Miss Chenery
Pretty much nobody knew the name on the buyers’ list at Inglis Easter 2022 who had ventured into the unknown by purchasing Lot 189, a filly by Justify (Scat Daddy), who, while a Triple Crown winner in the US, was then still tarred with the brush of anonymity that comes with that question mark tag “first season sire”.
Bred by Victorian Robert McClure’s Morning Rise Stud, an associate of Justify’s place of residence Coolmore, the filly went to the dreamy sounding “Summerland Farm”. It was not a name readily familiar, but at $180,000 it was no big deal, and then the next yearling walked out …
On day two, however, things took a turn, when the same name bobbed up as the buyer of Lot 265. This was a supremely bred filly, from the Yarraman Park draft, by I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit) out of the triple Group 1 winning mare Lucia Valentina (Savabeel), and the price was a far more significant $650,000.
Now this was newsworthy. It was decided your correspondent should seek out this Summerland Farm and get to the bottom of things. Only problem was, still no one knew who he or she or it was. Several people were asked, who all returned the same considered shrug of the shoulders. It took going to the virtual top – Sebastian Hutch, Inglis’s CEO of bloodstock sales – who, finally, pointed to a little man in a green shirt in the front row.
One thing you learn covering yearling sales is you don’t judge a buyer by his cover. That old bloke shuffling around in a brown jumper and grubby jeans, where it might only be the stains that are holding them together, he’s got a farm the size of Tasmania and he’s worth squillions.
Vince O’Connell was sort of in that mould. He wasn’t in the most robust of health, nor the most sartorial of outfits, but he was there to indulge his passion. He told me he’d had pubs in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, but after selling out of them, horses had become his main interest.
It was a lifelong affair begun as a boy in Struggle Street, South Sydney, when he was given a pony to get around on named Betsy. He’d bought the said Summerland Farm, near Kyogle, around 2002, turning the old dairy into primarily a horse property.
He’d bred a few. One was At Witz End (Epaulette), who’d won ten of 57, including two at Doomben, and had three months before this been named the Far North Coast District Racing Association’s Horse of the Year.
O’Connell was excited about his two purchases. The Lucia Valentina was an obvious stand-out. And the Justify was out of a Galileo (Sadler’s Wells) mare named Galizani. Her first five named foals hadn’t done much, but she had won two Listed races in Sydney for Patinack Farm, and was the owner of some more recent – very recent – fabulous history.
Galizani’s half-sister was Mull Over (So You Think), and just three days earlier that mare’s daughter Fireburn (Rebel Dane) had won a second elite-level race in the ATC Sires’ Produce Stakes (Gr 1, 1400m), to follow her more glorious Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) triumph.
O’Connell, the canny old bloke from the bush, was grinning, as he might have said, like a rat with a gold tooth, to get her for $180,000. He said he had some names in mind, for her and the other one, and couldn’t wait to see them race.
Sadly, Vince never did. He’d alluded in our interview to some health issues, and just three months later they took their toll. He passed on, aged 75.
Vince’s only offspring was his then 35-year-old daughter, Allison, or Alli as he called her. A commercial lawyer who counted her dad as her best friend, she was based in Dublin at the time. When her mum Wilma called to say Vince was desperately ill, she booked a flight home next morning. She got the worst text possible as she was walking into Dublin airport.
She made her second trip home in six months. For the first, she’d been at her dad’s side for one of the moments of his life, when At Witz End won his title at that awards night in Ballina. That at least was one of the last nights she spent with her dear dad. This trip home would be far more gruelling.
Despite her deep grief, the lawyer in her at least meant she could step into gear attending to the details of her father’s estate. But there were many other – literally – moving parts.
“I got to the farm, and there were 24 horses running about the place,” Alli tells It’s In The Blood. “On top of that, the farm had become quite run down.”
By her own admission, other than having gone to the track a few times with her dad, Alli had precious little idea about horses – not just those she’d inherited, but horses in general. She had to learn, and fast.
Some parts of that equation were met by the lawyer in her.
“I took photos of each horse, got the Excel spreadsheet happening, and categorised each of them and got the breeding of them written down,” Alli says. “Dad hadn’t had the help of any big–time players – he did it on his own, and it was obvious he’d been getting sick.”
But the city lawyer also had to become the country girl. She rolled up her sleeves and did both.
“I was up about 6.00am feeding the horses, then at night I’d log on back to Ireland and do my lawyer work, from about 6.00pm till 2.00am,” she says.
“We also still have cattle. One day Mum and I had to take 1.5 tonnes of grain and put it into small buckets … to load into the (cattle) feeder. I can’t drive a tractor – though I might have to learn – so we had to do that by hand.”
This tough school went on for six months, but it was clear all the horses couldn’t be kept. Alli called on an old trainer/breaker mate of her dad’s, Greg Bennett, and an old school–friend who coincidentally worked with him, Beau Skerrett, who lived nearby.
“Beau took on some of the horses to get them prepped for sale,” Alli says. “We had six yearlings we sold through Magic Millions online in December, 2022, and we had to move a few others too.”
Eventually, the herd was whittled down to four. Hardly The End (All Too Hard), bred by Vince, went to Dubbo trainer Brett Robb, who’s won three from nine with her. So did Bliss (Sebring), who’s won two of five.
“I really had no idea. Greg Bennett recommended Brett Robb because he said we knew he could trust him, which is great to know when you’re new to it all,” Alli says.
As for her two more expensive fillies, a big city stable seemed appropriate.
“My friends’ dads said Chris Waller was a good trainer, and I should go with him,” she says, with a classic blend of honesty and understatement. “I just emailed him out of the blue. I didn’t quite know how big he was. I said: ‘Hello Mr Waller, My name is Allison, my dad has passed, would you be interested in training these horses?’”
A reply, in the affirmative, came pretty swiftly. A tiny part of it could just be that Alli heard Waller was the under-bidder on the Lucia Valentina, but in any case, he was quickly to the fore.
“Chris actually helped me when we went through all the stock. He got on a video call and we ran through it together. I’m so thankful to him,” she says.
Here came one piece of symmetry. Alli’s colours, inherited from her father, are black and white diamonds and purple sleeves. Waller’s are the same but with black and white checks.
It was soon time for Alli – also thankful to another Kiwi expat Rod Jellyman, a retired lawyer and former colleague who checked on the farm after her return to Dublin – to complete that most delicious step: naming her horses. The stable helped with this as well.
“Chris, and his PA Sophie Baker, told me to name them something that means something to me, and original,” she says, “not just the standard putting two names together like Just a Gal (Justify-Galizani).”
The I Am Invincible-Lucia Valentina is now named I Am Smiling, who’s had three starts for a placing, and is about to hopefully show her best as an autumn three-year-old.
“I never used to smile that much, just because I’m a bit conscious of my smile. But one day Dad said he hoped I’d be smiling one day with one of his horses if he wasn’t around,” Alli says.
The other filly’s name drew some exquisite inspiration: Miss Chenery.
Upon her father’s passing in the US in 1973, Penny Chenery inherited his farm and horses. Most people – including her husband – said she was mad to try to keep it all going, but she toiled tirelessly, under enormous stress, to make it work. She ended up with a rather decent horse, named Secretariat (Bold Ruler).
He of course became one of the greats, winning the Triple Crown, just like Justify. In another wonderful twist to this tale, Justify’s pedigree – and thus Miss Chenery’s – includes two appearances by Secretariat. Best known through the progeny of his daughters, he’s the damsire of Miss Chenery’s fifth sire, Storm Cat (Storm Bird), and comes into Justify’s second dam, as the damsire of A.P. Indy (Seattle Slew).
“It was one of the last films we watched together, Dad and I – Secretariat,” Alli says. “We both loved it. And dad, the old bugger, at one stage we’re looking at Penny Chenery and he says, ‘If anything happens to me, that’ll be you, girl’.
“So I saw a lot of similarities to me and my situation. The only thing I haven’t got is a husband telling me not to do it!”
Owned by Miss Allison O’Connell, trained by Chris Waller, carrying Vince O’Connell’s colours and ridden by Kerrin McEvoy, Miss Chenery came out and won at her third start at Canterbury last Friday night. A daughter of a sire who’s taken quantum leaps since Vince bought her, closely related to a Golden Slipper winner in Fireburn, she’s now worth a good bit more since she’s a city winner.
To Alli, she’s worth a lot more than that. Something unquantifiable.
“The race was a bit of a blur, then when she won I was really happy,” Alli says. “But then when Kerrin brought her back in, I was walking up to the winner’s stall and it all just hit me. I never cry, but it all just came flooding out.
“Kerrin must’ve thought it was a funny sight: it was a Canterbury maiden and Mum and I were carrying on like it was a Group 1! But it was like the culmination of everything that had happened to me with dad. I never got to say goodbye to him, and now here we were. It was a bit like the completion of a circle, but hopefully it’s also just the start of something bigger.
“I might have that in common with Chris – I hear he cries a lot after races! Plus he’s off a dairy farm, and sadly his dad passed away around the same time as mine.
“Chris is a lovely guy. He rang me on Monday and said, ‘Congrats – you must be so proud’. He knows my situation, and knows I want to turn this farm around. I hadn’t actually met him until the Magic Millions this year. I asked him for a slow breaking–in process to learn the ropes! But overall I’ve had to get up to speed very quickly and along with all the tears, I’ve really enjoyed it.
“And that was a big thing on Friday night, too. I felt like I’d won a Group 1. It was like I did it for dad – he’d picked the horse, and here she was winning.
“I could feel dad’s presence, and there was just a feeling of – ‘Alli, you can do this, you can run this thing. I have got what it takes’.”