‘It’ll be a normal sale, but with more nerves’ – owner prepares for Winx yearling filly frenzy
As if the legendary Winx hadn’t stolen the limelight enough in her time on the track – winning every single one of her last 33 starts, including a world-record 25 Group 1s – she is creating even more drama in her second career at stud.
The 12-year-old bay mare by Street Cry, a dab hand at siring generational female talents as Zenyatta proved in the US, was sent to dual Australian champion sire I Am Invincible for her first cover in 2019 but tragically lost the foal late into her pregnancy.
She was given a year off to recuperate from the life-threatening trauma before being sent to Pierro, a proven source of top-notchers, and she produced a filly from the mating in October 2022.
Winx was sent to breed-shaper Snitzel that season, but failed to get in foal, and so the Pierro filly is her only offspring to date, which obviously makes her a priceless asset.
It came as an enormous shock, then, when Winx’s doting owners – Debbie Kepitis and family, Peter and Patty Tighe and the heirs of the late Richard Treweeke – announced last year that the filly would be put on the market at the Inglis Easter Yearling Sale.
Many had assumed the partners would race the only (for now, hopefully) progeny of their wonderful mare, especially as she is a filly and could one day secure the bloodline; but no.
Now her date with the auctioneer, during the second session of the sale on Monday, April 8, is fast approaching.
Many of the biggest owners and breeders from around the world are likely to converge on Sydney for the event, and all the talk is that the much vaunted Lot 391 will smash the Australian record price for a yearling filly of $2.6 million, given for a Zoustar sister to Sunlight at Magic Millions last year.
Some have suggested that she might even surpass the highwater mark for a yearling of either sex down under of $5 million, bid by Bill Vlahos for the ill-fated Redoute’s Choice half-brother to sprint icon Black Caviar at the Inglis Easter Yearling Sale of 2013.
Debbie Kepitis, the most recognisable member of the partners who own the mare and her sales-bound daughter thanks to the purple streak she wore in her hair at the races so as not to jinx Winx, has therefore found herself back in the glare of the spotlight five years after the record-breaker’s retirement.
The first question is an obvious one: why on earth sell a unique filly with whom all the owners have a strong emotional attachment?
“It was a very difficult decision,” says the breeder, whose father Bob Ingham and his brother Jack made their fortune in poultry and were renowned for turning Woodlands Stud in the Hunter Valley into a powerhouse operation before Bob sold up lock, stock and barrel to Sheikh Mohammed in 2008.
“We just felt that the right way to go about it was to put the filly into a public auction and let someone else join in the amazing ride we’ve had with Winx, and wish them very good luck.”
That amazing ride with Winx began at the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale of 2013, when she was signed for by Guy Mulcaster on behalf of Kepitis, the Tighes and Treweeke at $230,000.
Was it love at first sight?
“Look, to be absolutely 100 per cent honest, I don’t remember,” chuckles Kepitis.
“The routine is that Guy, my bloodstock agent, looks at every horse in the book and comes back to me with a shortlist containing between 15 and 20 of the sorts of horses he knows I like. Then my husband and I, and now our daughters, look at the shortlisted lots and pick out the ones we really want.
“I remember seeing Winx the second time, though. She was a beautiful bay with black legs, which has always stood out for me and become something I follow, because if you ever look at my father and uncle’s horses, the peak of them had that colouring.
“I narrowed our shortlist down, and Peter did the same with his, and Winx was one of around four of five lots we crossed over on. We were outbid on the first two or three we all liked, so had to keep reassessing our budget, and in the end she was the one we managed to get. It’s funny how fate works.”
Kepitis keeps her feet firmly on the ground when it comes to her memories of the young Winx too. She doesn’t claim to have had any special insight in those early days into the extraordinary feats that were to come.
“She was a lovely specimen, not overly big or overly good looking, just well put together and with potential,” she says of the young filly, who was sent to Chris Waller to be trained. “She always looked like she would need a bit of time.
“To be honest, with the calibre of horses we deal in, the first test is getting them to the races. She did that, and looked very good, winning her first few races well, so we knew we had a racehorse, and a nice one we were going to have fun with. But I can’t say we knew she was special at that point: that didn’t really happen until she started on her streak.
“In fact, we thought she’d do better in the ATC Oaks, and we were pretty disappointed that she only came second, but it was dreadful ground at Randwick that day. We knew she was a Group 1 horse, and that the best way she could prove that was at three, when she would only be racing against their own age.
“So Chris came up with the plan to get that, and she did it easily in the Queensland Oaks. We never dreamt that she’d keep stepping up and stepping up after that, though. I think everyone knows what happened next by now.”
Indeed, it is suffice to say that Winx never looked in serious danger of being beaten thereafter, her trademark final-furlong swoop from midfield under Hugh Bowman seeing off all-comers, including superstars Benbatl, Happy Clapper, Hartnell, Humidor and Kermadec on various occasions.
Asked what she thinks set Winx apart from the rest, whether it was physical or mental supremacy, Kepitis says: “I actually believe it was everything. She had a motor, obviously, but also a fantastic mind, with an absolute will to win. She must have a hell of a heart too.
“Hughie said he never felt like he ever got to the bottom of her, even when he was flattening her out in some of those races when she had to put her head down and go all-out to win. You can’t do that without heart.”
Winx had nothing left to prove as a racehorse, but expectations were reset as she entered paddocks, and Kepitis admits that the sad false start to her breeding career was “devastating”.
“It hasn’t been straightforward,” she says. “We gave her a lot of time after she came off the track, as she raced for so long, and she got in foal in the first season, but the foal was a large filly; just too much for her. Obviously she has put as much into her foals as she did the racing.
“It was devastating to lose that foal. But we gave Winx the year off, because ultimately she comes first, nothing else, and luckily she got through all of that and got in foal to Pierro the next year.
“Pierro generally doesn’t put so much size into his foals, whereas I Am Invincible tends to produce larger horses, and we’ve got a beautiful, beautiful filly from the mating. She’s developed into an amazing model, with a great personality. She’s got every attribute you could want.”
A devil’s advocate might question whether one-in-a-million racemares like Winx can be expected to pass on their brilliance, saying they were freaks of nature, or ‘too masculine’ to become good mothers. They might call upon Black Caviar and Makybe Diva, two other outstanding Australian champion females this century who have produced little of note, as evidence.
“I would actually agree with that analogy, it’s been shown over time,” says Kepitis. “But this filly is amazing. It’s shocked us, really, that Winx has produced her. We’re basically showing her off by taking her to the sale, because we’re so proud of her.
“I’m not saying it with tongue in cheek, or as sales patter, and I know a lot of luck has to come into it, but I sincerely believe this filly will be a racehorse, and that’s exciting.”
Winx was covered by Snitzel again last season, after failing to get in foal to him the year before. Her owners keep her pregnancy status private and give only sporadic updates, which is understandable so as not to burden the mare and connections with unfair expectations, but Kepitis does confirm that the last scan was positive.
The Pierro-Winx filly has an even more exciting pedigree besides having two outstanding racehorses for parents, for several reasons.
First, Pierro’s sire and paternal grandsire were the immensely popular Woodlands Stud-owned Australian horses of the year Lonhro and Octagonal, who won no fewer than 21 Group 1s between them.
“The Ingham family connection through Lonhro and Octagonal does make her a little more special,” says Kepitis. “They were real people’s horses, who the public took to their hearts. They didn’t do it easily, though. Octagonal always seemed to only just get up by a nose or short head, and Lonhro would do these amazing runs down the outside of the field.
“I remember watching both horses when I had kids. In fact, I know exactly where I was when Lonhro won the Australian Cup, god only knows how he did it, as my second daughter was in year 12 at school and I was at a teacher’s conference that day, a little distracted.
“My kids also remember Lonhro, they were very much a part of it. Dad and Uncle Jack were very generous in including everyone in their fun. How lucky were we to be a part of all that?”
As well as having three folk heroes owned by members of the Ingham family in the first three generations of her pedigree, the Pierro filly out of Winx also has a more universally appreciated selling point, in boasting Street Cry as damsire.
The late son of Machiavellian has long excelled in this department, with Cascadian, Diversify, Rebel’s Romance, Romantic Warrior and Vino Rosso among the highest earners out of his daughters bred in the northern hemisphere, but he has been especially influential as maternal grandsire in Australia.
Golden Slipper hero Farnan, Blue Diamond Stud Stakes winners Daumier and Lyre, Kingston Town Classic scorer Pounamou and Group 1-winning sprinter September Run had already advertised Street Cry to good effect as a damsire down under, but they have been joined this season by Godolphin’s Newmarket Handicap victor Cylinder, Spring Champion Stakes winner Tom Kitten and Group 3 scorer Red Card.
“Street Cry is certainly making his mark as a broodmare sire,” says Kepitis. “Godolphin seem to have a nice stock of daughters by him. It’s such a shame we lost him so young.”
Everything seems to be in place for Winx’s filly to make a fortune at Inglis then: an extraterrestrially gifted dam; an elite sire; an excellent back pedigree; rarity value; good looks; and the world’s attention on her.
So how are Kepitis’s nerves holding up?
“We have so much faith in the filly, everyone’s talking about her and asking about her,” she says. “We know that there are only a few people who will be able to play at the level, but whoever does get her will be serious racing people and will look after her and give her a home for life.
“I’ll be at a table in the centre of the complex, where we normally sit, as I’ll be involved in the sale other than selling her, looking at purchasing a few yearlings as we normally would.
“So it’ll be just like a normal sale, but with a few more nerves. That’s what I’m trying to tell myself, anyway!”
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