Teo Ah Khing, Chairman of China Horse Club
It seems appropriate that Teo Ah Khing’s arrival as the international newcomer of interest to global racing comes in the year of the horse.
Malaysian-born of Chinese parents, Teo, 54, is an architect and self-made billionaire whose investment in horse racing has ballooned to extraordinary levels in a short period of time.
Teo’s focus is with the China Horse Club, afar-reaching venture aimed squarely and unashamedly at China’s tsunami of nouveau riche.
Now racing horses in as many as eight countries, CHC first raised a profile at the 2013 Sydney Easter yearling sale,validating a joint venture signed off eight months earlier with the Coolmore Studby buying several lots and, notably, a pair of colts by the stud’s major sire Fastnet Rock for $3.9 million.
One of the colts races as Zululand, winner in March of the Group II VRC Sires’ Produce Stakes at Flemington in the joint ownership of Coolmore and the CHC, but running in the colours of the former.
Another yearling acquisition that year was a $700,000 Fastnet Rock filly, First Seal, which carried CHC’s colours to win the Group I Flight Stakes at Randwick in October.
And in between the notable wins by Zululand and First Seal, Teo’s profile was lifted to international prominence by events in England and Ireland in June.
With the ink still to dry on the 2012 contract of agreement on the Chinese venture between CHC and Coolmore, Teo attended the Tattersalls October sale, England’s premier yearling auction. At the time he was invited by John Magnier, the Coolmore supremo, to join him and fellow Coolmore supporters Michael Tabor and Derek Smith in the ownership of two of the nine colts bought at the auction for the stud.
One of the colts was the superbly bred Galileo-Ouija Board chestnut, a 525,000 guineas ($1.056m) buy that was named Australia who took the classic honours in Europe in 2014 by winning the English Derby and Irish Derby.
A stunning debut, then, for an owner who has been in the game for less than two years — a period in which CHC has aligned with other established movers and shakers of the global thoroughbred industry.Australia’s Arrowfield and Vinery Studs and the European power house Qatar Racing are among the future racing partners of the club.
Teo is promoting the CHC as “Asia’s premier racing, business and leisure club, offering members and guests peerless service, experience and top-tier racing all within a luxury equine environment.”
There is a two-level structure to the club’s membership with places limited to 2000 at the premier level. An application form is the one way to find out the cost of membership.
“By the time China Horse Club was envisaged in 2010, my goals were clear,” Chairman Teo says on the club’s website. “Like every owner I wanted to taste success at the highest level … I wanted to bring high class thoroughbred racing and the experiences that comes with it to a population that has not experienced the social, cultural and lifestyle aspects of the sport.”
And where better than Dubai would one acquire the taste that would turn the dream of the CHC concept into reality.
It was, after all, Teo’s architectural company TAK Design Consultants that blueprinted and directed the multi-billion dollar project that is now the grandstand-hospitality feature of Meydan,Dubai’s racetrack — a superstructure 1.5km long and with a crescent-shaped roof encased with solar panels.
“In Dubai, I had the opportunity to be adviser for seven years to His Highness Sheikh Mohammed,” Teo declared.
“To build Meydan properly, to make sure it was going to be everything Sheikh Mohammed wanted, and what I wanted, I needed to know about the horse and all it requires.
“So Dubai was the first time I really started to pay attention to thoroughbreds (and) it was in Dubai that I was exposed to elite racing for the first time.”
To power CHC’s direction and membership drive “as a doorway to a world of opulence and extravagance”, Teo has wooed an international advisory council under chairman Joseph Deiss, formerly president of the United Nations General Assembly and a former president of Switzerland.
Teo is joined on the council board by John Magnier (of Coolmore Stud), Dato Tan Chin Nam (Malaysian Chinese mega developer and four times Melbourne Cup winning owner), Andreas Jacobs (of Germany’s premier stud Gestut Fahrof), John Warren (British bloodstock agent, racing adviser-manager to Queen Elizabeth) and Owen Glenn (New Zealand philanthropist and breeder-owner of 2014 Australian Derby winner Criterion).
CHC is fast becoming a major pin-up client for breeders and bloodstock auction houses, with its selected buying activities now including race fillies and potential and present broodmares — all heightened by the desire to support dual Derby hero Australia, who begins a new career in February at Coolmore Stud in Ireland (and undoubtedly shuttling toits NSW Hunter Valley property in the Australian spring) where he stands alongside his multi-championship winning sire Galileo.
At the two major breeding stock sales in the US in November, CHC spent $US7.265m ($8.948m) on 13 fillies and mares (the dearest at $US2.8m), having a month earlier invested €2.69m ($4.036m) on tried horses at the Arqana Arc sale in France.
CHC bought the three top lots at the French sale, the most expensive being the Group II winner Auvray, a $1.2m buy which will be shipped to Australia with the 2015 $6m Melbourne Cup as a specific goal.
Early this month, CHC bought into a quarter share of Just The Judge, the 2013 Irish 1000 Guineas winner and a Group I winner in Canada in October, after Qatar Racing bid 4.5m guineas ($9.054m) at Tattersalls December sale in England to buy out Swettenham Stud, its racing partner in the four-year-old mare.
Just The Judge
CHC was again active at the 2014 Sydney Easter yearling sale in April, buying four colts and a filly, but its biggest spend at that time was $5.8m for a 40ha property in the NSW southern highlands.It’s a few furlongs away from Think Big Stud,owned by CHC advisory board member Dato Tan.
Teo plans to end the year of the horse with a bang, having put in place with the Singapore Turf Club a race meeting designed for a niche market and strategically timed to entice a share of the outbound Chinese tourists celebrating its New Year on February 19.
Article by TONY ARROLD from THE AUSTRALIAN
