‘Not for the faint-hearted’: What it’s like to drop $30 million ... in one race
Hard luck stories are easily found on a racecourse but how many of them have cost you $30 million?
When boom colt and short-priced favourite Storm Boy missed the start in the Golden Slipper (1200 metres) at Rosehill a fortnight ago, it didn’t just kill his chances of victory but halved his potential price as a stallion in retirement.
The Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott-trained Storm Boy.Credit: Janie Barrett
Heading into the race, the Magic Millions winner was valued at $30 million and loose change. Win the Slipper, as most expected and tipped and certainly gambled, and his value could have reached as much as $60 million, a world record for a two-year-old.
“It could have been close to that if he won the Golden Slipper,” Coolmore stud manager Tom Magnier confirms. “When he missed the start, we knew the writing was on the wall. The track was a bit slower on the inside. It was unfortunate because Ryan [Moore, the jockey] had no other option but to go there.”
After jumping sluggishly out of barrier two, Storm Boy eventually settled midfield on the rail behind a wall of horses. The horse battled down the straight along the inside rail, and even looked the winner at one point, but fell away to finish third to stablemate Lady of Camelot.
A hush fell over the mounting yard where the horse’s large and varied group of owners stood ashen-faced, trying to process what had happened.
Lady Of Camelot takes out the Golden Slipper ahead of Storm Boy (far left) a fortnight ago.Credit: Getty
But nobody lost as much as Coolmore, which bought a 75 per cent share for $22.5 million in February, with this race – and a lucrative career at stud – in mind.
Such is the madness and mystique of the thoroughbred breeding industry, which is far more sophisticated and bankable than mug punting but just as vulnerable to all the little-big-things that can go wrong with horse, especially capricious two-year-olds.
The slightest of errors, the smallest of misjudgements, or just suffering the hard luck found everywhere in racing, and it can cost millions.
“It’s not for the faint-hearted,” Magnier offers in his thick Irish brogue. “In this game, you’re on top one day but down in the trenches the next. You take the good with the bad, but we’re lucky to be associated with people who understand the game. If everything was a guarantee in horseracing, it would be very controlled – and not very exciting.”
On Saturday, on the first day of The Championships at Royal Randwick, the time-honoured Doncaster Mile is the headline race, but the headline story can be found in the Inglis Sires Produce Stakes (1400 metres).
The horse with the most on the line is Storm Boy, who is again favourite. Victory will salvage many of the millions lost amid the carnage of the Slipper. Another loss in a group 1 race and his stud value could erode even further.
“He’s still the best colt in the land,” Magnier argues. “It was a huge effort for him to finish third. It was a very brave run. We weren’t disappointed.”
That type of perspective only comes from experience.
Tom Magnier with Gai Waterhouse at the Magic Millions Yearling Sale in 2022.Credit: Fairfax
Since the 1850s, Coolmore has been producing and acquiring the best stallions racing has seen, including all-time stud legends Danehill and Galileo. Some of the best mares, too, including Chris Waller’s retired superstar Winx, whose first foal goes to auction on Monday with a record price expected.
Storm Boy is sired by American triple crown champion Justify, who stands in both Australia and the US, and out of the Fastnet Rock mare, Pelican.
“Justify is on his way, if he’s not there already, with the title as the best stallion in the world,” Magnier says. “He’s standing for an astronomical fee in America. People could breed to the horse at a fraction of that in Australia. We haven’t made a final decision on whether Justify will come back to Australia or not.”
Having Justify as a daddy made Storm Boy an attractive buy at last year’s Magic Millions sales on the Gold Coast and the training partnership of Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott snapped him up for $460,000.
Storm Boy gallops to an easy win in a race at Rosehill Gardens in December.Credit: Getty
Ownership of the horse was syndicated but the final 20 per cent was bought by a group of Penrith businessmen after Waterhouse paraded the colt through the beer garden of the Log Cabin pub where she was a guest speaker at a function.
Soon enough, the whispers about Storm Boy started to grow into a dull roar. In the trainers’ hut at Randwick, where Waterhouse and Bott stable him, there was plenty of swooning from rival trainers whenever the colt worked at dawn.
When Waterhouse, who knows a thing or two about preparing two-year-olds, wondered out loud if the colt could be the best juvenile she’s ever trained, more people started to take notice. After Storm Boy won the $3 million Magic Millions 2YO Classic in early January, stud farms started circling.
“That race was the stake in the ground to say that he’s going to be a really serious prospect,” leading bloodstock agent Jim Clarke says. “After that race, there was quite a lot of interest in the horse from a number of different [stud] farms. That was when we started to explore the possibility of selling it. Most of the major scale farms in the country got in contact and wanted to know whether he was going to be sold.”
Robust negotiations between owners, trainers, stud manager and bloodstock agents constantly hum in the background of the thoroughbred industry with everyone wanting their clip, especially when the horse has some serious racing ahead of it as Storm Boy does.
It’s standard practice for most deals involving young horses to include “kicker payments” to each owner.
“What tends to happen is any sale that’s negotiated is done so in a way where the original ownership group that are either selling out of the horse or diluting their interest in the horse gets rewarded for any racecourse performance in the future that has a material impact on the horse’s value as a stallion,” Clarke explains. “If Storm Boy had won the Golden Slipper, it would have moved the needle in a very big way financially for everyone. The decision to agree to sell the horse to Coolmore prior to the Slipper was to decrease the risk for the ownership group in the event that he didn’t win the Slipper.”
Waterhouse wasn’t at the course on Slipper Day, watching instead from her residence in the Southern Highlands with her daughter, Kate, alongside her with a Channel Seven microphone under their noses.
In live footage that has now gone viral, Waterhouse was so focussed on Storm Boy she didn’t notice that Lady of Camelot — “the filly!” — was charging down the centre of the track. It was Waterhouse’s eighth Slipper winner but her laser-sharp focus on the colt demonstrated how much was on the line.
Which makes the Sires on Saturday a critical race for all concerned, not just Coolmore. It is the second leg of the Triple Crown, which also includes last month’s Slipper and the Champagne Stakes on April 20 at Randwick.
Lady of Camelot and Coleman, who finished second in the Slipper, are also in the Sires, but the biggest issue for Storm Boy is the heavy rain that’s fallen in Sydney since Thursday evening.
“He has galloped on soft ground before, but he might need tractor tires this weekend,” Magnier says. “That’s the biggest worry we have.”
It’s another tricky, unpredictable variable that could cost, or make, millions. It’s not faint-hearted.
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