Melbourne lawyers living Slipper dream with share in star colts Profiteer and Stay Inside
Couple hit the jackpot as Newgate swoops on stallion prospects in a matter of weeks
Melbournian couple Nadia Angelo and Anna Dodgshun are on the equine ride of their lives, sharing in the ownership of arguably Australia’s most valuable two-year-old colts, leading Golden Slipper Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) seeds Profiteer (Capitalist) and Stay Inside (Extreme Choice).
In a tale defying the odds, not once but twice, the lawyers have two unbeaten colts, Victoria’s speedball Profiteer and Sydney-trained Stay Inside, a colt with an electric turn of foot, who have propelled the couple into racing’s high-stakes stallion game where money starts at millions, not thousands.
Mick Kent Jr, the co-trainer of ruling Slipper favourite Profiteer, said it best when he alerted a significantly large racing audience about Angelo’s and Dodgshun’s luck.
“Are Anna and Nadia the luckiest owners you’ve ever seen? Buy a share in a couple of inexpensive colts. Both syndicated to Newgate Farm and both sitting atop the betting for the Golden Slipper, (It’s) like winning the lottery twice,” he posted on social media.
Profiteer, the last-start winner of the $2 million Inglis Millennium (RL, 1200m), is a $4 favourite for the Slipper, ahead of Stay Inside ($6) who made it two from two when putting four lengths on his rivals in a matter of strides in the Pierro Plate (1100m) at Rosehill, and the margin would have been significantly further had jockey James McDonald not sat up and smiled for the cameras a 100 metres out from the winning post.
Angelo, speaking to ANZ Bloodstock News yesterday, tried to make sense of a whirlwind few weeks – and the month ahead – which has been years in the making.
“It’s pretty lucky, isn’t it? I suppose the story goes way back a little bit, but ultimately, we ended up in Profiteer because we raced horses with Roll The Dice Racing and the guys who run that syndicate, Rob (Norton), Leigh (Saville) and Steve (Travaglia), are good mates of ours,” she explained.
“We used to have a horse of ours back in the day called Gredington who used to race against theirs in Mahuta and Mahuta kept beating Gredington in fairly decent races like the Carbine Club Stakes and the Sandown Guineas.
“There were a few races where we pitted up against each other, so we ultimately thought it was better to be in the same horse together, so we started buying shares with them.”
And while not the first horse the women have had with Roll The Dice, he is certainly the best.
“I remember one day Rob called us and said, ‘I think Jeremy (Rogers) has found us a really good one. He’s a nice Capitalist colt’, so my partner Anna and I had a look and we took a share in him,” said Angelo, Racing Victoria-owned media outlet Racing.com’s lawyer.
“We had an idea that he was a nice colt and he was going through his first preparation, but he kind of blew us away (at Flemington in December).
“(Mick Price and Kent Jr) are level-headed and they don’t get overexcited and build up too much expectation.
“We expected him to run well, don’t get me wrong, but we were always wary that we needed a two-year-old to run up the straight at Flemington and obviously he had to put it all together in his maiden race.”
Such was the manner of the two-and three-quarter length victory, downing spruik horse Ranveer (Winning Rupert) in the process, it left ratings gurus raving and Newgate Farm’s Henry Field on the phone to connections soon after negotiating a deal to buy into the son of the stud’s first season sire Capitalist (Written Tycoon).
The deal was done a week before the Millennium and it was a new experience for Dodgshun and Angelo. They bred their first foal born at Stockwell Thoroughbreds last year from a well-bred mare who had her last start in a $4,500 Victorian picnic race, but syndicating stallion prospects is a whole new ball game.
“That’s the first time for Anna and I, but obviously the Roll The Dice boys have had other horses and experience (with studs) but certainly not to this kind of level. So, it was very exciting to have been told that Henry (Field) had called,” she said.
“This links in with the Stay Inside story. The boys I am with in Stay Inside also raced Extreme Choice. I wasn’t in the horse, but I followed him very closely with them.
“I went to all of his races and he was almost my horse by default, so then Henry did the deal with them before the Golden Slipper in 2016 I think it was. They had that experience and we decided we had to race his progeny, which is why we ended up in Stay Inside.
“To do the deal on Profiteer with Henry and Newgate in January and a couple of weeks later for Stay Inside, it feels unheard of to me. We’re incredibly lucky.”
Despite the financial windfall – and the possibility of massive “kicker” payments to follow if either colt wins the Slipper – Angelo says the money is the furthest thing from her mind.
Profiteer and the Richard and Michael Freedman-trained Stay Inside are set to clash in the Todman Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m) at Randwick on Saturday week before the $3.5 million Slipper at Rosehill on March 20.
“The money’s not the driver. From our perspective, we’re just excited to know that the horses are going to have a really good life, especially at a leading stud, and the cash that comes with it is just a bonus,” she said,
“The next few weeks is going to be pretty nerve-racking and I suppose when there’s that much at stake it makes it more exciting.
“I said to my partner I don’t know how I am going to sleep for the next four weeks and she is in the same boat,”
As for their increased exposure, Dodgshun and Angelo have also received a first-hand example of the reach of social media after news of Stay Inside’s acquisition by Newgate Farm was revealed.
“Anna happened to pick up ANZ (Bloodstock News’) tweet and retweeted it and all of a sudden Mick Kent Jr retweeted that and it has just literally taken off overnight,” she said.
“You don’t spread it around and you don’t want to mozz yourself or anything like that. All of a sudden, it has become a bit of a story.”
The couple’s thoroughbred family numbers an ever-expanding 22 and there is another Extreme Choice two-year-old in training with Mitch Beer at Albury and they also bought into about five of Roll The Dice’s Magic Millions purchases.
There might be a few more if Stay Alive and Profiteer continue their winning ways in some of the country’s biggest races.