Spendthrift hoping for dream Slipper send off
When in 2015 US breeding operation Spendthrift Farm decided to go the whole hog on their Australian journey, purchasing Yallambee Stud in Victoria, their remit – in addition to hosting the US shuttle stallions – like any successful commercial stud farm would have been to breed big-race winners, buy big-race winners and create stallions to sire big-race winners.
The Kentucky stud founded by the late B. Wayne Hughes may be departing Australian shores, but today it has the opportunity to do so with a tick in at least one of the boxes of those three objectives – and on the biggest stage of all.
This year’s running of the Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) features two prospects in which Spendthrift has an invested interest. Capitalist (Written Tycoon) colt Sebonack will wear the orange and purple-quartered silks of their late founder having been purchased for $260,000 at last year’s Inglis Easter sale, while the OTI-raced Lady Laguna, a filly Spendthrift Farm bred by their resident first-season stallion Overshare (I Am Invincible), runs for Annabel Neasham.
“To win a Slipper would mean anything to anybody, really, and we’re no different, even in our current situation,” stud manager Garry Cuddy told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“At the end of the day, the Slipper is the pinnacle as far as I’m concerned, and to have two tickets in the raffle is an unbelievable achievement by the farm.
“We’re still working out which one we’re going for the most, but if either of them wins we’ll be very, very happy.
“You look at it and go, we purchased Lady Laguna’s father as a yearling and he ended up on the roster as a stallion and here he is with his first crop and a Slipper runner. But I’ll sit on the fence and say I’m definitely going for both of them and I think both mean as much as each other.”
The decision was taken to close the Australian arm of Spendthrift in December last year, and in the near seven years of operation Spendthrift has sourced three of their rostered stallions as yearlings, with Group 2 winner Dirty Work (Written Tycoon) in 2021 joining foundation stallion Swear (Redoute’s Choice) and Overshare as pride of place in Victoria.
Overshare, a winner of the Zeditave Stakes (Gr 3, 1200m) at three, was a $320,000 purchase from the Inglis Easter sale in 2016, while Lady Laguna’s dam, New Zealand winner Catalina De Lago (Encosta De Lago), herself a half-sister to Group 2 winner She Will Be Loved (Strategic) and stakes placegetters Mya (Desert King) and Thorn Dancer (Thorn Park), was a $230,000 buy for Spendthrift in 2018.
Should Lady Laguna, a filly picked out of the Spendthrift paddocks for OTI Racing at a cost of $20,000, win today’s Golden Slipper, the stallion will become the third first-season sire in four years to sire a Slipper winner from their first crop.
“At the end of the day, we’ve always said we put stallions onto our roster the hard way. Which is going to the sales, buying them as yearlings and racing them and then ending up on the roster,” Cuddy said.
“So to get to this point with him, with his first crop of two-year-olds in which he’s had three runners, that combined have had six starts for two city wins, two stakes placings and two city placings, so he can’t be doing too much more than that at this stage of his career.”
Victory would also make Overshare one of the most sought-after commodities in Australia, with his future place at stud uncertain in the wake of Spendthrift’s exit from Victoria and no stud deal currently in place.
“If he happened to sire the Golden Slipper winner and my phone isn’t ringing off the hook on Saturday afternoon, people maybe weren’t paying attention,” Cuddy joked.
Chairman’s Stakes (Gr 3, 1200m) winner Sebonack, trained by Team Hawkes, arrives at Rosehill off the back of a fourth-placed finish in the Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) at Caulfield last month, while Lady Laguna, a two-time winner pre-Christmas, finished third behind Fireburn (Rebel Dane) in the Sweet Embrace Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m) on a rain-affected track at Randwick on February 26.
“It’s a very, very open race. We were at the breakfast the other morning and everybody thought they could win and they all thought that five other horses could win,” Cuddy said.
“That Sweet Embrace was run on a ‘Heavy 20’ and Fireburn got through it best and she’s a high-class filly. She’s Extreme ran second and then turned up and got the job done in the Magic Night, so of the fillies’ form in Sydney, that’s the group that Lady Laguna sits in.
“Hopefully she can improve on her Sweet Embrace performance, but I don’t think she was as comfortable on the track at all that day. She was favourite to beat those horses that day, well, we’re going to have a better track than that tomorrow, so hopefully she’s in the mix.
“She’s bred to be a racehorse, but she’s not bred to be a swimmer.”