Milestone winner for talented horsewoman Fogden
Kacy Fogden’s career reached an important turning point at Rosehill on Saturday when a colt she hand-picked at last year’s Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale galloped into Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) contention by winning the Canonbury Stakes (Gr 3, 1100m).
In doing so, Best Of Bordeaux (Snitzel) brought up Fogden’s first Group winner since joining the Australian training ranks.
With a reputation for being a gifted horsewoman, it did not come as much of a surprise to see her reach that milestone.
Until yesterday, it was a moment the humble 29-year-old was still coming to terms with. Growing up in New Zealand, never in her wildest dreams did she imagine she would be training horses on the scale that she does today, let alone have a horse of his calibre on her hands.
But hard work and a deep passion for the thoroughbred led to Fogden’s defining moment at the weekend, achieving the success with a young horse she was taken with from the minute she laid eyes on him at the sales.
“It was his physical. He looked like a real runner. He was very athletic,” she says. “There’s not a lot of him when you look at him straight on, and he’s far from being fully furnished yet, but he would come out of his box and go straight forward and it was just the way he moved. He’s got good balance.”
With no credit arrangement organised with Magic Millions, Fogden purchased him under the Aquis banner. She went to $425,000 to secure him, well above her usual type of budget.
Initially, selling down shares proved somewhat challenging, but Aquis agreed to take the largest holding and his breeder, Gerry Harvey, also agreed to keep a slice.
“Gerry said to me he would only stay in for ten per cent as I still needed to prove myself as a trainer,” Fogden adds.
In the past 12 months Fogden has done just that, mostly succeeding with horses that are not expensive yearlings and which do not boast the big, sexy pedigrees like Best Of Bordeaux.
“When we were looking at yearlings I never had options to buy for myself and they would always be sent on to other trainers. Until him, I was never able to buy something and think ‘yes, I get to train that’,” she says.
Now she finally has one in her own barn and the Golden Slipper dream is real following Best Of Bordeaux’s devastating debut win.
“He’s a bit of a kid. Watching him on Saturday I thought ‘do you have any idea what’s going on, you are playing this way too cool’. He was acting like he’d been there for years,” Fogden says.
“It was nice to see him doing what he did and the way he did it.”
Fogden is a no-fuss kind of girl who tells it how it is, but you can detect a certain air of excitement in her voice when she talks about Best Of Bordeaux and the meaning of his emergence in her life.
With her father, Matthew, and late grandfather, Ashley, having both trained horses in New Zealand, the ability to train horses is in Fogden’s DNA.
She fondly recalls the days as a young girl when she helped them with their teams before school and regularly rode trackwork along Waikawa Beach.
“Watching grandad and going to the races at a young age was where the dream started, but I never thought it would be possible that you could ever do it,” she says.
With grit and determination and what she describes as “bloody hard work”, she’s made it happen.
“When I first moved to Australia I didn’t have a job so, as you do, you take whatever you can get,” she continues.
“I started working on a polo farm for the Currans in NSW. I had no idea about polo and had to learn it quickly.”
That opportunity proved fortuitous as it would ultimately link her to her biggest supporters in racing.
“I did a season in Queensland with the polo and I was working on a property that is now known as Aquis. When the polo finished I remember being asked if I wanted to stay on and do thoroughbreds,” she adds.
Never one to knock back an opportunity, Fogden agreed to give it a go.
“I have never been one to turn down opportunities and there’s always doors opening. I have been lucky,” Fogden says.
“As they (Aquis) got bigger and they got stallions and broodmares I just focused on the racing manager part and oversaw pre-training and yearlings. We would buy and educate them and send them to Gai (Waterhouse), (Chris) Waller, and Ciaron (Maher).
“We used to trade a lot of horses to Hong Kong and me getting my license was a natural course for an outlet for horses that were not up to that standard.”
Fogden hasn’t been handed flash horses to train and, much to her credit, has done it the hard way with cheaper and less regally-bred stock.
She says: “I think for me it’s always been about the animal and the purity of the animal. It doesn’t matter what it’s worth, what it’s bred by, or how much they paid, it always comes back to just the animal.
“I have always said it doesn’t matter what they cost.”
Now the stakes are high and she has a serious Slipper contender part-owned by some of the biggest and most powerful names in the industry.
Putting all the hype aside, she says that she’s not going to allow the pressure to get to her and enjoy the journey with a special horse.
“You don’t think it’s possible but this is a good reminder that it can all happen,” she says.
“The horses are probably the easiest part nowadays to deal with. It’s the people that put the most strain on our lives, but when you get those quiet moments with the horse they are quite special and make it all worthwhile.”