Just Feelin’ Lucky
Here’s something you don’t see every day: Nine-year-old jockeys.
But the subject provides a historical link for two of the most famous families in Australian racing – the Woottons and the Freedmans.
Back in 1902, trainer Richard “Dick” Wootton took umbrage with Australian racing authorities when they wouldn’t let his son Frank ride professionally in races because – of all things – he was nine years old. That made him just the five years short of the Australian Jockey Club’s age limit.
Wootton harumphed and chuntered, called the law an ass, and fled this nanny state that wouldn’t let fourth-graders loose against men in a field of 65kmph thoroughbreds. He headed to a frontier land where men could be men and boys could be jockeys – South Africa. He took Frank, his other son Stanley and a string of horses with him.
“After a while they needed a heavier jockey,” Stanley’s daughter Catherine Remond told It’s In The Blood. “So they called on Billy McLachlan from Australia. He went to South Africa and lived with them and was their heavyweight jockey for a while.”
She added: “Frank is in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s youngest professional jockey. And that will never be broken now of course.”
According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, the family returned to Sydney in 1906, but with December-born Frank still only 13 and still not allowed to ride, Dick got the hump again, and uprooted the family to England. What’s more, to remind him of home, the old curmudgeon bloody well took a kangaroo and an emu with him.
Frank quickly made a name for himself, and was England’s champion jockey from 1909-12 – all before his 19th birthday – earning the nickname of “Wonderboy”.
Dick was England’s leading flat trainer in 1913. He returned to Sydney around 1921 and bought property including the Doncaster Hotel, now in the hands of Newhaven Park’s Kelly family.
Meanwhile, Billy “Midge” McLachlan, turned out to be the great-grandfather of the modern Freedman training brothers.
And 120 years after they were united in South Africa, the two families were linked in winning style again at Eagle Farm last Saturday when Just Feelin’ Lucky (Justify) – trained by the youngest of those Freedman brothers in Michael, and bred by Remond – won Eagle Farm’s Gunsynd Classic (Gr 3, 1600m).
Sold by Sydney-based Remond from Ashleigh Thoroughbreds’ draft to James Bester Bloodstock for just $80,000 from Book 1 at Magic Millions Gold Coast in 2023, the three-year-old filly is looking handy, now winning four of eight starts alongside two seconds.
She could be the latest star performer from an illustrious family of her own, one that’s been in the Wootton empire for generations.
Remond’s father Stan Wootton of course became a pillar of Australian breeding, though still based at Epsom in England, where he was a successful trainer. He sent breeding stock to Australia including the stallion who became one of the greatest names in the country’s breeding history – Star Kingdom (Stardust) – who he’d purchased with fellow breeders Alf Ellison and Reg Moses.
Star Kingdom stood at the farm Ellison founded – Baramul Stud – which later belonged to Sir Tristan Antico and, now, Gerry Harvey.
After Stan Wootton died in 1986, Ellison picked out five of his mares that Remond should keep. She has continued her family’s dynasty, though these mares were just about the only things in the realm of breeding that trickled down to her from her father, who was a bit old school like his dad.
“He didn’t pass much down to me, because he thought women shouldn’t be involved in racing. He thought it was a man’s world,” Remond said.
“But one thing I know is he never bought expensive mares. A couple of my mares that I have now weren’t expensive mares, but they’ll turn out to do something good for me I hope.”
After her father’s death, Remond soon began to show this was a woman’s world too.
In 1987, she put one of the five mares Ellison had picked out for her, Biscarina (Biscay), to American-bred sire Salieri (Accipiter). The resultant grey colt became the eight-time Group 1 winner – for Freedman brothers kingpin Lee – in Schillaci.
Another of the quintet was dual city winner Extradite (Bletchingly). A 1982 daughter of a mare Stan Wootton sent from England in the early 1970s in Expulsion (Infatuation), Extradite started the powerhouse Remond-bred line that leads to Just Feelin’ Lucky, as her fourth dam.
For her first move with Extradite in 1986, just a few months after she acquired her, Remond also succeeded by putting the mare to Twig Moss (Luthier). This produced Twiglet, a triple black type winner who took the VRC Edward Manifold Stakes (Gr 2, 1600m) and the Matron Stakes (Gr 3, 1600m), before it was black type. She’s also Just Feelin’ Lucky’s third dam.
Two foals after Twiglet, Extradite also threw Facile (Godswalk), which seems a good name for a horse of any gender. This Facile, a gelding, won a Group 3 and two Listed races in the early 1990s. Then last year, the only other Facile in the studbook – the daughter of Trapeze Artist (Snitzel) trained by Gerald Ryan and Sterling Alexiou – won the ATC PJ Bell Stakes (Gr 3, 1200m).
Twiglet performed even better at stud than on the track, with Remond breeding two Group 1 winners as her third and fourth foals in dual Hong Kong Horse of the Year Fairy King Prawn (Danehill) and VRC Salinger Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) hero Easy Rocking (Barathea).
Easy Rocking became a sire of 12 stakes winners, at Wattlebrae Stud, where, coincidentally, this family’s emu links bobbed up again. In a well-known story in Queensland breeding, an emu chick wandered into Easy Rocking’s paddock one day. The pair became inseparable, and eventually made quite the sight – a handsome thoroughbred stallion and his six-foot emu mate.
Back to four legs, five foals after Easy Rocking the redoubtable Twiglet – who threw 14 in total – bore Fairy King Prawn’s full-sister, Crevette in 2002, by which time Danehill (Danzig) belonged solely to Coolmore.
“None of the mares in this family are very big,” Remond said. “They’re compact and strong, so you have to find a decent-sized stallion for them, as Danehill was.”
Crevette won three Listed events in 2005 then produced another elite victor for the family. Her fourth foal Cosmic Endeavour (Northern Meteor) claimed the ATC Canterbury Stakes (Gr 1, 1300m) of 2015, and Eagle Farm’s Tatts Tiara (Gr 1, 1400m), as well as a pair of Group 2s.
Twiglet also threw city winner Pimpinella (Flying Spur), and from her the Remond-bred Anise (General Nediym). Bought as a yearling by Darley, Anise won the Kindergarten Stakes (Gr 3, 1100m) and bore Darley the stakes-winning filly Troach (Epaulette).
Crevette, a mother of eight, is now Just Feelin’ Lucky’s second dam, having been put to Coolmore’s Pierro (Lonhro) for her second-last throw, the filly’s mother Phylicia.
This mare broke the chain in that she struggled on the track, with her highlight among six starts being a third at Taree (incidentally the birthplace of Dick Wootton). But she was never going to leave Remond’s grasp, and now she’s rewarded her with another stakes winner.
“Phylicia had a few problems. We thought she had potential but she never won a race,” Remond said.
“But I was never going to sell her or get rid of her because I like to keep going with that family, so it was well worth keeping her.”
Michael Freedman and Just Feelin’ Lucky’s team of 13 owners, who still include Bester, can be thankful.
Here’s something else you don’t see often: A completely “clean slate” pedigree, with no repetitions in the first five generations.
That’s what Just Feelin’ Lucky has, after Remond put the very Australian Phylicia to Coolmore shuttler Justify (Scat Daddy) in his second southern season to produce the filly.
It’s an arresting sight. Usually you can bank on at least someone appearing twice – surely a Northern Dancer (Nearctic) or another usual suspect. But no, the board is completely clear, with 62 different names filling the first five columns.
“It is unusual, and quite interesting,” said Remond. “I haven’t done it much before, or even seen it much before.
“I don’t like in-breeding in close, but this wasn’t by design.”
Digging deeper into Just Feelin’ Lucky’s pedigree, the repetitions do start appearing, and there’s one that could be particularly influential which is unusual in its own way.
It’s the breed-shaping Mr Prospector (Raise A Native), who’s spread far and wide, at 6f, 4f, 7f, 6f x 6m, 7m – and through six different offspring, no less.
Though born in 1970, he’s there as recently as the fourth generation thanks to helping conceive Love Style – dam of Justify’s sire Scat Daddy (Johannesburg) – at the grand old age of 28. Mr Prospector sired a restricted crop that year – but it was still only his second-last.
In contrast, the great stallion’s two seventh generation appearances come thanks to successions of horses born of parents when they were at far younger ages.
He comes into Justify’s dam’s side through births at eight, nine, seven, six, seven and eight years, with Justify siring Just Feelin’ Lucky when aged six.
And Mr Prospector’s seventh remote appearance in the bottom half – flowing into Pierro’s damsire – comes via births at eight, 11, five, nine, six and five, with Phylicia bearing Just Feelin’ Lucky at seven.
Aside from Mr. Prospector, Northern Dancer does finally start duplicating a few removes back, coming in nine times in total from generations five to nine, usefully through six different offspring. This includes sparking Justify’s sireline through Storm Bird-Storm Cat-Hennessy-Johannesburg-Scat Daddy, and into that of second dam Crevette via Danzig-Danehill.
However you dice it up, the mating appears to have worked wonderfully.
Justify was unproven at the time, but Remond chose the robust US Triple Crown winner mostly on his imposing type.
“I have to breed commercially, so I have to pick something that would suit the mare. Plus Justify seemed to be a popular stallion at that time,” said Remond, who these days still has five mares, who she keeps at Emirates Park.
“I was always going to sell the filly, because I need to sell a couple to keep the others going. But she wasn’t a very strong yearling, she was quite underdone, so that probably dragged her down a bit.
“Phylicia doesn’t have yearlings who do well at places like the Magic Millions [Gold Coast] yearling sale because they’re not advanced enough at that stage; they take a bit longer to mature.”
On that note, Phylicia’s subsequent foal, a colt by Coolmore’s Acrobat (Fastnet Rock), fetched $70,000 at Inglis’s HTBA Yearling Sale last month, bought by John Foote. Remond now has a weanling full-brother to Just Feelin’ Lucky, who she’ll be selling next year.
Just Feelin’ Lucky became the ninth Australian stakes winner from 134 runners here for Coolmore’s former shuttler Justify, who stands for that empire in the US for $250,000 (approx. AU$384,670). The nine-year-old has sired eight Group 1 winners, all in the northern hemisphere.
Hoofnote: With all this business conducted between Catherine Remond, nee Wootton, and Coolmore, some might wonder where a certain sire making waves at the stud got his name from. There’s no connection. For your next breeding-related trivia night, Wootton Bassett the horse was named after a town in Wiltshire.