‘I loved his fight and that was important for me at this time in my life’
Emotional Creswick Stakes win for Free To Move’s breeder Smith
Some victories mean more than others and for Leeanne Smith, the breeder of Saturday’s A R Creswick Stakes (Listed, 1200m) winner Free To Move (Unencumbered), the timing and the manner of the little gelding’s performance could not have been better.
The Flemington win of the Ken and Kasey Keys-trained Free To Move, a $101 outsider who Bucklee Stud principal Smith sold for just $8,000 as a yearling, came just days after the death of her mother Lois Smith.
“It certainly came at the right time. My mum passed away earlier in the week, so it did make for a shining light with everything that’s happening at the moment,” Smith said yesterday.
“Watching him win and watching his tenacity to hit the line was incredible. I was very, very happy. I loved his fight and that was important for me at this time in my life.
“I also know how much the horse means to Kasey Keys and definitely that was important because I know what it’s like to love a horse.
“We can all like them, but I know Kasey loves him. He’s very special to her and so that was very special to me also.”
Free To Move is the second last foal out of Canhill (Dangerous), a half-sister to Perth Listed-winning juvenile Western Zip (Zephyr Zip), who Smith bought in 2009 for a paltry $2,000 at the Inglis Great Southern Sale.
Smith said: “She was just my kind of mare. She was a lovely, strong mare and she wasn’t very big. She had a beautiful backend and … her page read okay at the time and she was at the right price.”
So, when a then colt from the second last crop by Three Bridges Thoroughbreds’ Unencumbered (Testa Rossa) went through the Melbourne Gold Yearling Sale in 2019, his price tag did not match the opinion Smith had of the horse.
“I did think that he would bring more money, but the way I looked at it was, he was going to a great stable and that he was staying in Victoria, which initiates Vobis, and he’s been very generous to me with his Vobis,” she said.
“God bless Kasey for putting him in Vobis races. If I ever do sell one for a price that perhaps isn’t quite as much as I would have hoped for, if they stay in Victoria and they get their Vobis bonuses (then I am happy).
“I walked out (of the Oaklands Junction sales ring) and the consolation was that he was going to be in a great stable.”
Free To Move was the fifth individual stakes winner and fourth this season for Unencumbered, whose loss has been exemplified by his string of talented horses to emerge in the past 12 months. He died in March 2018, a year before Canhill also died after producing a filly by Trust In A Gust (Keep The Faith) the previous October.
“She died and is now kicking goals as is Unencumbered, which is always the way,” she said.
“The Liston family did send me a text message this morning congratulating me, which was lovely, and I returned the same. Well done to them, too.”
The fact the Bucklee Farm-bred stakes winner occurred in the A R Creswick Stakes, a race named after Sir Alec Creswick who was the Victoria Racing Club chairman from 1969 to 1977, was not lost on Smith.
“I worked for Bonny Hoysted and he trained a lot of top horses for Sir Alec, which I strapped,” she said.
“It was a bit special because I am still very good friends with Sir Alec’s daughter Sally. Sally lives up here (in north east Victoria) and is only 15 minutes from where I am and we do keep in contact.
“I am absolutely delighted.”
Bucklee Farm, a 70-acre property at Greta West between Benalla and Wangaratta, will offer eight weanlings at the delayed Inglis Great Southern Sale on July 4 and 5, including a Street Boss (Street Cry) colt out of city-winning mare Gwenneth (Reward For Effort) and fillies by Highland Reel (Galileo) and Foxwedge (Fastnet Rock).
It is an important sale for breeders, particularly the Victorians who rely on the cashflow the market provides, and it carries even more weight this year after the 2020 auction was forced online due to the Covid-enforced lockdown of the state.
The Melbourne Gold Sale, where Smith sold Free To Move’s half-sister for just $4,000, also had to be conducted through the Inglis Digital platform.
“After last year with the Gold sale, it was – and I don’t know the right word – for me just horrible when it kept getting bumped back and back and back,” she said.
“In the end, it cost the farm a lot of money. Financially, last year was disastrous.
“I don’t recommend selling yearlings or weanlings (online). You can certainly sell your broodmares because you have got a catalogue page to look at, but to sell a weanling or yearling, and we ourselves being a small farm, we sell on type and that is what we missed out on last year.
“We couldn’t get them in front of the public to see the yearlings, so it’s (great to be getting) the weaners there this year.
“We have a mare selling online in a sale coming up, but your weanlings and your yearlings, they really need to be out there.”
She added: “I have a really, really strong buying bench of people who do come and look at either our weanlings or our yearlings. We’re quite lucky, we have a good strike rate for a little farm.”