I Am Me
She’s a push-button horse with a name that literally couldn’t be simpler, but amid the ups and downs of racing and breeding, I Am Me (I Am Invincible) has taken a circuitous route to potentially becoming Australia’s next sprinting superstar mare: from riches to rags, then a few more rags, but now to riches again.
She was regally bred – from the Australian breeding wing of Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Maktoum, a member of Dubai’s royal family and first cousin of its ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, of Godolphin and Darley fame.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa leapt from Arabian endurance horses to thoroughbred breeding and racing 20 years ago, and opted for Australia. He sent Englishman Tim Stakemire, a former pro polo player, who was involved with his Arabians, to run the operation, which he oversees from Melbourne.
Without an actual farm, and with most of its 35 broodmares agisted at Segenhoe Stud in the Hunter Valley, it’s an enterprise now well familiar to Australian racegoers through the Sheikh’s colours of gold with the royal blue V.
They’ve been carried by Group 1 stars, including Oohood (I am Invincible) and Hiyaam (High Chaparral) and Pride Of Dubai (Street Cry) – the Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) winner and now a surging Coolmore stallion still half-owned by the Sheikh.
The Sheikh also bred – though he races in co-owners’ colours – King Colorado (Kingman), the Ciaron Maher and David Eustace stablemate to I Am Me, who won the JJ Atkins (Gr 1, 1600m) last June.
And five months before that, the Sheikh’s breeding operation scored a major coup in selling Australia’s most expensive yearling of 2023 – the colt by I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit) out of the Sheikh’s triple Group winner Anaheed (Fastnet Rock) who yielded $2.7 million at the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale when selling to Coolmore’s Tom Magnier.
Now in his 80s, Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa hasn’t been to Australia since Covid, but was here before then to witness triumphs such as Pride Of Dubai’s win in the ATC Sires Produce Stakes (Gr 1, 1400m) in 2015.
“He’s a lovely, lovely man, and I couldn’t wish for a nicer boss,” Stakemire said of the Sheikh who, subsequent to his Australian venture, also founded a smaller breeding operation in the UK.
“He hasn’t been here for a while, which is not to say he won’t again, but he takes a very keen interest in what goes on. We speak most days, and if he’s got one running here, he’ll always get up and watch them. He’ll also go through the selection process of what horses we buy or keep or sell, and on matings he’ll also have an input.”
Amidst all the aforementioned highs, in 2018 there came an unprepossessing daughter of I Am Invincible, the second foal from Mefnooda (Medaglia d’Oro), who was bought by the Sheikh for $420,000 at the Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale in 2013.
Mefnooda was handy, recovering from her own rough beginning – tumbling over a fallen rival on debut at Bendigo in 2015 – to win five from ten, including one at Caulfield. But her first foal Merva (Fastnet Rock) would retire a maiden after three starts in the bush. I Am Invincible put more substance into her second foal, but not a lot, and eight months after the mare was sold to New Zealand in foal to Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice), the filly was offered for sale, but not at Easter or the Gold Coast.
Only five yearlings by the great I Am Invincible went to the Inglis Premier Yearling Sale in Melbourne that year, and I Am Me was one of them. There was a little bit of poker to be played in selecting her yearling sale, and Segenhoe’s Peter O’Brien concedes this hand didn’t win. There is always a beneficiary, however, and it was Dynamic Syndications’ Dean Watt.
“She was always a pretty neat filly, but wasn’t overly big,” O’Brien says. “We took her to Premier to help her stand out a bit more, but she didn’t really. She was OK, and vetted perfectly, but sometimes you can shoot yourself in the foot trying to stand a horse out at a lesser sale. With her good pedigree, sometimes people might wonder, ‘Why are they selling a well-bred Vinnie filly at this sale?’”
I Am Me indeed had a strong pedigree. Her second dam is One World (Danehill), who won a Group 3 at Flemington and an Adelaide Listed race. As a broodmare, she threw One Last Dance (Encosta De Lago), who could have been exceptional. She won her first three starts in 2011, including the Blue Diamond Preview (F) (Listed, 1000m) and Blue Diamond Prelude (F) (Gr 3, 1100m) in 2011, went amiss after the latter. She returned 18 months later, but was not the same horse.
One World, now also the second dam of two-from-three Caulfield Gold Ingot (1400m) winner Mollynickers (Pierro), was out of the unraced Prawn Cocktail (Artichoke), who threw a second stakes-winner in Maribyrnong Plate (then Gr 2, 1000m) victor Langoustine (Danehill).
And at I Am Me’s fourth dam, you strike gold.
Crimson Saint (Crimson Satan) was the dam of the outstanding Royal Academy (Nijinsky), who won top-flight events either side of the Atlantic in the July Cup (Gr 1, 6f) and the Breeders’ Cup Mile (Gr 1, 8f), and became a champion sire. Crimson Saint also threw two [multiple] stakes-winners in Pancho Villa (Secretariat) and his older sister Terlingua (Secretariat), who then found fame as the dam of Grade 1 winner and champion sire Storm Cat (Storm Bird).
In combination with I Am Invincible’s side of the family, I Am Me’s appears a reasonably straightforward pedigree, with only Danzig, his sire Northern Dancer (Nearctic), Sir Ivor (Sir Gaylord) and Northern Dancer’s dam Natalma (Native Dancer) duplicated in the first six removes.
There was something else not so straightforward about I Am Me at the Premier Sale, a possible false dissuader mentioned here only last week.
“She wasn’t a great walker, and had a short, choppy, sprinter’s action,” O’Brien said. “Now we know you ignore the action with Vinnies, but at that stage a lot of people weren’t attuned to the fact.
“So she was very quiet at the sales. The morning she went to the ring, the only person who identified and liked her was Dean Watt.”
Watt was surprised he could even be in the running.
“I went there to look at another horse. I didn’t have I Am Me on my radar,” Watt told It’s In The Blood. “Genetically, the pedigree rated very well. Medaglia d’Oro broodmares had a great strike-rate, and the cross was working well, but I just figured she’d be way over our budget, at somewhere above $300,000.
“I didn’t ask for her to come out of her box, and then Peter O’Brien said ‘Why aren’t you looking at this one?’ So I did. She was a touch back at the knee, but you get that with a lot of Vinnies. I got my vet Tim Roberts to check her, including the x-rays. Ultimately he said, ‘If you don’t buy her, I will’.”
Also straightforward was Watt’s acquisition of the filly, after a bidding “battle” that sent the room absolutely mild.
“I wanted to land on the reserve of $200,000, but someone else did, so I had to go to $210,000, but that was that,” he said.
With the juicy bloodlines, this filly who O’Brien said “slipped through the cracks”, went to Ciaron Maher and Dave Eustace. She showed some toe in trackwork, whilst being a little slow maturing, and was eventually sent for a soft debut kill as a September three-year-old, at Goulburn over 1000 metres. She was backed from $3.60 to $2.80, and with confidence high in the camp, she recorded a three-length third.
Redirected to Newcastle over 900 metres, she could still only manage second. She was then put into the Reginald Allen Quality (Listed, 1400m) at Randwick to gauge where she stood. She came eighth and was bundled off to the paddock, under a large question mark.
“She’d always shown us at trackwork that she had ability,” Watt said. “But she was immature. We spelled her, then when she came back we lowered our sights and mapped out a programme.”
Here’s where the dominos at last began falling the way they should. She went to the Lickety Split (1000m) at Canberra, which offered a $10,000 bonus to any winner who clocked less than 57 seconds. She won by three lengths, in 56.55. She went the reverse way and won by four at Ballarat. She went the straight way and scored by more than two, over 1100 metres at Flemington.
Another Listed bid, in Scone’s Denise’s Joy Stakes (Listed, 1100m), ended with a fighting fourth, where her achilles heel of a Soft 7 was revealed, as it was next start when sixth in Flemington’s Listed Creswick Stakes. She spelled, and has since won five from six, including black-type in record time in the Canterbury Sprint (Listed, 1200m), and last Saturday’s dominant first-up victory in the Rosehill’s Missile Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m).
I Am Me has now won eight from 14, which would be eight from 11 barring those two wet runs and a seventh in an ambitious Oakleigh Plate (Gr 1, 1100m) tilt. She’s won $630,000, with many more multiples of her purchase price likely. Suitors for The Everest (1200m) have come knocking, but for breeding value, several factors – like race schedules and her on-pace style – suggest the Manikato Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) could be right up her Moonee Valley.
Having matured at five, she looks a powerhouse sprinter who could be on her way to emulating the ten Group 1 winners who’ve represented Dynamic to varying degrees in the past, including Atomic Force (Danehill Dancer), Reward For Effort (Exceed And Excel), Polar Success (Success Express) and Savabeel (Zabeel).
As it is, the mare with the humbly simple name is providing a breathtaking ride for Watt and her 18 owners – with a wonderful twist.
Commensurate with Dynamic’s typical budgets, they include a landscape gardener, a coffee shop owner, a couple of farmers and some retirees. And one other bloke.
“When I bought her, I knew the vendors liked the horse,” Watt said. “So I asked Tim Stakemire, ‘Does the boss want to stay in?’
“He came back and said, ‘We’ll stay in for 15 per cent’. That was a great thrill for us. Sheikh Mohammed had never raced with a syndicator ever. It’s a great honour to have the Sheikh in the horse with us.
“And it’s added a bit for the other owners too. A couple of the boys – they haven’t met him or anything – but they love telling people they’re mixing with sheikhs these days.”