MAGIC MEMORIES

WRITTEN BY TREVOR MARSHALLSEA

SOMETIMES YOU CAN PAY A BARGAIN BASEMENT PRICE AND BUY A CHAMPION. AT OTHERS YOU MIGHT PAY MILLIONS AND END UP WITH A SNAAFI DANCER.

It seems the second scenario can apply to accommodation as well – even on the Gold Coast - as the men from Rosemont Stud and their “party whip” Peter Moody found in a misadventure which will be remembered, with much discomfort, for some time to come.

“We call it the Great Magic Millions 2020 Accommodation Fiasco,” says Rosemont principal Anthony Mithen, a man never stuck for a catchy headline as a former journalist who started that previous life not far from his stud at the Geelong Advertiser.

Rosemont would traditionally send a team to the Coast comprising Mithen, his brother, general manager Ted, and bloodstock GM Ryan McEvoy. A few years back they also roped in Moody, who teamed with the stud during his hiatus from training. The larger-thanlife Queenslander, back in his home state, was “a great addition to vibe of the house”, says Mithen, reporting the team “always had loads of fun and plenty of banter”.

Those times were always had in some “quite luxurious houses” over the years. But in 2020, all that went bizarrely, and shockingly, pear-shaped. Though

they’d booked through a luxury accommodation site, somehow this unloved nag of a joint had sneaked into the stable. There was a basement feel alright, but no bargain.

“We’d been really looking forward to enjoying similar trips as we’d had in the past with a bit of camaraderie and a great horse sale,” Mithen says. “But this place looked like some dive in Pakistan where a terrorist might hide out.

“There was concrete everywhere, broken tiles; one bedroom smelled like vomit. It looked like there’d been mice and rats through the place because you could see plenty of what they leave behind. There was a pergola out the back, but it had holes in it. It was just a shambles. And we were looking at 10 days of this.”

Moody had already performed what had become his traditional task – the shopping. The man who once traded a training prize of a year’s supply of champagne with a year’s supply of his state’s native nectar – XXXX Gold – had duly filled the fridge.

“To be fair there was also Coke, and some other necessities like salami, tasty cheese, and … no, that was about it,” Mithen says.

There was no caviar, black or otherwise. In fact this felt light years removed from those heady days, with the trainer’s haul barely lifting the mood.

“We sat under the pergola having a beer, and considered our plight,” Mithen says. “Then it started raining, and we were getting wet through the holes.”

Enough was enough. Phones were quickly swung into action. “Anyone, everyone, who might have had some accommodation was called or texted. But how were we gonna go finding a place at such short notice on the Gold Coast in peak holiday season? We were three wide and, with the rain pouring through the pergola, literally without cover.”

The previous day – while staying a night at a comfortable hotel as he waited for Rosemont’s rented house to be, err, prepared – he’d played golf with Gerry Harvey and Hamish McLachlan. The TV personality, an old friend of Mithen’s from the media world, had been “gloating and quick cocky actually about the fact he was staying at the best place in town, an apartment right on the beach”.

Now, down to his last chance, Mithen felt he might as well go straight to the top, and called Harvey.

“He was sympathetic to the cause, and he was very concerned about Moods, because most people know that when Moods gets grumpy, look out,” Mithen laughs. “And I reckon that meant Gerry was concerned for me, having to spend the next 10 days with a grumpy Pete Moody.”

The big Queenslander had some form, too, as a tenant not easy to ignore. On his first ever night in England, when in Newmarket with Magnus, he locked himself out of his rented flat. That’s not such a problem, on face value, but after a deeply jetlagged 4am bathroom visit, he’d gone through a wrong door and found himself trapped in the hallway - stark naked. This came much to the bemusement of the young couple next door who came to his rescue, with Moody’s modesty preserved only by a previous day’s tabloid found in the corridor, in a classic case of being saved by the late Mail.

“Anyway,” Mithen continues, “the call was a masterstroke. Gerry rang Katie (Page), Katie rang me, and within an hour we were supping pina coladas on the sixth floor balcony of her beautiful apartment block, staying in a four-bedroom beachside mansion!”

Mithen discovered another compelling feature about the place, a neighbour elsewhere in the building.

“We could look down on Hamish McLachlan, which, I have to say, gave me a great deal of satisfaction,” says Mithen, reporting the “unbelievable generosity” of the Magic Millions bosses was repaid in kind, via a hefty outlay at the sales.

That goodwill seems to be coming back for another turn. One of those purchases has become Brereton, the Moody-trained colt (named after Dermot Brereton) who hinted at a bright future with his win in the Maribyrnong Stakes in November. Another, the promising Waterhouse-Bott trained Quinlan (named after another AFL star in Bernie Quinlan), came from Gerry Harvey’s own draft.

“So some payback went on,” Mithen says, “but I’ll never be able to repay the generosity of Katie being able to put us in her apartment.”

What goes around comes around. But what became of the owners of that “luxury” rental house/terrorist bolthole remains a mystery.

ASK ANY VENDOR ABOUT THEIR FAVOURITE PLACE TO CELEBRATE A MAJOR SALE ON THE GOLD COAST AND YOU’RE NOT LIKELY TO HEAR A RESPONSE OF “IN THE BACK OF AN AMBULANCE”.

But that was where veteran Darling Downs breeder Mary Lee Trivett found herself after the windfall of her life.

The colourful Trivett was in her late 60s when she and Boutique Thoroughbreds’ Andrew Dunemann bought the mare Phoenix Park – a Melbourne city winner – for $150,000 when carrying her first foal, by Pierro.

The resultant filly was reared by Kenmore Lodge’s Kellie Bond, who, 16 months on, also entered a Pierro colt at the 2020 Magic Millions.

“Kellie had a reserve of $120,000 on hers and we had $150,000 on ours,” Trivett says. “Kellie’s a good judge and she always said our filly was better.

“Her colt went first and she got $425,000 and that’s when I started hyperventilating. Andrew started pacing around saying he should drum up people to bid on ours and I said, ‘I don’t think we’ll need to, mate’. I wasn’t pacing. I was just sitting there, stunned.”

Trivett, whose previous top yearling fetched $220,000, started feeling what she thought was bad indigestion. She went to the office and had a Rennies. Things “settled down a bit” as she waited for her filly’s turn, hoping merely to exceed her reserve.

“The auction went on and the bidding kept going, I just felt like I was about to faint,” she says.

It went double the reserve, then past $400k, broke through the half-million mark, and kept going still. Finally, at $550,000, the filly was knocked down, to Duncan Ramage and trainer Chris Anderson.

Still struggling to settle an hour later, Trivett was chatting to the appropriately named David Chester.

“I said, ‘That nearly gave me a heart attack!’ But then I said, ‘In fact, I don’t feel so good’,” she says.

“David said I should go see the medic. Next minute, I’m being whizzed off to hospital by ambulance, sirens and all!”

Tests cleared Trivett of a heart attack, but she was kept in for six more hours before being discharged around 10pm.

“I went to catch up with everyone but they’d all finished dinner, so I went home,” she says. “It wasn’t a big celebration for me, but I certainly won’t forget the day.”

Trivett, who’ll offer an Almanzor colt this year, hopes that apart from her clean bill of health there’s another good omen about that Pierro filly. Named Very Intoxicating, she carries the same silks of another Magic Millions graduate, Winx.

NOT MANY WOMEN WOULD APPRECIATE A BUMP FROM THEIR HUSBANDS, BUT THERE WERE 28 MILLION REASONS WHY GAI WATERHOUSE WAS GRATEFUL FOR ONE RECEIVED FROM OTHER HALF ROB IN 2007.

The master trainer has many fond memories from decades of Magic Millions sales. And while she may have bought Ha Ha here, one of her funnier stories concerns another of her seven Golden Slipper winners.

The sales, despite the glitz and excitement, are a marathon. And like a Test cricket batsman, you only have to lose concentration for a second and you’re gone.

“You have to have the focus, and not just at the sale itself. It’s sustained for 10 days,” Waterhouse says. “You get up there, you look at the horses, you have your brainstorming; they’re vetted and X-rayed, you’re dealing with your owners, and that’s before the sales even start. It’s a very long and very intense time. You’ve really got to have your wits about you.”

Even Don Bradman got out occasionally. One lengthy afternoon at the 2007 auction, Waterhouse admits, be it through some form of distraction or other reasons, a colt she’d circled before the sale by More Than Ready out of Purespeed came into the ring … and went out again.

“Horses are going through all the time. You might have a dull moment, or someone talks to you and you get distracted. I’m not sure what it was, but the horse got knocked down and I ‘wasn’t there’ and hadn’t put my hand up,” she recalls.

“Then Rob, who also had the running sheet, kicks me under the table and says ‘Pay attention! You like this horse!’”.

Hastily, wits were gathered, and the follow-on enforced. Waterhouse dispatched Rob and Denise Martin of Star Thoroughbreds to accost the breeder, Corumbene Stud’s George Altomonte.

“Denise offered a price, George wouldn’t accept it. He was being quite bullish about what he wanted,” Waterhouse says. “There was a fair bit of haggling and negotiating going on, eventually over a difference of about $10,000. It’s hilarious when you think back.”

Why? Because the colt, eventually prised from Altomonte’s grasp for $130,000, became Sebring. He won Waterhouse the Slipper and the Sires, went within a whisker of sealing the Triple Crown in the Champagne, and was ultimately sold to stud for quite a deal more than his purchase price after winning five of six starts.

“The horse was sold to stud for $28 million!” Waterhouse laughs. “Imagine quibbling over $10,000 for him!

“But it can be exceedingly distracting with people coming and talking to us. Thankfully I work with a great group of people who know when we’re in play and can usher those people to the side until the bidding ceases. But to also have someone like Rob just sitting there can be very useful.”

Waterhouse’s first interaction with Altomonte also sits among her favourite Magic Millions recollections. She was underbidder to him on a $160,000 Snippets filly in 2002.

“I didn’t have an owner lined up but I really liked her. I bid over what I thought I should pay, but I missed out,” she says.

“Rob told me ‘That gentleman over there got her’. So I rushed up and said: ‘I’m the under-bidder, I made you pay that price for her – I should be training her!’

“He said, ‘Jack Denham’s my trainer’. I said, ‘I’m much prettier than Jack!’”

Duly swayed, Altamonte sent Waterhouse the filly. Racing as Hasna, she won the last two legs of the Triple Crown, after placing third in the Slipper.

“It started a beautiful relationship between George and me,” the trainer says.

“But you’ve got to be Johnny on the spot at those sales. You’ve got to be hunting around all the time, looking for the jewel in the crown. It’s hard to find.”

How does one of racing’s most excitable figures compare the thrill of the sale to winning a major race?

“They’re equally exciting but different,” she says.

“When a horse wins a race, we might’ve worked with that horse for 18 months to three or four years. So it’s very much a birthing process.

“But when you buy one, we don’t know what we’re buying. We always believe we’re buying a champion, though of course you don’t know, but there’s always that excitement that it might just be the next Sebring, Vancouver, Pierro, Hasna or Ha Ha.

“But there’s no sale like this one. I like to say it’s where the turf meets the surf, and it’s fabulous.”

IS IT MORE LIKE A DAYS-LONG GAME OF POKER OR A DAZZLING DRAMATIC STAGE SHOW, THIS GLOBALLY UNIQUE YEARLING SALE?

Vin Cox has seen it from both sides and calls it a combination of both, a “perfect storm” of ingredients bringing tension, big money, an international dramatis personae of must-watch people and, of course, superstar thoroughbreds.

“It’s the sum of the parts that makes the total. Everyone plays their little part and creates the theatre and the drama that is Magic Millions,” says Cox, who was MM managing director for eight years before switching to fill that role at Godolphin/Darley in 2018.

The auctioneers, Cox feels, could be excused for thinking they own centre stage. He speaks with authority, having been one for a time, before moving on in what was “probably a relief to buyer and vendor”.

“Just managing the auctioneer’s egos is a job in itself,” he says with a laugh. “They’re a little bit the star of the show.”

It’s like an engrossing film, only the drama plays out over days, laced with plot twists and several major climaxes, each horse a fresh scene. Over there’s another player, a heavy-hitter whose countenance gives nothing away. Another prefers to stand out, possibly from years on a real stage.

“Gai Waterhouse is very theatrical when she’s bidding,” Cox says. “Most buyers like to be quite discreet about what they’re interested in, but she’s very flamboyant, which probably speaks to her days in acting. It comes out in everything she does, including bidding on horses.

“Others, like the Rosemont crew, can get emotional, but most aren’t like that.

“There are people like Duncan Ramage, who are more discreet than flamboyant. Guy Mulcaster is very discreet. If he could sit in a darkened room and bid, he would.

“James Harron is very analytical and very strategic about the way he bids, like with the increments and how far he’ll go. Sometimes he might throw in an unusual increment just to bluff the market, or it might be all-chips-in sort of thing.”

In that regard the auction “really is like a game of poker”, Cox says, in that “it’s about trying to bluff the other buyer out of the market”.

While such auction moves may be universal, Cox firmly believes the Gold Coast MM is unique, and vital for the future.

“What Magic Millions does is bring a whole new generation of stake-holders into the business,” he enthuses.

“Through Magic Millions Racing Women, the wives of a lot of men in the industry are very much engaged. The families come up. The kids, through a cohort of people their same age, get engaged in the sale process, the raceday, in bloodstock generally. It really is the genesis of the future of the industry.

“It’s very much a family affair, more so than other sales.”

What also evolved, during Cox’s time, was the Magic Millions’ transformation “from being a domestic sale to an international giant”, the latest plank of which came with the influx of American buyers, sparked mostly by Teeley Assets’ dispersal of 2014.

“We got a good helping of buyers from America that were enlightened into the strength and depth of our pedigrees, the quality of our bloodstock and the racing product in Australia,” he says. “We’ve always had good European and Asian interest. The Americans had never thought about participating in Australia, but now we have a huge American investment in Australia, and Magic Millions has led the way in that.

“There’s no sale like it in the world.”

THE 2008 MAGIC MILLIONS TWO-YEAR-OLD CLASSIC WAS AN EDITION TO REMEMBER.

For starters, it was held in late March, having been put back due to the Equine Influenza crisis earlier that season.

The first six horses home were fillies, and capping this particular ladies’ day, Clare Lindop was at the head of them as she became the first – and still the only – female jockey to win the race.

The flying Leon Macdonald-trained Augusta Proud had made a mockery of being passed in at the Adelaide sale at just $47,500. With Lindop aboard she won her first five starts, capped by Morphettville’s MM 2YO Classic, before heading to Queensland.

“It felt like being in a football team, just winning and winning and then you’re off to the grand final,” Lindop recalls. “It was great to be involved. It was a great group of owners from Port Augusta – hence the name – and Leon was from Port Augusta as well.”

Lindop was the first Australian female jockey to ride in a Melbourne Cup, the first to win a Group 1 (Exalted Time, 2006 Adelaide Cup), and the first with a metropolitan premiership, in 2005. But she was blown away with this trip, saying “the whole Gold Coast was Magic Millions crazy”.

Augusta Proud was $5 second-favourite behind Gai Waterhouse and Nash Rawiller’s charge She’s Meaner, at $4.60. Lindop felt she had a good chance, especially from barrier two, but was “a little nervous”. She’d had four earlier rides and finished 11th or worse. She was away from home turf, unfamiliar with her rival jockeys, was “more comfortable racing in our direction” and feared her filly would be too.

Still, Augusta Proud travelled sweetly behind the pace on the fence. Around the turn, Lindop moved towards the outside but that passage was slammed shut.

“In those big sprint races, there’s no time to think. It’s all instinct. I thought, ‘The outside didn’t work, just go back inside and keep on riding’,” she says.

With 200m left, Rawiller and She’s Meaner were nearly three lengths in front, but with some astonishing manoeuvrability Augusta Proud speared back to the fence and kept charging, ultimately claiming victory with the last bob of the head.

“I did enjoy beating Nash. He’s such a hard competitor. But he looked across and said, ‘Good on ya, Clare’. He was first to congratulate me,” says Lindop, who may only have grasped the full significance years later.

“My mantra was always ‘I’m a jockey, not a female jockey’,” the now retired rider says. “But later, to be recognised like that does start to feel special. You connect the dots and realise that me achieving to X-level allowed the next wave of girls to come through.

“I wasn’t that much into waving the girl flag but I am pretty proud of it, being the only girl to win the race.”