Mills toasts Odeum’s Group 1 Guineas success as fillies syndicate builds momentum
Agent’s sales ring twist of fate provides ultimate success with late-blooming daughter of Written Tycoon
In August, Saturday’s Thousand Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m) winner Odeum (Written Tycoon) was not even among the initial nominations for the three-year-old feature race and had it not been for a moment of indecision 17 months earlier the filly would not have been in the ownership she is today.
Agent Sheamus Mills, who selected and part-owns the $420,000 Mick Price and Mick Kent Jnr-trained Odeum at the 2019 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale, yesterday reflected on the “sliding doors” moment that led to him securing the filly.
“Luckily enough, my clients Heath Newton and Anthony Roberts were with me on the table at the Gold Coast,” Mills recalled yesterday.
“We had been at the races that day and there were a couple of fillies going through that night that we liked. I had her pegged around the $350,000 to $400,000 mark and thankfully they were there (to back me).
“I do remember, talking about sliding door moments, that whomever was under bidder, when it hit $400,000 they had one more bid and got put on $420,000 and we said ‘that will do us, we’re out’, but whomever bid the $420,000 dragged it back to $410,000, so that opened the door for us to have the $420,000.
“We were actually out, but it’s amazing how these things work and thank god they dragged their bid back $10,000.”
A winner of the Jim Moloney Stakes (Listed, 1400m) at her previous start, Odeum has progressed from a maiden win on August 8 to winning back-to-back stakes races at her third and fourth starts, culminating in Saturday’s milestone victory, and Mills admits the filly’s progression has surprised him.
Odeum’s condition will be monitored by Price and Kent this week before a decision is made whether she goes for a spell or runs in either the Moonee Valley Fillies Classic (Gr 2, 1600m) on Cox Plate day or the Empire Rose Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m) on Victoria Derby day at Flemington a week later.
“She has been a funny one because she’s been a slow learner. I still don’t think she’s the developed product yet because when you look at her runs … she will drop the bit and you think what sort of petrol has she got left?” he said.
“Even yesterday, she hit the front and wanted to prick her ears and stop, so she is still very much a work in progress. She had two preps where in her first trial – 800-metre jump-outs at Caulfield – I thought she was very good and then her second trials were flat.
“I do remember that we did accept for a race last prep and we were toying whether to run her or not based on the second jump-out which was only fair.
“She had shown glimpses of it, but she was clearly not physically there yet to cope with the two trials as well as getting through to the races.”
The jump-out performances had led to connections ignoring the nominations for the Thousand Guineas, but that mindset changed after she won her maiden in country Victoria.
“Funnily enough, she was racing on the Saturday and the noms for the Thousand Guineas closed on the Monday or Tuesday before her race. She wasn’t in the noms but then she went to Moe and she won, so the first thing I did was send Mick and Mick Jr a message saying, ‘whatever you do, get this horse in the noms’ because the late noms closed two days later,” he said.
“The first round of late noms you could get in for $1,000 and thankfully she won on the Saturday and we paid up on the Monday.”
A half-sister to Listed winner Goodfella (Snitzel) and out of two-year-old-winning, stakes-placed Movie (Red Ransom), Odeum is now a Group 1 winner and possibly the most valuable in the select group of fillies raced by Mills and Heath Newton as well as Anthony Roberts’ Chesapeake Thoroughbreds, who also bought into the Thousand Guineas winner as a yearling.
“Persuader and See Me Exceed have been the two flag bearers so far. See Me Exceed is six and has just gone to stud while Persuader is five. We don’t have much amongst our four-year-olds but with our three-year-olds, we’ve got a really good crop,” the Victorian agent said.
“As well as Odeum, we’ve got some other nice fillies. We’ve got Selfless who ran in the Edward Manifold and she’s hopefully running in the Ethereal on Saturday and we’ve got a Tavistock out of Octapussy in with Mick at the moment (called Wayborn) and a Not A Single Doubt filly up with Tony Gollan.
“These guys are high on quality, not on numbers, and at the moment we only get around four yearlings a year, so their racing team would be around 15 at the moment.”
Mills has helped NSW Riverina-based breeder Newton overhaul his thoroughbred portfolio and one element of that, with the addition of Roberts, is to put together a band of quality broodmares.
He said: “When I met Heath he was top-heavy on geldings and trying to do it as a business, so for all sorts of reasons, the structure we went with was to try and buy well-bred, well-conformed fillies and try and turn a result on the racetrack and even if we don’t, get a second bite of the cherry at stud.”
The most expensive of those fillies raced in the partnership is the $1.5 million Written Tycoon (Iglesia) filly out of Magic Millions 2YO Classic (RL, 1200m) winner Karuta Queen (Not A Single Doubt). She has been named Queen Of The Green and is due back in work with Tony and Calvin McEvoy this week.
“I am certainly not getting ahead of myself on that horse, but I am not surprised that the early reports are as glowing as they are,” he said.
“I have never even thought about spending that sort of money on a horse and I have never encouraged Anthony or Heath to do it either, but in my opinion, she was a bit of a one-in-a-million sort of horse.
“Her level of intelligence, her stride and physical development made me (have that conviction), so without being blase, there’s no surprise to me that all the strappers love her and all the riders love her. She is a very easy horse to love and I am sure she will take all her prep work in her stride and do it very easily, but whether that means her legs will go fast or not, that is all to be seen.”
The timing of her return means it is unlikely Queen Of The Green will be ready for a Magic Millions 2YO Classic (RL, 1200m) campaign, but Mills hopes the filly will measure up to other high-profile two-year-old races later in the season.
He said: “Her aim – and she needs to prove that she is up to this – is a Blue Diamond prep and we’d love to see her good enough to get through to the Blue Diamond itself.”
Odeum’s sire Written Tycoon, owned by Woodside Park Stud but relocated to Arrowfield Stud this season, has enjoyed a remarkable start to the 2020-21 season by also producing Caulfield Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m) hero Ole Kirk and Schillaci Stakes (Gr 2, 1100m) winner Dirty Work on Saturday.
The previous week, he sired dominated ATC Gimcrack Stakes (Gr 3, 1000m) winner Enthaar.
“We were probably a little bit late to the party, but when we did chime in, we have gone in fairly strongly,” Mills said of his attraction to Written Tycoon’s progeny.
“I obviously bought the Karuta Queen for the same ownership (as Odeum) this year and we’ve bred fairly extensively to him as well.
“We sent about ten mares two years ago and about eight last year and again this year. He was already a good horse at that stage, but it is nice to see the way he is going given the number of mares in foal or foals on the ground we’ve got by him.”
Had circumstances been different, Mills would have been on course at Caulfield on Saturday, but instead he celebrated the Guineas success at his Melbourne home where, like all the city’s residents, remains in lockdown. So, he turned to a 2002 bottle of Grange to help toast the occasion.
“My head would tell me that I celebrated just as much as I would have given better circumstances in the state. While the celebrations were clearly a little different, it probably produced the same result,” he joked.
“Funnily enough, the significance of that bottle is that some clients of mine, the Star Witness Bloodstock boys, gave it to me as a present after buying a mare for them (Streetcar Stella) for $125,000 in foal to I Am Invincible and the foal out of that mare made $1.5 million at Easter (in 2017).”
Mills also part-owns Atlantic Jewel Stakes (Listed, 1200m) winner Night Raid (Vancouver), who was unplaced in the Thousand Guineas.
Also trained by Price and Kent, she will be spelled and kept to sprint distances next campaign.