Need Some Luck
It might seem a little odd to speak of a run of terrible luck with a mare who’s thrown three stakes winners, but the story of Lovely Jubbly (Lion Hunter) and her offspring is not your usual one.
The 26-year-old is the dam of Chautauqua (Encosta De Lago), the 12-time stakes winner including six at Group 1 level.
She’s the mother of London Lolly (Charge Forward), a mare who – also trained by Team Hawkes – won an Adelaide Group 3 and a Moonee Valley Listed.
And now she has a third black type victor, with the very deliberately named Need Some Luck (Rubick) taking Saturday’s Fisher Stakes (Listed, 1200m) at Flemington for Peter Snowden.
Three stakes winners from 12 foals. Imagine how she’d have gone if things had gone more her way.
Grey like her father, Lovely Jubly was bought at Magic Millions Gold Coast in 2001 by the late Newcastle-region trainer David Throsby. He had his Woodbury breeding enterprise just outside Maitland, and had a shopping style many a man would admire.
“He went to buy a Lion Hunter because he liked the stallion. And he liked the fact her mother was out of a Vice Regal mare,” says his daughter Edwina, who has carried on the Woodbury breeding operation since David’s death some 13 years ago.
“So he went to buy one horse. He walked in, bought her, and walked out. Was there for about ten minutes. He was very good at identifying good horses.”
Bred by Queensland’s Carnation Lodge, out of multiple Sydney and Brisbane city winner Jaboulet (Vice Regal), the filly had a half-brother in miler Sir Howard (Alannon) who’d already won one of his two Group races in New Zealand, and had three months earlier run third in the prestigious Captain Cook Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m).
Yet David Throsby purchased her for just $36,000. Partly that was because Lion Hunter (Danehill) was a first season sire, but it was a prescient move to buy from the maiden crop that would make him Australia’s champion first season sire of 2001-02.
Throsby had bought well. He trained Lovely Jubly in a stellar first season, in which she took the rich Magic Millions 2YO Classic (RL, 1200m) on the Gold Coast and a Doomben Group 3, before the Brisbane top-tier double of the then-Group 1 Sires Produce Stakes (1400m) and the TJ Smith Stakes (1600m), which is now the JJ Atkins.
Lovely Jubly, who went to other stables after that first season, added a Caulfield Listed for Brian Mayfield-Smith before retiring with seven wins and five minors from 19 starts, and a very good for back then total of almost $1.5 million in prize-money.
She went to the breeding barn and, as mentioned, it’s been a tale of highs and lows.
Yes, she threw Chautauqua and two other stakes winners, but some other misfortune dogged her.
“She’s probably been one of the most unlucky mares to have produced good horses, you’d have to say,” Edwina Throsby tells It’s In The Blood.
“She’s had 14 foals. Seven of them have died, out of some terrible luck. There were some good ones amongst them too, but they just had freakish things happen to them.”
John Hawkes was sent Lovely Jubly’s first foal, Cravings (Encosta De Lago). He was a city winner, but was then gelded, it led to an infection, and he had to be euthanised.
Four foals later came You Got The Love (More Than Ready). Also with Hawkes, he ran second at Rosehill at his second start, then went into the sand roll, got too close to the gate, badly cut his leg and couldn’t be saved.
There are others, but you get the picture.
Amidst all this bad luck came a piece of serendipity.
Looking for a sixth mating for Lovely Jubly, the Throsbys had been mulling a return to Encosta De Lago (Fairy King). Coincidentally, he’d been raced by David’s brother Joe, but by 2009 he was a super successful sire standing at Coolmore for $220,000.
Thankfully, a charity auction arose – raising money for the Victorian Bushfire Appeal – in which a service from Encosta was the prize.
“At the time dad had said it was too much money to go back to Encosta De Lago, but I convinced him to spend the money in the auction,” Edwina says. “It was going to a good cause, so that got him over the line.”
The result was another grey – Chautauqua – the sprinter who, sadly after David Throsby’s passing, would become the number one progeny among 26 Group 1 winners in the storied stud history of Encosta De Lagol.
He also represented another twist of luck.
“I’ve kept 13 of Lovely Jubly’s 14 foals, and sold only one,” Edwina says. “You can probably guess which one.”
It’s true, after a private sale, all $8.76 million of Chautauqua’s earnings went to other people, primarily another grey named Rupert Legh.
Chautauqua was of course a hugely charismatic performer, stopping hearts by settling so far back, unwinding finishing bursts perhaps not seen since Bernborough (Emborough).
And his racing career ended equally unforgettably, when he started simply refusing to leave the starting stalls. When he’d done this in six barrier trials in quick succession in 2018, retirement came.
For that personality, we have his mother to thank.
“Chautauqua and Lovely Jubly were son and mother but they were twins really – very similar,” Throsby says. “And Need Some Luck is probably the closest to the pair of them in the family, personality wise.
“Lovely Jubly was pretty headstrong – still is, aged 26! I’ve still got her at home, and if she doesn’t want to be caught, you can’t catch her. She’ll do what she wants to do. She’s still roaming the beautiful paddocks with the siblings I’ve retained that have retired, and she’s enjoying life. She is the boss though.”
After Chautauqua’s year-older half-sister London Lolly, more bad luck – or bad ability – continued to pepper Lovely Jubly’s breeding story until in 2019, Throsby devised a final mating for the old grey mare, who by then was 20.
Keen to try for another Chautauqua, but with Encosta De Lago five years retired, she opted for a son of his who was standing at Coolmore at the time, Rubick.
“It took me 14 goes to realise what worked,” she says. “As a breeder you try to get it right. It’s a bit of a guessing game, but the Encosta De Lago cross had worked the best, so I went down that line.”
The colt arrived, Throsby would retain this one and send him to Snowden. She just needed a name.
“It was going to be Lovely Jubly’s last foal. I thought about calling him ‘Lucky Last’, but then I couldn’t do that to him. What if he kept finishing last?” She says.
“But I thought ‘Need Some Luck’ summed everything up. We were due for some. So far, it’s working.”
Now a lightly-raced five-year-old gelding, Need Some Luck has been a model of consistency, with six wins and seven placings from 15 starts.
He graduated to stakes grade last Brisbane winter, and ran second both times, in Listed class. But if that raised fears of more frustration, they were allayed with his powerful 1.75 length win in that grade at Flemington, on a Heavy 8.
“I’m thrilled to have another stakes winner out of the mare,” Throsby says. “He’s been well trained and well placed and will only get better.
“My dream would be to win a Group 1 with him of course, though that’s very hard to do. But the more I watch Saturday’s win, the better it looks. He likes the soft tracks, but Brisbane’s tracks were very hard in the winter.
“But it’s all about maturity for him. It’s up to him. He’s got the ability.”
Putting Lovely Jubly to Rubick – as opposed to Encosta De Lago – resulted in Need Some Luck carrying double Danehill (Danzig). It’s also in the least-preferred way, statistically, as a double male at 4m x 3m – via Rubick’s damsire Rock Of Gibraltar (Danehill) and Lovely Jubly’s second sire – though it doesn’t seem to have blunted him much.
The only other bit of inbreeding comes from his two sirelines of Northern Dancer (Nearctic), at 4m x 5m. Overall, the great stallion is there in ample portions at 4m, 7f, 6m, 6m, 6m x 5m, with just the one spot in the bottom half.
Northern Dancer’s blue hen dam Natalma (Native Dancer) is the most-repeated female, with eight mentions mostly in the seventh remove and all bar one on Rubick’s side. Selene (Chaucer) has seven spots, again with only one of them coming in the dam’s half.
Hyperion (Gainsborough) is the dominant sire, with 15 mentions.
What also stands out about the pedigree is the longevity of its tail female line. The last four generations span 64 years! Mostly it’s because fourth dam Mordello (Copenhagen) was 18 when she had third dam Avadell (In The Purple), and Lovely Jubly was 21 when she threw Need Some Luck.
Time has moved on elsewhere. Chautauqua entered a new career in the show world. Rubick went to Victoria’s Swettenham Stud for a few seasons but – with successful sire sons of Encosta De Lago thin on the ground – he’s now doing his best in China.
Lovely Jubly stopped breeding after Need Some Luck was born in 2020, though Throsby wonders if she underestimated her.
“Looking at her now, I probably retired her too early, really,” she says. “But I thought she’d done enough. Three stakes winners is pretty good, but she might have had more, but for that bad luck.”
Throsby is breeding from a couple of her daughters, however, including London Lolly. She’s had a Sydney city winner in All England (I Am Invincible), and now has a yearling Zoustar (Northern Meteor) filly Throsby is very excited about, and a filly foal by State Of Rest (Starspangledbanner).