Winx under bidder Peter Orton’s story on how he missed out on the supermare is the stuff of nightmare
AS the world’s greatest racehorse heads towards her date with destiny next Saturday, the man who could have bought Winx but just missed out, has broken his self-imposed silence about something that has been an open secret in horse breeding circles since 2013.
Andrew Rule
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AS THE world’s greatest racehorse heads towards her date with destiny next Saturday, the man who could have bought her can only watch and wonder at what might have been.
Like a star country footballer who plays one AFL game, he’s not sure if his brush with fame is a medal or a scar.
The right answer, of course, is that it is something to be proud of.
It’s a commonplace in racing that there is a queue of coodabeens claiming to be the under bidders on every champion, but in the case of the young Winx, the truth can now publicly be confirmed.
The losing bidder was respected horse breeder Peter Orton, manager of one of Australia’s showpiece studs, The Vinery in the Hunter Valley.
Orton wasn’t the only one who wanted the leggy daughter of Street Cry and Vegas Showgirl, Lot 329 at the Magic Millions sale in early 2013. But it was actually his final offer (via an agent) that the budding Winx partnership of Peter Tighe, Debbie Kepitis and Richard Treweeke topped with their last-ditch bid.
Any low-ball offer above the selling price of $230,000 would have snared her. But it wasn’t to be.
Yearling buyers keep a lot of balls in the air … but not crystal balls.
And so it was that Orton can claim the biggest fishing tale of all — about the one that got away.
Orton has not gone out of his way to advertise it — nor has his loyal agent, Damon Gabbedy, a Melbourne-based agent renowned for picking top-class fillies.
But in the pressure-cooker world of horse breeding and buying, insiders knew that of those who bid for the world’s greatest galloper, Peter Orton ran second with a bid of $220,000.
Orton sees hundreds of young horses every season on the big stud in the Hunter Valley — but still clearly recalls the sensible filly he picked out at the 2013 Magic Millions yearling sales.
He makes the point that her sire, the Irish-bred Street Cry, “wasn’t as hot as a gun” then, just another expensive Kentucky shuttle stallion who had yet to prove himself under Australian conditions.
So the filly wasn’t a showstopper, but he liked her.
“I thought she’d make a nice three-year-old,” he told the Sunday Herald Sun this week, breaking a self-imposed silence about something that has been an open secret in breeding circles.
“She had a great shoulder and the right angles. She had stride and athleticism but there was scope left in her to fill out and grow. We can’t pick the ‘motor’, of course, but with her looks and pedigree we thought she was a nice three-year-old type who would be good to breed from later.”
As it turned out, the filly that turned into Winx was much better at four years old than at three and better again at five.
She is now seven and those who know her best — Chris Waller, track rider Ben Cadden and race day jockey Hugh Bowman — swear she’s as good as she has ever been.
The astonishing time she ran to win the Turnbull Stakes at Flemington at her last start proves she is faster than any middle-distance horse on earth.
“Her weight balance is so good,” enthuses Orton, explaining why Winx has such extraordinary longevity.
“She has such an efficient physique.”
Like everyone in racing, Orton praises the way Chris Waller has trained her to maintain her ability over six seasons by keeping her happy and injury-free.
“There are no tricks — no lugging bits or blinkers — so you have to give credit to Chris. She has remained stress-free.”
But Orton isn’t the only one to reflect on what might have been.
As revealed in the new authorised Winx biography (disclosure: this columnist wrote it), former Victorian trainer Gerald Ryan badly wanted her but could not interest owners who were intent on buying early-maturing sprinting types with the hope of competing in the world’s richest juvenile race, the Golden Slipper.
He succeeded in that, paying close to half a million dollars for the beautiful colt that raced as Rubick — brilliantly bred, a Hollywood looker and fast — that would become a sire at the exclusive Coolmore Stud as soon as he finished a racetrack career.
He also bought a $300,000 colt that would win more than $650,000 in Australia and Hong Kong.
Ryan inspected the Street Cry filly four times but could not persuade his owners to take a punt on a slow developer.
Compared with the more advanced yearlings, the future Winx was just another immature filly, something like a gangly teenage netballer in a beauty pageant.
But something athletic about her appealed to Orton and Gabbedy, Ryan and another Sydney trainer, Tim Martin, who had bought her older half-sister Miss Atom Bomb the year before.
The only difference between those four and Guy Mulcaster, who selects yearlings for Chris Waller, is that once the bidding started, the prospective owners — Tighe, Kepitis and Treweeke — decided to up the ante to $70,000 each — “plus one bid”.
Ryan shares the Rosehill trainers’ tower with Chris Waller every morning, and has watched Winx develop with more than usual interest.
He still has the much-thumbed 2013 auction catalogue that falls open at the page outlining Lot 329’s pedigree. He can’t help wondering what might have been but concedes no one could have trained her better than Waller.
There are other hardluck stories, of course. One belongs to her breeder John Camilleri.
For the successful businessman, Winx’s success is a source of mixed emotions.
He decided that if she did not make more than $200,000 he would keep her and race her himself. For him, it was like tossing a coin: he would leave it to fate and the market.
Five years on, in the autumn of 2018, he would put the decision in perspective: to regret selling a yearling (for a good price) that later goes on to win millions, is like regretting the sale of your first house just because it later rose in value.
Business is business and you have to do the logical thing at the time.
Besides, there are much harder luck stories than that at every yearling sale. Such as that of Lot 340, sold half an hour after Winx in 2013.
The imposing black colt, also sired by Winx’s “father” Street Cry, he reminded the then boom Melbourne trainer Mark Kavanagh of Shocking, his electrifying 2009 Melbourne Cup winner.
Which is why Kavanagh paid $550,000 on behalf of a coterie of Melbourne business people wanting a Cups contender.
Kavanagh also paid big bucks for another Street Cry colt at the sale. Both prices were outside the Winx group’s budgets, which is why they quit bidding for Lot 329 at $230,000.
The rest is history.
The unfinished filly has finished first 32 times, with a winning streak of 28 and counting. Whereas the beautiful, big black colt (racing name Spruiking) proved so slow he was donated to the Werribee Veterinary research centre to investigate what was wrong.
As for his expensive stablemate, it managed to run a place at Geelong before being turned out with several thousand sheep at Avenel.
This is racing. Mostly, the money runs faster than the horses.
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