Half Your's owners: Glory was all theirs

When the hammer finally fell on Lot 87 at the Inglis Digital Late November Sale in the spring of 2024, trainer Tony McEvoy faced an all too-familiar problem.

His team had bought the horse they wanted, a promising gelding named Half Yours, but they had stretched their budget to breaking point and spent $55,000 more than planned.

To make matters worse, they didn’t have a single owner for the horse.

It wasn’t the most speculative purchase McEvoy had made – he’d put his neck on the line for more expensive horses before – but convincing owners that a five-year-old gelding with just a handful of starts to his name and little pedigree to speak of was worth a punt proved an unfamiliar challenge.

“I genuinely thought we would buy Half Yours for $100,000–$120,000. We had OTI Racing on board to go fifty-fifty to $250,000, but I didn’t think we’d get anywhere near that,” said McEvoy.

“Well, he sailed past that. Terry (Henderson, OTI director) couldn’t go any further. Calvin (McEvoy) and Rayan (Moore, racing manager) were so bullish, they wanted him so badly. At $300,000 we weren’t the highest bidder – we put in one more, and thankfully $305,000 bought him.

“History will show it was the best $5,000 I’ve ever spent.”

The then little-known Half Yours would, of course, go on to become a household name as the 2025 Caulfield Cup and Lexus Melbourne Cup winner. But before he hit those heights, the McEvoys had to put together a group to race the horse.

Trainers and syndicators buy horses without owners every season, with major auction houses Inglis and Magic Millions providing short-term finance while trainers and racing managers hurriedly pull together each group.

Australia is the home of syndicated horse ownership, so owning a horse in partnership is part of the racing ecosystem – but it’s a relatively modern phenomenon. 

“When I was riding work under Colin Hayes at Lindsay Park in the nineties, most horses were owned by one person. If they raced with someone else it would be one or two at most, and most likely they’d be mates,” McEvoy explained.

“Today it’s nothing for an owner to race a horse with ten or twenty people, maybe more, and never meet everyone else who’s in the horse during its career. Syndication has made owning a racehorse a completely different experience.”

When it came to confirming owners for Half Yours, the McEvoy team relied on the knowledge of their client base to construct a group of like-minded individuals.

“If an owner doesn’t see what you see, it’s hard to get them on board – it’s that simple,” said McEvoy.

“I called Jason Biasin. He’d been a longtime client but had gone through a tough time with the loss of his father and some business challenges. We stuck by each other through those times, and he was starting to get back into ownership. I put the horse to him and he didn’t hesitate. He took 25%.

“Neville Smith was a new owner to the stable and had expressed interest in a nice, tried horse if it came along. He took 25% and suddenly we were halfway there. We’d been introduced to Tony G (Guoga) and put the horse to him; he loved what he saw and came in as well.”

Guoga is quite a story in his own right. A former member of both the European Parliament and Lithuanian Parliament, Guoga describes himself as a serial entrepreneur, with significant crypto holdings and a successful professional poker career, once playing cards against US President Donald Trump.

Joining the partnership were former Glenelg Golf Club captain Gavan Fox; Brisbane fruit-and-vegetable wholesaler and long-time McEvoy client and friend Simon George; John Summers; and Ballarat hotelier Dave Canny, whose Red Lion Hotel in Ballarat had become a favourite watering hole for McEvoy Racing staff.

The unassumingly named Terrace Syndicate took a share too, but their members were anything but unassuming, comprising a group of Australian business heavyweights, all members of the Adelaide Club based on North Terrace in Adelaide, from which the syndicate takes its name.

Amongst the syndicate are Rick Allert, former chairman of Coles Myer; billionaire businessman Darren Thomas, whose Thomas Foods International exports meat around the world; and Thomas’ father-inlaw and former Ernst & Young partner, Colin Durnsford.

The last five percent share was fittingly snaffled by Warrnambool local Paul Farley, a former local footy coach and mate of Half Yours’ breeder and original owner, the late Colin McKenna.

In the months after the race, each owner had the chance to take both the Caulfield Cup and Lexus Melbourne Cup trophies home for a week. Farley revelled in the opportunity to show them to his community and toured Warrnambool’s primary schools, high schools and aged care homes with the gold cups proudly on show.

“None of them [the owners] had ever raced together. They were from all walks of life, but here they were, landing in the same horse – and what a ride he’s taken them on.

They’ve shared an experience that most owners can only dream of,” said McEvoy.

“It doesn’t always work out that way, of course, and some owners don’t handle disappointment very well. But I tell every new owner to the stable this: I can’t guarantee its ability, but as a racehorse owner you will have an experience unlike anything else.”

Although he missed out on being a part of the Half Yours fairytale, OTI Racing cofounder and director Terry Henderson has enjoyed his share of success in elite races all around the world, as one of Australia’s greatest syndication success stories.

“It would have been a lot harder to get a business like OTI off the ground anywhere other than Australia. Culturally, we’ve accepted shared ownership a lot better than other places in the world, and our sport really thrives because of that,” he said.

With horses spread across Australia and Europe, OTI provides a rare ownership experience and consequently attracts people chasing something a little out of the ordinary.

“The key is knowing your client and understanding what they want. Do they want to race a colt or a filly? Do they want to race in Europe? Is there a certain race they want to win, maybe a Derby or an Oaks? If you can put them in the right horse that gives them a chance to achieve that goal, you’ve got a much better chance of doing business again,” Henderson said.

Winning Group 1 races is the dream for every racehorse owner, but Henderson acknowledges that there are plenty of wins to be had through horse ownership, and not all of them happen on the racetrack.

“Watching friendships form through a horse is pretty special. One of our owners comes to mind. He recently turned 80, and four or five guys he’s raced with were there celebrating with him. They didn’t know each other until they raced together, so it’s a great way to meet people,” he said.

“At the end of the day, the horse brings it all together – people from all walks of life. That’s the joy of racing in Australia.”