TDN AusNZ Podcast

New season, new champions, new owners. 1997/98 was a watershed in many ways, as the Danehill juggernaut hit a speed bump, the Cups King went international and an upstart sales company got a new start. Cambridge Stud finally found an heir to its iconic breed shaper, Sir Tristram and Inglis finally had a legitimate threat to its hegemony in Australia.

TDN Australia and New Zealand’s look back at the 1993/94 season takes in the emergence of the first crop of inarguably the world’s greatest ever shuttle stallion. The results of these first runners helped put an industry back on its feet after the financial crash and survive a mystery ailment that almost derailed the season’s biggest yearling sale.

A new season, more history. 1993/94 finds a racing and breeding industry clawing its way back. The first, and so far only, crop of a highly touted shuttle stallion have just turned three. Meanwhile, the Victoria Racing Club is racing the clock to execute a bold new strategy for Australasia’s premier thoroughbred contest.

In the final part of a retrospective of racing and breeding season 1989/90, there are more tectonic shifts to an industry in transition. As the industry battles with a looming recession, shrewd investors take a punt on a relatively new concept - dual hemisphere stallion duties.

The 1989/90 racing and breeding season takes an incredible twist, as Inglis and Wrightson's join forces for a unique ‘fire sale’. Plus, an Australasian Champion Sire graces the track and an all-time great trainer announces he will retire.

Season 1989/90 opens with an industry under a cloud. A number of leading training and breeding operations are close to oblivion and it is only through extraordinary measures that they can be rescued. What led to the catastrophic downturn in the Australian bloodstock market at the end of the eighties?

Racing and breeding season 2007/08 takes another turn as a global force ‘supersizes’ its involvement in Australian racing, in one grand move. As Easter gets underway, Nathan Tinkler has company at the top of the buyers list, for the first time since he burst onto the scene in early 2008.

The extraordinary 2007/08 racing and breeding season continues as Equine Influenza moves the goalposts for the nations best horses. Plus, yearling sales season makes a belated start and a new force joins the buying bench with a flourish unlike any seen before, or since.

A look back on the spring of 2007 and the virus that brought the Australian racing and breeding industry to the brink of ruin. Featuring recollections from those on the front lines and an exploration of the ongoing ripple effects of the outbreak.

In the final episode of Season 1 of Connections Cast, Gus Roland is joined by beef baron and ex-auctioneer Stuart Ramsey, who has achieved a wealth of success in the breeding and racing caper through his renowned Hunter Valley-based Turangga Farm operation.