Starting as a humble dairy farm, Darling View Thoroughbreds has blossomed into one of the most prominent stud farms in the State through the committed ambition of father-son duo Clive and Brent Atwell.

“The business has been in the blood for a long time, my great grandfather Walter Atwell actually owned and trained the 1925 Perth Cup winner Great Applause,” Brent Atwell said.

“Breeding has always been in the family, but not in a commercial sense – apart from the past 14 years, when my father Clive and I decided we would stand the stallion Patronize.

“One thing in this game I’ve found out along the way is that you’ve got to take every opportunity that gets thrown at you. If you tread water in this game, I reckon you’re gonna drown.”

It has been a bold move that has paid big dividends, with the stable standing some of WA’s most in-demand stallions.

And none are more prominent more than Playing God, the headliner at Darling View.

“We had the opportunity to in 2020 to purchase Playing God and I said to Dad, if we’re going to take this farm to the next level, I reckon this could be the horse to do it,” Atwell said.

“The star of the show is Playing God, he’s an absolute freak, I think he’s the best stallion that we’ve seen in the State …ever.

“Over the next few years, he’s just going to get even better than what he’s doing now.”

The champion stallion, along with stable partners Lightsaber and Splintex, put in work year-round – producing some quality foals and stakes winners.

While finding a compatible partner in real life can feel impossible, Atwell has it down to a science for his studs.

“It comes down to a few things,” he said.

“You’ve got pedigree, so what the family has been plus the descendants – what they’ve done. Then we’ve got to match the bloodlines correctly … have we got a fast, smaller mare that needs a bit of size and what stallion will suit that.

“Predominantly in WA we’re looking for these speed lines, so maybe they might have won as a two or three-year-old over 1000 to 12 or 1400 meters, city winners, black-type winners.

“We’re trying to breed athletes, but we also want them to look good when the buyers are coming to the sale to purchase them.”

A stallion like Playing God can only carry so much of the weight in breeding.

Which is why finding a quality match can become a mission.

“Then you’ve got the other side of things where I head off to the breeding stock sales,” Atwell said.

“Not only are we breeding the horses and breeding new foals, we’ve got to be able to support these stallions with quality bloodstock.

“So I travel to all the breeding stock sales throughout the country and look through all the mares.

“See what’s available, see what might suit our mares and whether we can purchase any, because we need to give our buyers a product that’s commercially right for them.”

The operation runs year-round, with the team out at Oldbury having all hands on deck when needed.

“It’s pretty constant, there’s no real lull period on the farm here,” Atwell said.

“Everything from your general horse husbandry to feeding and caring for these couple of hundred horses daily.

“It is a seven day a week job, anything from simple care to the veterinary work as far as the breeding side of things goes.

“From December 1st we get into yearling preparation, so that’s three months of education and exercise, preparing the young horses for sale so they can go there and show themselves off as best they can.”

Each horse that goes through Darling View is a two-and-a-half-year investment.

The stud’s preparation for the yearlings is a meticulous process and each is trained with a view to it becoming a champion.

“They go through a 12-week exercise education program and they’re getting taught how to walk properly so when a buyer comes to look at them, they can present well,” he said.

“They have to be ready for any situation as far as their temperament goes and they need to look very well so there’s a lot of grooming that goes on daily.

“We x-ray every joint on the horse as far as their legs go and they get scoped to make sure their airways are clean and tidy.

“After basically 10-and-a-half weeks, we take them to the sale and spend just over a week up at the sale grounds. Anyone can come out and view them.

“The planning side of things is as big as the preparation, because as breeders we’re trying to think what’s going to be commercial two-and-a-half years down the track.”

But even with all the time and effort that goes into getting the horses ready for the yearling sales, sometimes it’s about finding the diamond in the rough.

“We’ve sold horses from $2000 to $600,000 … everyone’s looking for the story of the horse that makes $5000 and goes and wins $1 million,” Atwell said.

“You can find them in any shape or form and you can pay any amount of money for it … so, try and tick as many boxes as you can and hope they run fast.”