Amosu
Things certainly run in a sequence in the Langbecker family, the breeding name behind flying filly Amosu (Invader), winner of Saturday’s The Debut 2YO Plate (1000m) at the Gold Coast.
The dynasty began with Kevin Thomas, the former king of Albion Park and a revered member of Queensland’s Harness Racing Hall of Fame.
He passed on his horsemanship to daughter Letitia, who worked with her father in the harness world, then in thoroughbreds at his renowned Washpool Lodge pre-training and breaking farm on the Darling Downs.
Letitia and husband Kerry Langbecker passed on some more genes to daughter Brooke, who initially took her father’s lead in becoming a showjumping champion before following her mum into thoroughbred breeding.
And on Saturday at the Gold Coast’s Magic Millions meeting, Letitia bred the winner of the second race, and Brooke bred the winner of the third.
That’s not a bad effort, mum and daughter breeding the winners of two $500,000 races, and in fact two-thirds of the program, given the meeting was called off after the third.
Letitia Langbecker, who owns five mares, has bred winners before, but for the handy Slippin’ Jimmy (Pariah) to take his sixth race from ten starts in a half-million dollar event felt special.
But for 27-year-old Brooke, who owns four mares, to then claim her first winner as a breeder in the very next race with Amosu spelled a heady time indeed for the family.
“We were very excited,” Brooke tells It’s In The Blood. “First mum’s horse won and then I was sitting with friends before the next race and they said, ‘Your horse is a fair chance in this’. I said, ‘Oh, I couldn’t be that lucky’, but she got up and won.
“We had a nice celebration that night.”
The Liam Birchley-trained Amosu has what looks a decidedly interesting, intricate and carefully planned pedigree, through the mating of Aquis Farm’s Invader (Snitzel) with the city-winning Precipitate (Masked Assassin).
And yet in breeding’s great lottery, any class the filly has may more accurately be attributed to good fortune.
She’s inbred to a son and a grandson of Northern Dancer (Nearctic) in, respectively, Fairy King and Danehill (Danzig).
Fairy King is there at 4m x 3f, through his most famous Australian product Encosta De Lago – Invader’s damsire – and Amosu’s second dam Pray For Reign, a dual winner who was Listed-placed at Caulfield.
Danehill is repeated at 4m x 4m, via Redoute’s Choice into Snitzel into Invader, and Danzero into Masked Assassin into Precipitate.
All that looks tricky but might not please some purists. Doubling Danehill through two sons is statistically the worst way to do it. And many will attest that there’s no good way to duplicate Fairy King.
“I read an article ages ago by someone who said never do a double Fairy King, and that they just wouldn’t do it,” says Joy Mackay, of Queensland’s Canning Vale stud. “But hopefully it’s worked in this case.”
Mackay and husband John Barnes are key to the Amosu story, for they were responsible for the mating. “Designed” is probably a stretch. They owned a breeding right to Invader, and so put their mare Precipitate to him, in what at least was a fair physical match of what Mackay says were two “neat” horses which “might produce a sprinter”.
The couple then put Precipitate up for sale carrying Amosu at the 2022 Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale, which was where Brooke Langbecker pounced, buying her for $15,000 to later officially become the breeder. There was even a touch of happenstance in that, too.
“Mum and I weren’t at the sale, but we’d been sitting at the computer all day watching,” Langbecker says. “Then Mum had ducked away, and I bought Precipitate without telling her. She came back and I told her, and Mum was like, ‘Why would you buy her?’ and blah blah blah.
“I just said, ‘I’ve just always wanted an Invader. I don’t really know why, but I’ve just always liked Invader. And I liked the page, so I bought her for fifteen.
“It was a bit spur-of-the-moment, but it seems to have worked well.”
Langbecker put the resultant filly, Amosu, up at the Magic Millions Gold Coast March sale, and she was bought by Bloodstock Solutions for $60,000.
The young breeder, who won showjumping’s hugely prestigious Sydney Summer Classic World Cup event in 2018, is now ensconced with her parents at their Embrook Stables spelling and pre-training farm near Beaudesert, while dabbling in creating thoroughbreds.
She owns and breeds from a sister to stakes-winning Queensland mare Chinny Boom (Spirit Of Boom) in Holdin’ My Own, who she bought for $22,000 and has sold two daughters of for $90,000 and $85,000, both to Brisbane’s premier trainer Tony Gollan.
She also bought a Deep Field colt for $70,000 in 2020 and pinhooked him at the Magic Millions Gold Coast sale for $200,000.
And she’s going back to this year’s March sale with three yearlings – a colt by Portland Sky, a Dubious filly – and Amosu’s half-sister by Profiteer (Capitalist).
“It’s pretty exciting to be selling Amosu’s half-sister,” she says. “I love breeding. I haven’t had much luck at all before Amosu, to be honest, but it’s a lot of fun.”
For Mackay, there are no regrets in selling Precipitate, who sadly died last year, but her forecasts of what she might produce seem to have been borne out in Amosu.
“We raced Precipitate and bought her mother Pray For Reign off the track. They both gave 110 per cent on the track and we like to think their progeny would as well,” Mackay says.
“Since we owned a breeding right to Invader, putting Precipitate to him was a bit of happenstance, but that probably happens more often than we care to think.”
Amosu – whose pedigree is also powered by 11 appearances of the mighty blue hen Natalma (Native Dancer) – has become a chapter in an upswing of a season for Invader.
Looking at breeding stats, it might be easy to dismiss Aquis Farm’s ten-year-old stallion.
Last spring, his service fee dropped to $8,800, and the studbook shows he still only covered 17 mares, down from 92 at $11,000 the year before. Even considering the general malaise that hit parts of the 2024 season, it was a disappointing seventh spring at stud.
Yet there’s a case to be made that he’s on the way up.
With only four crops running, Invader sits at a career high 16th on the Australian general sires’ table by earnings, thanks to the $3.7 million reaped by his sole stakes winner Sunshine In Paris, who claimed her second top-tier success in the VRC Sprint Classic (Gr 1, 1200m) in the spring.
The winner of the 2017 ATC Sires’ Produce Stakes (Gr 1, 1400m), Invader – who has 83 winners from 147 runners 56 per cent – is now also at a meritorious sixth place on the two-year-old sires’ table.
Amosu is one of his two winners from four juvenile starters. The other is the wonderfully named Satisfied Mugs. He’s won the past two of his three starts, all in Townsville, by 3.5 lengths, and is headed to the $500,000 QTIS Jewel 2YO (1200m) at the Gold Coast in March.
“Invader had a bit of a lull in numbers last season, and of course you’re disappointed whenever you have a stallion who doesn’t get the support you think they deserve,” says Aquis’s director of sales Jonathan Davies. “But last season was a unique season for a number of reasons, and it was a very competitive stallion market.
“But he’s started off this two-year-old season really well. And it’s important to note these two-year-olds are from the first book he covered after we relocated our stallions to Queensland, when he had some sharper mares coming to him.
“He’s only a young stallion still, and he’s still got plenty in front of him. He’s proven he can throw an elite racehorse, he throws a good type, and consistently gets winners. He certainly shouldn’t be cast from anyone’s minds.”