Lindsay Park turning platinum into gold
Any owners heading to the Inglis Premier Melbourne Yearling Sale with a VOBIS Platinum voucher to spend are in for a treat, with more than 300 eligible yearlings set to go through the ring at Oaklands Junction from 2-4 March.
Over a third of the 803 lots presented for sale will carry the VOBIS Sires logo, giving prospective buyers armed with a voucher the opportunity to purchase their next racetrack star at a fraction of the full price.
The Lindsay Park stable are avid advocates of the VOBIS Platinum program, which offers an additional $30,000 in vouchers to the eligible winners of the 250-plus VOBIS Gold races programmed across Victoria each and every season.
Before she was retired to the breeding barn, their flying filly Croatian Belle became one of the pin-up girls of the program when she burst onto the scene with back-to-back wins at The Valley – earning her all-female ownership group $60,000 in VOBIS Platinum vouchers as well as over $150,000 in prizemoney and bonuses.
The bumper windfall persuaded many of her owners to take shares in another filly purchased by Lindsay Park from the Rosemont draft at last year’s Inglis Premier Yearling Sale, and she has already gone some way towards repaying their investment after just one career start.
Grace Ramage, a key member of Lindsay Park’s Racing & Client Liaison team who helped put together the ladies’ syndicate for both horses, believes the benefits of the VOBIS program make it more inviting to attract new owners into the stable and also to retain existing clients.
“The stable really targets any races across the calendar which offer VOBIS Platinum vouchers, because the additional incentives are a massive value add for our clients,” she said.
“Croatian Belle is a great example. The two $30,000 VOBIS Platinum vouchers she won at the start of her career allowed her owners to get into another Lindsay Park filly by redeeming those vouchers, so they didn’t have to spend any additional money. That filly is Rohesia, who picked up almost $50,000 in prizemoney after she ran third on debut in the Inglis Banner during Melbourne Cup week last year.
“Success stories like this help us bring new clients into the stable and keep our existing owners happy, as well as helping when it comes to the sales season. Any clients that have remaining balances on their vouchers can reinvest in VOBIS Sires yearlings in an easy and affordable way. There are so many eligible lots coming up for sale, and the vouchers offer an amazing incentive for our clients to offset the cost and buy into them.”
In addition to discounting the cost of purchasing an eligible yearling, VOBIS Platinum vouchers can also be offset against the service fee of any Victorian-based stallions signed up to the VOBIS Sires program.
Some of Lindsay Park’s extensive ownership group have done just that, redeeming their share of VOBIS Platinum vouchers on the service fees of Written Tycoon (Yulong), Ghaiyyath (Darley Victoria), Rubick (Swettenham Stud) and Fierce Impact (Lovatsville).
In excess of $4.6 million in VOBIS Platinum vouchers have been won to date, with almost half of that total redeemed so far – which includes a 100 per cent redemption rate on the $90,000 in vouchers won during the month of September last year.
Only horses paid up for the VOBIS Platinum program are eligible to compete in the two marquee races on Victorian Owners and Breeders Raceday at Caulfield, which for the first time will be held during the Festival of Racing on Saturday, 15 March.
They are the VOBIS Platinum Showdown (1200m) for juvenile horses and the VOBIS Platinum Guineas (1600m) for three-year-olds, which are worth a combined $1.5 million in prizemoney and bonuses.
Lindsay Park won The Showdown in 2021 through Finance Tycoon, who romped to victory by more than four lengths and is now standing at Kooringal Stud.
Team Hayes train a number of precocious juveniles eligible for the 2025 renewal including another son of Written Tycoon, the Yulong-owned colt Tycoon Star, who made his return to the races in Saturday’s Sportsbet Blue Diamond Prelude (C&G) (1100m) at Caulfield.