Six-time Melbourne Cup winning owner Lloyd Williams is set leave his Macedon Lodge training establishment which has produced four Cup winners since the turn of the century.
Macedon Lodge will close as a private training base for horses owned by Williams and his son Nick next month and be offered for sale next year.
Williams has not been spending the amount of time at Macedon Lodge he once did.
While Macedon Lodge will no longer be the training base for Williams-owned horses, Nick Williams said the family racing operation would continue but with reduced numbers in Australia.
“We will be selling a number of horses, both privately and likely some through dispersal,” Nick Williams said.
“(But) we will have a large number of horses in training in Ireland with Joseph O’Brien and we will continue to have horses trained in Australia by various trainers.”
The Sheila Laxon-trained Ethereal was prepared at Macedon Lodge to win the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups in 2001 while Williams-owned Cup winners from the property he bought in 2005 have been Efficient (2007), Green Moon (2012) and Almandin (2016).
Williams had previously won the Cup with Just A Dash (1981), What A Nuisance (1985) with his most recent, the O’Brien-trained Rekindling in 2017.
O’Brien had three Cup starters for Williams this year with Master of Reality, ridden by Frankie Dettori, relegated to fourth after being second across the line followed by Twilight Payment (11th) and Latrobe (18th).
Macedon Lodge has had 35 runners this season for Australian trainer Liam Howley, registering two winners, Homesman in the Feehan Stakes at The Valley and Spanish Point in a benchmark 78 race at Geelong, both in September.
Robert Hickmott, who trained Green Moon and Almandin, left Macedon Lodge in 2017 to train at Caulfield.