Taits Buy Twin Hills

Olly and Amber Tait have purchased Twin Hills Stud in Cootamundra, New South Wales, Australia from Godolphin in a deal brokered by Inglis. The Taits will operate the 2500-acre Twin Hills, offering racehorse and broodmare boarding, sales preparation and consignment, from April this year.

Tait, an Australian national, was chief operating officer of Darley for 15 years before leaving that position in October 2014. He has since remained in England working on a consultancy basis and breeding horses commercially, and he told the TDN setting up a business in Australia has been a longtime goal.

“To have a commercial Thoroughbred enterprise is what I wanted to do, and I've been wanting to do that for quite some time,” Tait said. “It was important for us to find the right place to do that; the right platform where we could run a business.”

Tait continued, “Setting up your own business is something that takes a long period of time. You want to find the right place, and this was exactly the right place for us.”

Tait would certainly know a good Thoroughbred nursery when he sees one. Tait, who hails from a highly successful racing family, established Darley's satellite in Australia and spent time managing Darley's farms in Japan and the U.S. before relocating with his family to England, where he was responsible for overseeing Darley's global operations. And this isn't the first time Tait has been involved with a purchase of Twin Hills.

“When the Woodlands bloodstock enterprise was bought by Darley I managed that acquisition, and this was an asset that was purchased by Darley in that acquisition,” he explained. “It's a property I know well and had been involved with before, and it's a property I always thought was wonderful. At the beginning of August last year Darley put it on the market with William Inglis, and I then started trying to buy it. All these things take a bit of time and we got it finalised in the last few days.”

Twin Hills was established by Ferd Calvin before being purchased by media personality Mike Willesee in the early 1980s. Willesee renamed the property Trans Media Park and, in addition to building up world-class facilities, stood important stallions Snippets (Aus) and Rubiton (Aus). Twin Hills was purchased by Jack and Bob Ingham's Woodlands Stud in 1993 and was an integral part of that operation as the home to many of its broodmares as well as successful sires like Strategic (Aus), Domesday (Aus) and Quest For Fame (GB). After its purchase by Darley, Twin Hills was home to some of Godolphin's most successful Australian racehorses, including Group 1 winners Appearance (Aus) (Commands {Aus}), Exosphere (Aus) (Lonhro {Aus}), Epaulette (Aus) (Commands {Aus}) and Guelph (Aus) (Exceed and Excel {Aus}).

After all his years traveling the globe, Tait said his family's decision to return home to Australia was a straightforward one.

“I've been very fortunate to work and be exposed to the Thoroughbred industry in different parts of the world,” he said. “Australia is home, so there was a natural gravitation back here, particularly given the age of our children, but at the same time weighing up what we were going to do, you look at how the industry has developed and is continuing to develop in Australia, and there's a fairly compelling argument to set up shop here. It's a very vibrant environment. The economic fundamentals of racing are very sound and there's a great culture of racing within the country, and as a consequence there's a very commercial market as well. In terms of the business we're going to run Australia was a great place to do it.”