Vale Ron Sayers

Story courtesy TDN Australia & NZ

WRITTEN BY JESSICA OWERS

The passing of Yarradale Stud principal Ron Sayers last year has left a considerable hole in Western Australian racing.

His friend Greg Carpenter, the chief handicapper for Racing Victoria, chatted to TDN about the man that was larger than life.

Sayers was as popular a racing identity as Western Australia has ever produced, and tributes came thick and fast in the wake of his sad death. The President of Thoroughbred Breeders WA (TBWA), Fiona Lacey, said the Yarradale studmaster was a genuine loss to the West.

“Ron has been such a passionate supporter of racing and breeding in WA for so many years, building his stud up to be one of the leading farms and racing hundreds of horses,” she said. “He was not only a great character of racing, but a genuinely good person who helped many, many people along the way.”

Sayers bought Yarradale Stud in 1997. Currently, the farm is home to three stallions, including War Chant (USA), Gingerbread Man, and Heritage.

The property was previously in the hands of Don McCully and Dallas Dempster, but Sayers went in heavily during his tenure, propelling Yarradale among the leading breeders in Western Australia.

By all accounts, it was typical of how he operated.

Sayers was successful, effective and driven. He became a brilliant breeder and owner across the last 30 years in Western Australia, which also mimicked his professional brilliance in mining enterprise.

“It’s really sad that the Western Australian racing and breeding industry has lost such a passionate supporter,” said Greg Carpenter, Racing Victoria’s chief handicapper. Carpenter, speaking to TDN AusNZ this week, was a longtime friend of Sayers’.

“People will know well Ron’s story as a self-made success in the mining industry, creating and developing Ausdrill into the company that it was,” Carpenter said. “But the traits that he showed there flowed through to his racing interests, with his biggest legacy being the way he treated his staff and, when it came to racing, it was very much the same.”

Sayers was a silver-haired, larger-than-all-outdoors mining tycoon.

As a young man, born and bred in Kalgoorlie, he worked as a knockabout mechanic on the Great Boulder gold mine before selling drilling equipment locally. Eventually, he got to thinking that there was more money to be made in using his wares than selling them, so he bought a second-hand mining drill and grew his company from there.

In 1987 he owned a single drill rig and, by 2018, Ausdrill had blossomed into a billion-dollar business, one of the biggest drilling outfits in the world. It became an ASX200 company with more than 8000 employees, which today are spread between 12 countries as part of the Perenti Group.

Sayers was particularly proud of the staff legacy at Ausdrill. It was something he prided himself on when he retired from the company in 2018. Without doubt, he was a people’s person, which served him well in the sport of racing.

“One of the great things that Ron enjoyed about being involved in racing was sharing the experience with family and friends,” Carpenter said. “He was a great one for being a part-owner of a horse rather than a sole owner, because he enjoyed the social relationships that came from racing.”

According to Carpenter, they make them tough in Kalgoorlie. Much of the mining town has followed racing for a long time, and it was no different for Sayers.

“Probably, though, what set Ron down the path that he eventually took into racing and breeding was the wins he had in 1995 in the Kalgoorlie and Boulder Cups,” Carpenter said.

“He won those races that year with a horse called Forehand. For anyone from Kalgoorlie to win that double is a huge thing, and that was one of the great highlights for Ron in his life.”

Forehand was by the Mr Prospector (USA) stallion Bellotto (USA), from the Shining Finish (GB) mare Winning Hit. All round, it was a well-named pedigree for Sayers.

The horse won nine races for a further nine places in a highachieving, 24-race career that ended on the Gold Coast in 1996.

“So there was Forehand in 1995, and then a few years later he and a group of his close friends bought into the ownership of Northerly,” Carpenter said. “All of them were part of the great success that Northerly had in Group 1 races in Australia, and that was just a joyous experience, not only for Ron and his friends, but for all of Western Australia, really.”

Northerly (Serheed {USA}) was the ultimate ride for Sayers.

From the year 2000 to the horse’s retirement in 2004, he won 19 races – 18 at stakes level, 16 at Group level of which nine were Group 1s. They included the Cox Plate twice and the Caulfield Cup, along with the Australian Cup, also twice.

“Northerly cost me a lot of money in the 20 years since, trying to find one to replace him,” Sayers later joked.

In the end, he never had another Northerly, but Sayers wasn’t short of success at Yarradale Farm.

He won four G2 Karrakatta Plates over the years, the first of which was with Born Priceless (Pricelessly {USA}) in 2001, and the latest of which were Valour Road (Frost Giant {USA}) in 2018 and Ima Single Man (Gingerbread Man) in 2020.

In fact, Born Priceless probably provided the best of those wins, the filly being from a mare that Sayers bred and by a stallion he stood at Yarradale Stud.

“Racing was something that he was passionate about,” Carpenter said. “Ron was very hands-on in the breeding processes. He was deeply immersed in stallion statistics and breeding statistics, and that was one of the reasons why he eventually bought into the Southern Hemisphere breeding rights of his stallion, War Chant.”

War Chant, by Danzig (USA), wasn’t a young sire when Sayers snapped him up. The horse relocated permanently to Yarradale Stud following the 2014 Northern Hemisphere breeding season, and he’s stood his last five seasons for $11,000 (inc GST).

“War Chant has become a great sire of broodmares for Ron,” Carpenter said. “But one of the great elements of this story is that his most recent winner was Lady Chant, who won the WA Oaks last season, and she’s a filly that Ron bred and obviously retained for 50 per cent. That would have given him great satisfaction.”

Lady Chant sits alongside Valour Road and Ima Single Man, as the most recent of Sayers’ track interests.

The Racing Victoria handicapper knew Sayers well from their mutual roots in Western Australia. However, it wasn’t until Carpenter was working as a handicapper in Singapore that he properly grew to know Sayers.

“When I was head of handicapping in Singapore from 1995 to 2000, I spent some time with Ron and wife Lyn when they came to Singapore to enjoy the races,” Carpenter recalled.

“That would have been around the late 1990s, and that was when I realised what a larger-than-life character Ron really was, and what a great storyteller he was.”

Carpenter says that Sayers was great fun to be around, not least because of the good yarns he spun about Forehand and Northerly later on, and all the horses he had cheered along the way.

The Sayers friendship group was wide and illustrious, having in excess of 400 partners in his racehorses at one point.

“I was very close to the Northerly journey,” Carpenter said. “So, I got to know Ron better through all of that. He was so passionate about Perth racing, and he had a genuine love for it. He had a great desire for WA racing to blossom and flourish and be as successful as it could possibly be.”

“Ron was a self-made man,” Carpenter said. “He created his own success and wealth, and he loved the company of others and the enjoyment of being at the races, winning or losing.

“He thought outside the square all along. He didn’t let things get in his way, and if he thought WA racing was better off for something, he would try to make it happen. Ronnie did everything because he had a genuine love of Western Australia, and a genuine love for family and friends. He is a really sad loss.”

The 70-year-old died in May 2022 and is survived by his wife Lyn, five children and numerous grandchildren (his pride and joy).

He was so passionate about Perth racing, and he had a genuine love for it. He had a great desire for WA racing to blossom and flourish and be as successful as it could possibly be.