Personality Profile July 2003

Ron Gilbert

A love of animals, success in business and determination have seen former “problem child” Ron Gilbert become a high achiever in a variety of pursuits. Now, as GRAEME KELLY reports in this profile, Ron and his wife Debbie are having great success with their Highgrove Stud operation and are planning for a future surrounded by thoroughbreds.

ALTHOUGH only in his mid-forties Queenslander Ron Gilbert is already a high achiever.
After developing a flourishing housing development operation, Ron Gilbert Homes, through the 1980s and 1990s he has turned his attention to the business of breeding thoroughbreds with equal success.
In just a few years he has established a presence in the industry by producing the Gr.1 winner Porto Roca as well as multiple stakes winner Stella Artois.
Then, since establishing the Gilbert Thoroughbred Group which has its base at Highgrove Stud on the Gore Highway, he has turned out racehorses of the calibre of the exciting Legally Bay, Time Out and Sir Success among others.
His business acumen and reputation in the industry have also resulted in him joining the Board of Aushorse in 2000, and he is vice-chairman to Arrowfield’s John Messara.
Along the way to becoming one of the most prominent and prosperous sons of picturesque Toowoomba, renowned as the Garden City of Queensland, he has cultivated a winning formula.
Ron, who has enjoyed having the wholehearted support of his wife Debbie in both the homes and the horses, has an acute understanding of commerce as well as a vision of the future.
As a result he soon came to realise that the viability of his building enterprise depended on delivering value and providing an exceptional level of customer service. So, during the time he was involved in building houses, he went to great lengths to ensure his clients were happy and satisfied.
These days he is utilising a similar policy with the racehorses he is breeding.
“In the building industry I built every house the way I would have expected my own house to be built,” Ron said.
“In the breeding industry every foal is bred as though we would like to keep it ourselves. We spend a lot time assessing the type of foals our mares produce and we put a lot of effort into selecting the stallions to suit them.
“Also we put quite a few hours into studying pedigrees with the idea that we will produce a horse we would want to race, and so far that’s been working.”
Remarkably, Ron’s success has evolved from a rather troublesome beginning for he says he was “fairly rebellious” in his days as a hyperactive schoolboy in Toowoomba, which is situated in the rich Darling Downs region some 125km west of Brisbane.
That trait, combined with a reluctance to study, soon eliminated any thoughts he initially had of following a professional career as a veterinary surgeon.
“I had ponies and raced pigeons as a youngster,” he said. “My real love has always been animals and, to begin with, I wanted to be a vet.
“However because I was a bit of a problem child and school work wasn’t a major priority, studying veterinary science was out of the question, so I just went for a job when I finished school. I started out as an apprentice carpenter.”
Not long afterwards he first encountered Debbie in his hometown and a romance quickly blossomed. This led to marriage when he was 20 and she was 19.
“By that stage I had become an organiser and I had this great plan that Debbie would work for four years before we thought about starting a family - but she became pregnant the day after we were married.”
This led to their eldest daughter Alissa, now 26, being born “nine months to the day” after their wedding and the Gilberts also have a son Brett, 23, and a second daughter Vicki who is 19.
“I remember I was pretty shattered when Deb became pregnant, because I’d just built a new house and we were young and just starting out.”
Although still utilising his skills as a carpenter Ron, around that time, followed his father Jim into the world of racing greyhounds.
“Dad had a very good bitch called Donna’s Repeat who won a lot of races and broke track records. Then Dad bred from her and she had all these pups. I picked out a couple and started training them. We had a dog called Copper Fashion who was runner-up in Greyhound of the Year, and another named Smart Cavalier who won races in Brisbane and Sydney.
“When we had that sort of success I decided I liked the greyhound business, so I gave up my carpentry and went into training full-time.”
This led to the Gilberts deciding to sell their home - “we made a $14,000 tax free profit in 14 months,” Ron said - and moving to Drayton on the outskirts of Toowoomba, where they built a training complex.
Although he won a “lot of races” Ron began to feel, after about six years, that the 24-hours a day, seven days a week demands of training greyhounds were excessive.
“At the end I was becoming sick of it but I kept going because of my father. He’d run a suburban butcher shop and he’d worked 70 hours a week, every week.
“All I saw of him was going to work early and coming home late and, to my way of thinking, not really enjoying his life. I decided I didn’t want that to happen to me and after Dad died in 1983 I began thinking about going into some other business for myself.
“My mother Bernice was still alive and she owned the butcher’s shop but I wasn’t really interested in that side of things so, because we’d had success with the first house we’d built, I thought I’d give that a go.”
With that Ron built another house which he sold quickly, and from there with Debbie’s support he began moving into the field of housing developments.
“We only started in a small way but the timing was very good because the building industry was just beginning to kick along.”
It was during this period that his code of conduct came into play.
“I always had a belief that if you were building a business you had to give the people you were dealing with more than they expected. Then they would never forget you. We did just that, and before long everything was growing astronomically.”
By the end of the 1980s Ron Gilbert Homes was building display homes and the group had become project home builders.
In a few short years, with Ron responsible for the construction and Debbie involved in the interior designing, the company’s activities had spread through Brisbane, the Gold Coast and the Darling Downs to Goondiwindi in the far west.
“Debbie and I always put not causing people any anguish or stress ahead of making money. It worked beautifully and the money began rolling in. At our peak we were signing up for 18 to 20 homes a month . . . it was really booming.”
This enabled the Gilberts to build a holiday house on the Gold Coast and to begin indulging themselves in the world of thoroughbreds.
“I’d always had a passion for horses and because of our trips to the Gold Coast we’d heard about the Magic Millions. One day I said to Debbie ‘we should go and have a look at this Magic Millions sale’.
“She immediately said ‘no, you’ll buy a horse’ but anyway we decided to pick up a catalogue. I went through the catalogue, picked out a yearling and went back to the sale.
“Embarrassingly now, I didn’t even look at the horse before I put up my hand and bought this Danzatore filly for $50,000.
“I didn’t know what to do with her after that, but we were introduced to Bruce McLachlan and we gave the filly to him to train.
“We named her Ascilla and although she wasn’t much good we enjoyed the experience.”
Ron said that during the next few years he bought a “about half a dozen yearlings” and among them were Verocative and Decidity.
Verocative who is by Bletchingly, won six races featuring the VATC Thoroughbred Club Stakes-Gr.3 (1400m) while Decidity, a daughter of Last Tycoon (IRE), won two races and became the dam of Time Out and Legally Bay.
“We had a lot of fun with them. Debbie and I became so enthusiastic about racing that we bought a unit on the river in Brisbane, because we planned to go to the races every Saturday.
“Then we were going to party to celebrate our wins and stay in the unit overnight, but needless to say we stayed in the unit for only a handful of nights over the next three years.”
However, with their thoroughbred holdings continually multiplying, the Gilberts had a number of broodmares on their hands before long. This led to their forming a relationship with Antony Thompson and Derek Field at the famed Widden Stud.
They bought a share in the Sadler’s Wells horse Barathea who was standing at Widden, and began agisting their mares at the stud.
“We enjoyed being associated with Widden and the people there, but because of the distance we had to travel to see the horses we didn’t really have the involvement we were looking for.
“We thought of buying a property in the Hunter Valley, but then we felt that wasn’t going to be an option because we’d really have to live there. That led us through to thinking about establishing a place on the Darling Downs.
“With my background in building I’d done a lot of soil tests and I knew the quality of the soil. After having some further tests done by agronomists, which showed all the right balances, we brought a property and named it Highgrove in 1997.”
During this process the Gilberts went to the United States for a month to inspect the studs in Kentucky and to study the types of facilities and services they provided.
“It was so intimidating that I said to Deb, ‘I know I can’t reproduce what Kentucky has’ with the trees and all the historic buildings’,” he recalled.
“That had a negative effect on me for three or four months after we came back, and for a while I wasn’t going ahead but I eventually overcame that.”
At the same time Ron was establishing other business interests and winding down his commitment to Ron Gilbert Homes, which finished its building operations in 1999.
“I felt I wanted a more passive source of income with a manager looking after things, rather than having to be around every day as I was with the building company.
“Also Deb and I felt we’d worked hard and were ready for a better, easier way of life and I felt I’d climbed the mountain.”
Using the experience, guidelines and knowledge they gathered in the housing construction business to advantage, Ron and Debbie have since built Highgrove into a showplace complete with all the necessary amenities and equipment.
“I had done all the research and formulated the plans for the farm before we drove in the first peg, so we’ve always known where we were going.
“From our American trip and from looking at farms in the Hunter (Valley) I knew what we wanted.
“Once we began operating the farm having four mares just wasn’t going to be a viable option financially.
“Even though more or less, it started out as a hobby, the breeding had to pay its way or otherwise there was going to be a massive drain on our resources.
“Because of that we needed to have quite a few more mares so I began buying selectively at sales and now we have 18.
“I intend maintaining the numbers between 15 and 20 because service fees are quite expensive, and when you are dealing in that sort of money it is serious business.
“Also I don’t want to overstock the farm. Every paddock on the farm has a six-month spell each year and I’m happy with the way everything is going.”
In the time since becoming established at Highgrove, the Gilberts have been selling six to eight yearlings a year.
“When we began breeding commercially we decided, because of the distance we are from the major cities, that racing wasn’t really an option. We would prefer to race in Sydney or Melbourne but it’s a two-hour drive to the airport and then you have a flight and another drive to the racecourse, so we decided that we would breed to sell.
“That way people could come to the farm and know if they liked something they could buy it.”
Among the first of their yearlings to be sold was Porto Roca, who is by Barathea from their Salieri (USA) mare Antelliere, a Gr.3-placed winner during her racing days.
Prepared in Melbourne by Danny O’Brien, Porto Roca became the first major race winner bred by the Gilberts when she defeated Lady Mulan and Belle du Jour in the STC Coolmore Classic-Gr.1 (1500m) at Rosehill Gardens in 2001. To their satisfaction she continued on to victory in the Tatt’s Club (Qld) Winter Stakes-Gr.3 (1500m) at Eagle Farm, later in that preparation.
With Antelliere also being the dam of Bluebird the Word, whose wins included the Waikato RC Whakanui Stud International Stakes-Gr.1 (2000m), Ron is thinking about retaining one of her fillies in the future.
“While we are still breeding to sell, mares have been becoming so expensive that we will have to think about keeping some fillies,” he said.
“I’d say we’d have to keep one from Antelliere, because she is 17 this year.”
Wisely he also retained Decidity and Verocative from earlier times. Decidity went on to produce the Gr.3-winning juvenile Tme Out and Legally Bay, who proved herself to be one of the 2002-03 season’s most highly promising two year-olds.
Verocative gained her fame as the dam of the $1.4m Danehill (USA) yearling sold by the Gilberts at last year’s William Inglis & Son Australian Easter Yearling Sale in Sydney.
Subsequently returned because of a bone cyst on his stifle he has been named Critical List, is in training at Flemington with Brian Mayfield-Smith and will be raced by the Gilberts. Already a trial winner at Cranbourne he is expected to make his racing debut in September.
“We feel he is special and we’re pretty excited about him, but we won’t know whether we’re right or wrong for a few months or so.”
Other purchases for Highgrove include Angelic Smile, a sister to stakes winner Russian Caravan; Brilliant Crown, who is a half-sister to Gr.1 winner Shot of Thunder; the Diesis mare Tenakee, dam of Sir Success who won the BTC Golden Stakes-LR (1200m) at Doomben in April; the Nijinsky mare Kasimova, the stakeswinning Centaine mare La Rose Noir, and Zoulany who is a three-quarter sister to Spartacus.
When mated with quality stallions such as Canny Lad, Danehill, Danzero, End Sweep (USA), Flying Spur, Octagonal (NZ), Redoute’s Choice, Snippets, Woodman (USA) and Zabeel, their progeny have been eagerly sought after at the Magic Millions or Australian Easter Yearling sales.
“I was disappointed and embarrassed for the farm, when the $1.4m colt came back to us,” Ron admitted. “It was an honour to have bred a horse valued at that price and the money would have been nice, but it wasn’t going to change our lifestyle in any way.
“The money is great and the return you receive is great if everything goes according to plan, but the money is not the be-all and end-all as far as we are concerned.
“Deb and I are doing this because we are passionate about the farm and about the horses.
“We want to breed Group winners and we get as great a thrill watching them race as we would if we actually owned them.
“What I like about the thoroughbred industry is that you are close to the other participants, and that they are generally happy for you to have success. In a lot of other industries you don’t associate with your competitors as such, and the better you go the worse they like it.
“That’s one of the reasons we are so comfortable in the thoroughbred industry.
“Another reason that got me interested is the unknown factor. In every other business I’ve been associated with you fairly well know on July 1 each year how your financial position is going to be by June 30 the next year, but with thoroughbreds everything can change so dramatically and drastically, you are not ever really in control of your situation.
“That’s quite different to anything else I’ve ever experienced.”
While deeply immersed in breeding racehorses Ron says he has “absolutely no ambitions” to stand a stallion in his own right.
“Stud farms which stand stallions, or stallion stations are a specialised industry. I don’t understand it and I’m more than happy to breed colts who become stallions.
“If I happened to own a stallion prospect he would stand somewhere else where the job can be done properly.
“I couldn’t do that properly at Highgrove, and besides, we only have our own mares here. We don’t have any horses coming and going on the farm so our horse and pasture management is under control.”
So - it seems - is everything else!