams) not too long ago and asked how it was all going and said that I really liked the idea of purchasing the stud. I have been to my accountant and I simply said, ‘what do you think?’, and he said, ‘it’s all there, we can make it work if you want it to happen, it's up to you whether you want it or not’.”

“When talking between Rick and Dick (Karreman), it became pretty simple in the end.”

Once he received their blessing, it was just a matter of taking the plunge and getting the sale over the line.

Remaining part of the industry

In news that industry people that will no doubt be rapt about, Rider confirmed that The Oaks Stud will remain as a stud.

Rider’s takeover will not happen until July 31 2027 in a decision that mutually benefits both parties. The Oaks Stud will have the ability to prepare their horses for the New Zealand Bloodstock Ready To Run Sale at the end of 2026 and a final draft for the 2027 New Zealand Bloodstock National Yearling Sale as per normal, while also going through the process of recalibrating their bloodstock.

“We're going to continue running the farm as a stud,” Rider said. “At the moment, we've got The Chosen One standing there, I own a reasonable portion of him and he will remain staying there at this stage.”

It also gives Rider time to get organised as his property trebles in size. Having started Milan Park in 2007 with just 50 acres, Rider’s nursery currently spans 250 acres, or over 100 hectares.

“It's worked out really good for us,” he said. “Rick just said we can't do it before the yearling sales with that uncertainty and I agreed. He thought June would be ideal and then we came up with the end of July as it makes sense with the racing season. So we ended up doing the deal on 200 hectares of the farm.”

Milan Park houses Rider’s personal broodmare band, but he has more commercial plans for the future of The Oaks Stud.

“We don’t really do agistment at Milan Park apart from a few mates’ mares,” Rider said. “With the purchase of The Oaks, we will take agistment at that farm, we will look to foal down at that farm and run the place as a fully commercial stud. We want to specialise on top-class agistment for mares and give breeders another option.

“Over the next 12 months, we will also look to get another stallion. If we already are standing one, we might as well have two.”

A year of highs for Milan Park

The last 12 months have been about more than just Rider’s farmland tripling in size. Milan Park has experienced a strong season on the track, highlighted by homebred Provence claiming her third Group 1 in December’s G1 Mufhasa Classic - and the mare lit up the sales ring at Inglis’s Riverside Stables sales complex in May when selling for $1.8 million to Yulong Investments.

It was Rider’s first time presenting a mare at the sale, consigning her himself in partnership with Newgate Consignment. Parting with the mare was bittersweet, given the heights she took her ownership to, but Rider conceded that sometimes you have to think with a business mindset.

“We were always going to keep Provence,” he said. “And I suppose, when talking to a couple of different people at very good studs, they kept telling me, ‘you have invested a lot of money into horses and farms, and now and again you've just got to try to balance the books’.

“You might have to sell the odd horse. After hearing this from several well-respected people, I had a talk with Bruce Perry and he was of the same thinking, so we ended up deciding to sell her, and see how we go, and we were very happy with the result.”

Provence was the third highest priced lot of the sale topped by $5.6 million juvenile filly Chayan (I Am Invincible). Speaking at the time of the sale, Yulong CEO Sam Fairgray shared that the Kiwibred would be bound for a date with either G1 Blue Diamond Stakes winner Devil Night or G1 Galaxy Handicap winner Private Harry.

“I also had a 5% share in Super Seth and we have been rewarded very nicely for that too, thanks to Mark (Chittick) and the Waikato Stud team,” Rider said.

Nobody needs reminding that one of the headline stallion announcements of the year has been Super Seth’s acquisition and move to Coolmore’s Jerry Plains property, in a deal reported to be in the region of $70 million. The sire of four Group 1 winners will stand his first season on Australian soil for a fee of $137,500 (inc GST).

“So, it's been a good year for us, and we had a very good year on the track too. We are pretty content with how things are going especially as we are well aware, as are all industry people, that it is a hard industry out there, and sometimes you ask yourself, ‘am I doing the right thing?’

“But it gets us somehow, you know, the passion, the love for the industry, it does get us. When you have good horses, it keeps you going.”

A framework that works

For Rider’s own operations, the same framework that has dictated the farm’s success to date will remain unchanged. His personal broodmare band is going through a stage of renewal as he incorporates his newest editions.

“We will be doing things exactly as we are currently, we maintain roughly 60 mares in the band,” Rider said. “We have entered about 17 to the upcoming Gavelhouse Plus Broodmare sale and there are some very good horses in there. We may have sold Provence, but over the last couple of months we have purchased about half a dozen mares in Australia to come back to New Zealand.

“We have sold one real good one and bought six, and I have had people ask me, ‘why would you do that?’. My comment back to them is I am very fortunate, and I am re-investing in new families and Australian blood, which we need in New Zealand.”

Chief among those are two purchases made at the Magic Millions Gold Coast National Broodmare Sale in collaboration with Bruce Perry Bloodstock (BAFNZ); winning I Am Invincible mare Sensory for $150,000 and four-time winner Simply Amazing (So You Think {NZ}) for $270,000.

Sensory, carrying a pregnancy to Zousain, is out of a full sister to stakes-winning, stakes-producing Come Hither (Redoute’s Choice), from the immediate family of Not A Single Doubt - a lineage that Rider is particularly fond of. In foal to Home Affairs, Simply Amazing is a granddaughter of four-time Group 1-winning champion mare Tuesday Joy (Carnegie {Ire}).

“Also a factor is that I am still breeding from Provence’s dam Sombreuil and I have a weanling filly full-sister to Provence in the paddock, and Sombreuil is heading to Anamoe this spring,” said Rider. He typically 10 to 12 of his mares across the Tasman to Australian stallions every year.

“You have got to keep bringing that new blood into New Zealand. Whether it's through mares or through stallions, we've just got to keep improving. Im breeding from black-type mares or siblings to black-type horses from black-type families, so I'm hoping to make families and utilise that Australian blood.”

The proof has been in the pudding this racing season with Magill (Farnan).

“We had Magill place in the Karaka Million 2YO this year, and he is by an Australian stallion in Farnan, out of a good mare I purchased in Australia from the Not A Single Doubt family,” Rider said. “I’m very proud that he is the first foal out of the mare, we are doing something right there. Jessica Rabbit is going to Stay Inside this year and we have another two more mares going to Stay Inside also.”

Investing in the future

Rider has always been a shareholder in New Zealand stallions, with his portfolio including the likes of Super Seth, The Chosen One (NZ), Wrote (Ire), and the late Savabeel, and he has now started to invest heavily in Australian stallions as well.

“I've invested in Anamoe, and bought a share in Tentyris,” he said. “I'm now really focusing on a bit of that Australian blood. Buying shares means you are guaranteed those spots in what is a very competitive market in Australia and they aren’t cheap either. I think all the shares in Tentyris were gone in a day and he was fully booked in a day or two also, the demand is just so high.

“We also have a few other shares also - Bivouac, Broadsiding, and Anders. We have a good cross-section of Australian stallions.”

G1 Thorndon Mile winner The Chosen One also won Group races at three and four, and performed at Group 1 level across four seasons of racing. His eldest crop are about to turn three and, like their father, are intended to improve with age.

Rider admits that the late announcement of the stallion ahead of his debut season at stud put something of a handbrake on his first crop numbers, but that breeders liked enough of what they saw with his first 26 foals to return in higher number the next year.

“We were a little bit late getting him out there to the public and he's only got about 26 rising 3-year-olds,” Rider said. “But he has built up numbers on the back of those foals and served about 80 for each of the next three seasons. People have been so impressed by the types. He does leave a good type.

“He is stamping them very much like Savabeel did. We sold one in Book Three of the Summer Sale to Katrina Alexander for $60,000. They are great types.”

Rider is excited to see the stallion’s first 3-year-olds hit the track, and will continue his investment in the stallion’s future alongside his acquisition of The Oaks Stud.

“We have a filly with Andrew Forsman named Shestheone that will be running in the spring as a 3-year-old, and a nice gelding with Guy Lowry that I will be racing with the O'Leary brothers from Taranaki,” he said. “I think Guy thinks a little bit of him. Rick Williams told me that about every other week someone is ringing him saying, ‘we have a nice The Chosen One;, so the feedback is good.

“He just needs to do it on the track now and he's got to do it the hard way, but we're keeping our fingers crossed.”