To Sir, with Love

Words / Jessica Owers

It’s been nearly five years since Brendan and Jo Lindsay bought New Zealand’s Cambridge Stud and, in the time since, they have rebuilt the farm with a particular homage to Sir Patrick Hogan and the two horses that delivered an empire.

Brendan Lindsay didn’t need to buy Cambridge Stud in the spring of 2017, but he wanted to. It could have taken him three years to negotiate the purchase, but instead it took him three weeks. He went from a life spent in the boardroom to one in the hot sun or driving rain, fixing fences and rearing bloodstock. He had swapped one intense, high-achieving business for another.

Brendan and wife Jo assumed control of Cambridge Stud in April 2018, less than two years after they sold their company, Sistema, for $660 million to an American outfit on the Fortune 500. They’d have preferred the particulars to be more private than they were, but that’s how things go at that level of commerce, and their purchase of Cambridge Stud brought a fresh wave of attention.

For 41 years, the property had strolled along in the willowy control of Sir Patrick Hogan. It had hosted the Queen, Sir Tristram and Zabeel, and it was hard to imagine that anyone else could do so well there.

When the Lindsays moved in, they had every right to go their own way with their expensive, new investment, but they did so carefully. They had bought a horse farm that was equal parts New Zealand legend.

“There’s quite a responsibility that comes with buying a business that has a heritage like what Cambridge Stud’s got, and Jo and I took that responsibility onboard,” Brendan says. “We can’t ever achieve what the stud’s achieved in the past, because those are all memories, but we can honour its past, which we’ve tried to do.”

The first two years for the Lindsays were the hardest. When they moved in, they had resident stallions Tavistock, Keeper, Burgundy and Power. They lost Tavistock and Burgundy in the space of a month, which was only a short time after they lost Roaring Lion, who had just arrived on a shuttle deal, to colic. The following year, COVID took hold, and it might have been enough to squeeze the spirit of the hardiest man, but the Lindsays pressed on at Cambridge Stud. They rebuilt the farm from the beating heart of the stallion barn right out to the tree-lined boundary fences, and Cambridge Stud today is a sparkling version of its old self.

“We felt we needed to make some changes,” Jo says. “Most of the buildings hadn’t stood up to time very well, and so we put a plan together for the property with respect to what it was and what we wanted it to be. We bought two additional neighbouring properties, one that has become the new foaling unit, and that’s a good example of some of the things we had to do because before, the foaling unit was an old dairy.”

“If a fence came down, you’d say to yourself that you’ll put it back up again,” Brendan says. “But then you look at the driveway beside it and realise that needs some work, and then you put in a new pathway. And now you’ve got a path that needs a fence too, and then you add trees until you look across the road and decide you might as well do the other side too.”

It is modern and polished, every bit the showpiece farm you’d expect of it, and sat in the hub of things is a new heritage centre. The idea for it came fairly soon after the Lindsays took over, and the logic was to honour the past, in particular the eras of Sir Tristram and his son Zabeel.

“In the first few days of talking about buying from Sir Patrick, we initially talked about wanting to add a heritage centre to Cambridge Stud,” Jo says. “It would be headlined by Sir Tristram and Zabeel because those two stallions left a massive mark on Australasian racing.”

“Cambridge Stud wasn’t just Sir Patrick and the horses,” Brendan says. “It was also the staff that have come through the place, like Colm Santry to Adam Sangster, Brent Taylor from Trelawney and James Cummings. These guys all came through Cambridge Stud as part of their cadetship, if you like, so it was about honouring everyone who’s contributed, too.”

The Cambridge Stud Heritage Centre is an interactive experience for visitors. There are digital displays of old races and farm photographs, and quotes dotting the walls from recognisable names.

The Cambridge Stud silks are on display, as are many trophies and farm memories.

In the centre of things, the old horse known as ‘Paddy’ is recreated in splendid detail. Sir Tristram is surrounded by his wooden trough, stallion vest, brushes, bit and life-size effigy.

“We’d travelled to Kentucky to visit a couple of the horse museums there, and then we went to Ireland to see similar centres at Coolmore and the Irish National Stud,” Brendan says.

“I’d already been to Newmarket to look at what they’d done, and we basically wanted to see what other people had achieved with these sorts of things and what we could learn from them.”

That was in 2019, just a year after the Lindsays had taken control of Cambridge Stud, so their heritage centre was front and centre of their earliest plans, and they enlisted bloodstock auctioneer

Steve Davis, a Kiwi, to join them on a quick, seven-day jaunt across the horse museums of the world.

“I’m on the board of the New Zealand Racing Hall of Fame, and we’ve got a lot of gear that we’ve accumulated over the years from inducting people and horses,” Davis says. “I’ve known Brendan and Jo for quite some time and, when I heard they were building a museum, I got in touch to see if I could be of any help.”

Davis joined the Lindsays in the earliest planning of the centre. He scribbled notes on napkins during their whirlwind tour, and assisted in the ideas about design and presentation. They visited the Kentucky Horse Farm in Lexington and the Keeneland museum, and in Tipperary they saw the monument to Sadler’s Wells, whose hide has been mounted and displayed.

“I thought it was great, this idea of a monument to the history of Cambridge Stud,” Davis says.

“And it’s been done in such a way that visitors walk in and reflect on the past, and they work their way around the museum and end up back in the present day. So you start in the green silks of Sir Patrick Hogan and you end up in the black and gold silks of Jo and Brendan.”

The Lindsays were under no obligation to open their new farm to the public, but that’s not how they operate. When they sold Sistema in 2016, it was under the condition that the business remain in New Zealand. Opening their heritage centre to visitors, gift shop and all, wasn’t an issue.

“They were inspired by the stud tours that go on in Kentucky, which were mirrored on the bourbon tours,” Davis says. “Buses of people going around the studs, it creates interest in the industry beyond its own audience. Brendan was genuinely interested in preserving the history of Cambridge Stud in one way or another because the property itself has gone through massive changes, so it’s nice that we’ve been able to retain some of the old stories.”

Like everything in modern commerce, Cambridge Stud has had to modernise and plunge forward, and in January, for the first time in over a decade, the farm will sell a draft on the Gold Coast under its own banner. Via Bhima, Cambridge Stud has sold January yearlings in recent history, but it’s a homecoming of sorts this time around.

“Sixty-five percent of our sales come out of the Australian market,” Brendan says. “We need to showcase our product in New Zealand obviously, but we also need to take some of our product to Australia. We’re very lucky that Barry Bowditch has been with us in New Zealand to see what we’ve done, and he’s very supportive, so coming back is a big thanks to him and to Magic Millions.”

Experienced as Cambridge Stud is at selling its bloodstock, there’s nothing like being among the colour and clamour of a Gold Coast January. For the Lindsays, however, it’s like the last few years, with its bumps and nudges, has been building to this.

“It’s taken us five years to get to here,” Brendan says. “Coming back to the Gold Coast is another step that Jo and I are taking with Cambridge Stud, and it’s a big step. We’re excited. We’re hoping to have a bigger profile at Magic Millions in the years that come, so this is the very start of a journey that our business is going down.”