Andrew Rule: Mr UltraTune now Mr UltraTarget
Sean Buckley the enigmatic UltraTune tycoon has been hard to miss this year. With skin is so tight, his hair so black and his teeth so white that wags have dubbed him “Waxworks”, who is he?
Andrew Rule
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Sean Buckley the enigmatic UltraTune tycoon has been hard to miss this year. Some people once close to him have not missed him at all — in either sense.
Mr UltraTune has become Mr UltraTarget, copping more sniping than a Collingwood coach. So who is he and why are so many people talking about him?
In business, Buckley is the man who expanded the chain of car service outlets into a national franchise of some 300 outlets.
In physical enhancement, his Ultra Hair clinics seem to have found the fountain of youth. His skin is so tight, his hair so black and his teeth so white that wags have dubbed him “Waxworks”.
In racing, he owns the once ultra-fast Miss Andretti, who conquered Australia in 2007 then conquered the world by winning the Kings Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot. In 2013 his colt Shamus Award defied experts by becoming the first maiden (previous non-winner) to win a Cox Plate.
Buckley, often described as ultra smart, invested in simulated altitude training for horses, treadmills in airtight rooms of deoxygenated air. But it is his no-longer-private life that has taken all the oxygen lately.
His troubles became public late last month when someone leaked recordings of conversations between Buckley and his now bitterly estranged partner, Jennifer Cruz Cole.
The recordings reportedly range across many subjects — some potentially damaging. Apart from Cole’s claim to have been verbally abused, it is alleged the recordings contain threats to a Gold Coast club owner.
Then again, boastful claims to a younger partner might be hot air. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time a wealthy windbag posed as a tough guy.
There is no proof that Sean Buckley has done anything wrong. What is clear is that his angry lover has had big help from a big helper crusading for her and for himself. His name is Anthony Swords. Until recently he was Buckley’s “Mr Fixit”.
Every week, Swords would drive from his Cranbourne base in his company Range Rover to Buckley’s stud at Willowmavin, near Kilmore.
Part of his role was to manage the many employees who look after dozens of valuable horses on the stud, but he once flew to England to negotiate with an animal reproductive expert on Buckley’s behalf.
After years of close protection bodyguard work (including with Channel 9 stars) and debt collection and “mediation” with his former associate Mick Gatto, Swords wanted to lay down his sword.
He was tired of being seen as a hard man, he says. Dealing with horses and horse people made a change from running around protecting the interests of clients in the business he then shared with Gatto.
Swords and his now ex-partner became so fond of horses that he rescued several former gallopers from meat buyers at country horse sales.
One of his favourite “rescues” is Alessandro Volta, an English stayer flown in with two others by world-famous trainer Aidan O’Brien for the 2008 Melbourne Cup. Alessandro Volta, used as a pacemaker, led the field before beating one horse home. O’Brien was later baked by stewards for “cooking” his horses.
The unfortunate “pacemaker” was quickly shuffled towards racing’s back door. He vanished some time after failing at Stony Creek races.
Sentimental Swords heard that Alessandro Volta was being sold at Bairnsdale saleyards and rescued him for $150. But the big softie is less kind about his former boss. They fell out because, he claims, Buckley ordered him to keep a watchful eye on Jennifer Cole — among others.
Swords says he found snooping repugnant and resigned from all Buckley businesses except the horse stud after Buckley threatened to sack him if he didn’t do as directed. He says UltraTune’s marketing arm paid a former police technical expert $8000 a week.
Buckley is renowned for racing the freakish Miss Andretti, who once held five different track records in Australia and England.
But Miss Andretti, like many great racehorses, is a poor producer. After her first foal in 2009, she has had few offspring to race. In fact, she failed to get in foal (or miscarried) for five years straight before having a cluster of three foals from 2014 to 2017.
Each foal was named after a famed racing driver but failed on the track.
For a champion racemare to be a dud at stud is common. Many old mares have a history of not conceiving and of miscarrying. Not many deliver two foals in consecutive years.
In late 2014 a former Buckley employee, a skilled horse handler, told me that Miss Andretti was a shy breeder who rarely held a foal for full term.
“She was foal proud, [meaning] she wouldn’t stand to be covered by a stallion if she already had a foal on her,” the expert said. Meaning that even if Miss Andretti could carry a foal to term, at best she would get in foal naturally only every second season.
The answer was technology, the employee said. Elite veterinarians at Ultra Thoroughbreds’ NSW stud, Golden Grove, used the latest reproductive techniques to ensure that she produced a series of foals.
One expert involved with Miss Andretti (and other mares) is now working for NSW racing authorities. And racing stewards are interested in talking to other former stud staff.
The former employee quoted above said this week Miss Andretti was not the only mare to be assisted with reproductive technology — but dismissed speculation about the champion Nature Strip, bred at Golden Grove.
The current sprint champion, winner of last week’s Lightning Stakes, was bred naturally under the rules of racing, the expert said. But Nature Strip’s mother Strikeline has had “help” since then, according to Swords’ detailed claims about what otherwise seem to be eccentric breeding decisions.
Both Miss Andretti and Strikeline were apparently mated with Buckley’s useful (and costly) racehorse Addictive Nature in late spring, 2019. If not mated naturally, then artificially inseminated with his semen.
Buckley’s barrister Damian Sheales has been fielding questions about this all week. His client’s instructions are that both mares were impregnated at a reproduction facility in Western Australia merely to improve their chances of natural conception next time.
The off-the-record message is clear: All his client has done is spend a fortune breeding a couple of blue blood “ponies” that can’t be registered to race. And theres nothing wrong with that as long as they are never registered in breach of the stud book rules. Depending on who you listen to, it’s clear that either Addictive Nature (suddenly elevated to stallion status) was rushed across the Nullarbor or his semen was.
All that can be said is that, in fact, the foals of Miss Andretti and Strikeline born last spring have never been registered — and so no offence has been committed against rules banning any artificial aid from conception to birth.
Miss Andretti had a bay filly with a white face, Strikeline a black colt with a star. One of them has since allegedly died. If so, the surviving foal is the best bred hack in the land.
What a tangled web we weave when first we practise to conceive.
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