Rose Bay's Belle Vue listed by ATC director Angela Belle McSweeney

The queen of the track, Angela Belle McSweeney, has listed her Rose Bay home after five decades of family ownership.

 

The Australian Turf Club director with a taste for bubbles is seeking $6.6 million through Gavin Rubinstein at Ray White Double Bay. 

 

The home’s interior is filled with memorabilia that highlights her remarkable horseracing bloodlines.

 

 

Angela’s late father, Tony McSweeney, the prominent horse owner and former chair of Tattersalls Club, paid £29,000 for the house in 1965.

 

Her grandfather, Pat Nailon, was a leading trainer for several decades from the 1920s.

 

McSweeney, who had her first trackside glass of Dom Perignon aged 13 at Chantilly Racecourse near Paris, was a model and successful businesswoman.

 

She helped to introduce fashions on the field in NSW in the early 1980s.

 

Her then-husband John Needham pioneered the Magic Millions concept in the late-1980s. 

 

Her campaign in late-2016 to join the board of the Turf Club secured support from trainer Gai Waterhouse, Alan Jones, Melissa Hoyer and Ray Hadley.

 

Longtime racing writers Ray Thomas and Max Presnell also backed her candidacy.

 

McSweeney, who has been working on a self-help empowerment book, will be downsizing after the February 22 auction.

 

Much of her time — and ­Instragam posts — centres on her daughter Juliet Love and her husband Charlie Albone, a landscape designer from Foxtel’s Selling Houses Australia.

 

McSweeney dotes on their two children, Leo, 5, and Hartford, 3.

 

She recently recalled how often the Tivoli Ave home was “awash with champagne”. 

 

Her mother’s friends would arrive on race days to have champagne before leaving for the track.

 

 “It was like a movie,” McSweeney told the Wentworth Courier. “Everyone was in high heels — that’s probably why I’m so mad on shoes.”

 

Her public relations company, Angela Belle McSweeney Internazionale, has for 25 years specialised in luxury brands including Tiffany & Co, Mercedes-Benz, Versace and Veuve Clicquot.

 

McSweeney has been a part-owner and manager of more than 60 thoroughbred horses through the decades, including the Magic Millions winner Our Horizon in 1990 and the Golden Nugget 1992 winner My Marilyn, whose blonde mane and tail reminded her of film star Marilyn Monroe.

 

This article was first published in the Sunday Telegraph.