A MAGIC MILLIONS STORY: YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE FIRST ACROSS THE LINE TO BE A WINNER

By Graham Potter with Stuart Kendrick | Friday, January 11, 2019

The Magic Millions Two-Year-Old Classic is a race founded on the concept of a chasing a magical dream and winning millions. The chase means different things to different people but, as trainer Stuart Kendrick can tell you, your horse doesn’t have to cross the line first for you to be a winner. Here, Kendrick shares the story of Fullazaboot, a flashy chestnut, who, for an emotionally intense thirteen months … from purchase to his onward sale … took his connections on a ride of lifetime.

“The Magic Millions sale in January is a hard sale to buy at in terms of being able to get a horse you want at a price you want. In 2017 I did manage to buy four or five horses out of that sale and one of them was Fullazaboot.

“I actually had gone around to Gerry Harvey’s barn to have a look at another horse and I just noticed him walking along. He was just one of those horses that took my eye. It happens. He just grabbed me and I went straight to the catalogue.

“I had one of my good owners there with me and I said, what was that horse by? He looked it up and it was a Sepoy. He looked nothing like a Sepoy … you know, a lot of them are sort of short, nuggety, chestnut horses and he was a big bay with white socks and a white blaze. He just looked an athlete.

“We then looked into the pedigree. I heard that his half brother had won a trial and that he went really well. Chris Waller had it. As it turned out that horse was D’Argento who won the Rosehill Guineas and who was one of the star horses over that Spring.

“I was thinking I might get this horse fairly cheap being by Sepoy. I thought if I got him for $50 000 I’d be happy … but I would go to $60 000. To cut a long story short, we he came into the ring they announced that D’Argento had won a trial and I went … oh no … so I had to go to $90 000. I blew the budget a bit but I just kept going!

“I was really happy to have him. It is stressful pushing the budget but every year you have got to do the same thing. If you want nice two-year-olds in the stable for that next year you have got to put your neck on the line every year. You have got to buy the horse and then you’ve got to find some people to jump in with you. That’s the nature of the game.

“You do get people before the sale wanting to come in but a lot of the time there is still plenty of work to do in terms finalising ownership after a purchase.

“In this case I sold shares in Fullazaboot to some good clients … and kept a share in him myself. I like to put my money where my mouth is and we keep shares in the majority of the horses I buy at the sales.

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“The Magic Millions Two-Year-Old Classic is a dream race. It was established on that basis so, like everybody else, you are looking to get into the race if you can but that comes with a whole lot of pressure on its own.

“We got him up. We obviously trialled him. He went really well. We targeted a race in town first-up and it poured with rain. I said to the owners I think this horse is really smart. I think he is a pretty good thing on a dry track but I don’t know if he’ll handle the wet. As it turned out, it was a Heavy 10 and he won by three.

“That set us up nicely for Magic Millions qualification going forward. What we did from there was we gave him one more run. He was very unlucky that day. He got held up, had no luck and flew home for second.

“He was a horse that I always thought would get a mile … especially on the dam side … so I really didn’t want to take that edge off him by giving him another run going into the Magic Millions. I wanted to just give him a little, soft trial … so then qualification became a juggling act with everybody’s prize money going up and down.

“All the time we were waiting in the wings watching the order of entry and trying to decide, do we go again? Do we not go again? In the end we didn’t go again. We had one last, long look at it all, made and assessment and decided to roll the dice and leave things as they were.

“When the dust had settled, Fullazaboot was in the final Magic Millions Two-Year-Old Classic field.

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“Fullazaboot starting price was $101.

“Before the barrier draw we were about $25 or $30, which was still probably a good price we thought, but then we drew the marble which gave us an outside gate … next minute the odds just kept getting out and out and out and out.

“The barrier was the big factor in that price movement. Obviously, it is hard to win from there.

“As it turned out with all of the interference we got smashed even wider.

“When you watch it on the video, the run was phenomenal. To do what he did from where he came from and then to understand that Sunlight, the only horse who beat him home has gone on to be one of the champion three-year-olds as well, puts Fullazaboot’s Millions run into greater perspective.

“To pull the amount of ground we did off those horses was excellent. We didn’t win the race but we felt like we were winners. It was a very special moment.

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“All of these events led to the connections being faced with another tough decision.

“While we were planning our next move … we had the Group I ATC Sires' Produce over 1400m at Randwick in our sights … offers to purchase Fullasaboot began to surface.

“The interest to purchase Fullazaboot started after the Magic Millions and the offers just kept going up and up until it got to the point where we just said it is too good an offer not to take.

“There was still plenty of thought given to it. There was a bit of a mixture of feelings. A few guys didn’t want to sell … but, when we start out, we do formalise an agreement which says that, in any decision, the majority rules so it had to be more than fifty percent in favour for any sale to go through.

“I think the first couple of votes were … no, no … but then, as the other votes came in, it changed and it way it panned out was that we accepted an offer.

“Make no mistake, it was a hard decision because we had also so recently before that sold Ted to Hong Kong. He was renamed Ping Hai Star and he went on to win the Hong Kong Derby for John Size and Ryan Moore, so it was a really hard decision at the time because you really don’t want to sell all of your good horses.

“From a training point of view you don’t want to sell but you have to be realistic and when it gets to a certain price you have to make that call.

“We picked up a couple of hundred thousand in price money at the Millions and with what we had already won plus the purchase offer amount … it made the $90 000 I had to go to when blowing my budget look very cheap."

Selling Fullazaboot brought to a close a highly eventful, very intense but thoroughly enjoyable experience and obviously a very rewarding thirteen or fourteen months for connections … all on the back of a special Magic Millions adventure which shows you don’t have to win the race or spend up too big to come out on top.

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