A double on a Magic day for Fernrigg

Cover image courtesy of Magic Millions

R. Listed Magic Millions 2YO Classic winner Shaquero (Shalaa {Ire}) and Magic Millions Fillies' and Mares winner Krone (Eurozone) both hail from the famous pastures of Fernrigg Farm. The property has also produced dual Group 1 winner Yankee Rose (All American), Group 3 winner Acatour (Sebring) and stakes winners Tawteen (Stratum) and Well Sprung (Star Witness).

Fernrigg owner Rae-Louise Kelly purchased Krone for $30,000 as a weanling at the Magic Millions National Weanling Sale Select Session from the draft of Bell View Park Stud before selling her to Rosemont Stud for double the price as a yearling.

Kelly, who set up her own property after spending five years as the Yearling Manager at Widden Stud, said Krone’s win was a highlight of her career.

“Krone was probably one of our biggest achievements, finding her as a weanling,” she told TDN AusNZ. “She had a pretty successful race career before retiring and then for her to come back and do what she did on Saturday was a great thrill.

“She was a pretty difficult filly to prep, she was always so tough, and we always said that if she wasn’t a good racehorse, she wasn’t going to be anything because she just had that attitude.”

Kelly worked hands-on with 2YO Classic winners Le Chef (Exceed And Excel) and Sunlight (Zoustar) while at Widden, and with Shaquero sold to Guy Mulcaster for $160,000 at last year’s Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale from her own draft at Fernrigg, she said it was a great thrill to add a third winner of the rich race to her resume.

“Coming from Widden, I was there to prep Le Chef and I had Sunlight as a weanling and a yearling and so to have two Magic Millions winners in my time at Widden was pretty incredible,” Kelly said. “But then to have one come out of our own draft in such a short period of time was a dream really.”

Two of the first people to congratulate Kelly after the momentous wins were Widden's Antony Thompson and Coolmore's Tom Magnier, and she said it meant a great deal to have the support of two of the big farms in Australia.

"It's great to have support from people like that and it meant a great deal to us," she said.

Kelly said to have two Magic Millions winners come from her farm was a great advertisement for what she and her husband Padraig Kelly are trying to achieve with their business.

“We’ve always tried to get out there how many good horses have come off the farm and even when we’re pinhooking and things, we want to get across that we don’t do it for massive results in the sale ring, we do it because we want to buy a racehorse and we want to show that we can pick a racehorse from a weanling,” Kelly said.

“To have Krone come out, who we bought as a weanling, we also bought Brazen Beau’s first stakes horse as a weanling as well, so to then have Shaquero come out, it just backs up our motto of the farm that we buy and produce racehorses.”

Buy and produce racehorses

At just the beginning of the year and of the sales season, Kelly said it sets up the business for more positive results as they get set to offer more yearlings at next month's Inglis Classic Sale and the Inglis Easter Sale later in the year.

“It gives us a huge boost going into the rest of the year,” she said. “We’ve had some really great feedback on a lot of the horses that we sold last year and I think in the next month or two we're going to hopefully see some really exciting 2-year-olds hit the track from every draft that we sold last year.

“Moving forward, we’ve got a pretty nice Classic draft this year and even more exciting is we’re coming back with another Easter draft this year, which is highlighted by a Redoute’s Choice filly out of a mare that I also prepped and sold at Widden. So she has kind of done a full-circle and now she’s a resident at Fernrigg which is really exciting.”

Krone stood out to Kelly from day dot, however, her success on the track is a deserved repayment after being a tough case to educate in her sales preparation.

“I think from the minute she got pulled out of the stable (at the sales) and they took her for a walk, we just fell in love with her,” Kelly said. “She just had an unbelievable action, she got her head down and you could say she had the frame and everything to fill out, but I think it was her action that got us more than anything.

“We got her pretty cheap, we thought we would have to pay a little bit more for her but during the prep, it took six weeks to just get her broken into a roller.

“She would throw herself around and she broke countless rollers in half and it got to a stage in the prep where I said to my husband (Padraig) that we’ll try one more week with her and if we can’t get it on, we’re just going to have to stop because it was too close to the Sale.

“And then the penny kind of dropped and then she just started to put all of that energy into her work.

“She wasn’t a horse that you could go and pony pat or that liked being groomed, but if you put her to work, she just knew her business.

“And I actually congratulated Tony Gollan on the weekend and told him that story and he could totally relate to it as well with everything she’s shown him in her work.”

Star qualities

Similarly with Shaquero, Kelly said he was at times difficult when he arrived at the farm to be prepared for the sales but the switch flicked with him and it was evident he had some star qualities.

“He came to us just before the prep and he was always quite a headstrong colt,” Kelly said. “He knew what he could get away with and we had to keep the more experienced people on him because he knew how to work everybody.

“He would only do what he had to do but when he bonded with somebody and it really clicked, you saw a real star side of him, even in parades.

“He had one guy parade him the whole time and he really walked out and you could see that he was an athlete and luckily he fell into the right hands.

“His improvement over the three months that he was at Fernrigg was very impressive, he turned the corner completely.”

For this year’s Magic Millions Sale, Fernrigg Farm offered a draft 18 yearlings with 15 of them finding new homes and Kelly said she came away from the Gold Coast with mixed feelings.

“We had some really nice horses up there but we did have a bit of a tough week,” she said. “We got 15 out of 18 sold and they all went into the right stables and were bought by the right people.

“I think going off our latest results on the race track, people know you can buy a tough racehorse from Fernrigg without having to pay top dollar.”

Attention on Classic

Now she turns her attention to the Inglis Classic Sale where Fernrigg will offer their strongest draft of 11 yearlings, and Kelly believes they should have a good week.

“I think the Sale should be pretty strong,” she said. “Inglis does a really good job of putting together a quality catalogue and we’re probably going there with a stronger draft than we have before.

“There are some well-related colts there, we’ve got a half to Hydro Star (Lot 610) who also put in a really good performance on Saturday and there’s a couple of really good fillies by the right stallions.

“We’re going to meet the market as we have done since Day 1 and hopefully we’ll get the horses into the right stables.”

Kelly picked out two highlights from Fernrigg’s Classic Sale draft in Lot 431, A Zoustar filly out of Ziptomylu (USA) (City Zip {USA}), and Lot 79, a filly by Capitalist out of La Llorona (Choisir).

“The Zoustar filly, we sold the Not A Single Doubt half-sibling at Magic Millions last year and it will make an appearance in the next couple of weeks but she’s just a really forward, balanced filly,” Kelly said.

“The Capitalist filly out of La Llorona, Peter Moody has the 2-year-old and it trialled second behind Mick Price’s good 2-year-old Profiteer who went on to win it’s first start at Flemington. She has probably got a bit more size and scope to what the colt had but Capitalist is doing the job as well so she’s really exciting.”