Well Written
Breeder David Digney could be excused for feeling some seller’s regret as the unbeaten Well Written (Written Tycoon) forges what’s shaping as a spectacular career, capped off most recently with her six-length romp in Saturday’s Karaka Millions 3YO Classic (RL, 1600m).
But he’s not taking it too badly. For overriding any misgivings about offloading the filly as a weanling for $32,500 is the knowledge this Australian-bred, New Zealand–based budding superstar – now with five wins from five attempts including a Group 1 – has been in the best of hands since he sold her, with the reasons for her cheap price prompting a slowly, slowly approach.
Digney, a Melbourne logistics businessman who’s been in the game for 25 years, has hit the jackpot by breeding his first stakes winner after sending his Sebring (More Than Ready) mare, Mozzie Monster, to the seemingly ageless Written Tycoon (Iglesia) in his first season at Yulong in 2021, when he stood for $165,000 (inc GST).
It was a well researched mating, tapping into a couple of Written Tycoon’s better nicks, but the type it produced wasn’t, shall we say, all that obvious.
“She was pretty plain, medium-sized, didn’t have a lot of bone, wasn’t overly pretty and wasn’t really muscly,” says Megan Kirsopp-Cole, who reared the filly at her Lemrac Lodge farm, west of Geelong.
Well don’t gild the lily there, Megan.
“It’s what I love about this game,” she continues. “If you went to our paddock back then and looked at the ten or 14 foals that were there, no way would you have said that she was the one. But she’s just incredible now. I’m loving watching her.”
As the future Well Written arrived, Digney was in the course of downsizing, and the filly was offered as a weanling at the Inglis Great Southern Sale of 2023.
She was bought for that figure – $32,500 – that’s becoming cheaper and cheaper by the start, by Foxhill Thoroughbreds. Behind that enterprise are Benji and Harry King, sons of Nick and Anne-Marie King of New Zealand’s Brighthill Farm. Harry’s now best known as Yulong’s sales and nominations manager, and his intimate knowledge of Written Tycoon heavily influenced the purchase.
“Written Tycoon is a great sire, but he can throw all sorts of types, including pretty plain ones,” Kirsopp-Cole said. “This is where Harry had the insight, being at Yulong. He knew to ignore the type with Written Tycoon.”
The King brothers decided to send Well Written across the Tasman to be pinhooked, via their parents’ farm. She didn’t get to Karaka but was sold at New Zealand Bloodstock’s National Online Yearling Sale in 2024, bought by trainer Stephen Marsh and Dylan Johnson Bloodstock for NZ$80,000.
She’s now won NZ$1.42 million, with her dizzying five wins – all since debuting in September as a three-year-old – including the New Zealand 1,000 Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m), her first start after Yulong bought 50 per cent of her.
Digney has been thrilled to watch it all unfold. Yes, he’d hoped to receive a good deal more for the filly, but he’s still delighted with how she’s blossomed.
“She was very backward as a weanling,” he recalls. “She still had the right shape, but she was a bit weak.
“To be honest, I thought I was going to get more than that, from the pedigree, but I decided to let her go at that price.
“Is there seller’s regret? Yes, but if you look at the whole cycle, she’s turned into a great horse, and I’ve still got Mozzie Monster.
“I’m not going to say I’m happy I sold the filly for $32,500, but it’s the game, isn’t it? And the upside is the mare’s very young still, she’s got two nice colts and a lot of breeding ahead of her.
“And if the filly had landed in an Australian trainer’s hands and they maybe pushed her a bit early, she probably wouldn’t be the horse she is today. So in hindsight, the sale was probably the best thing for the horse. The time the new owners and trainer have given her has been a blessing.
“She’s the best horse I’ve bred by a mile. I’ve bred a lot of cheap horses over the years, and gone to cheap stallions. But over the last five years I’ve got a bit more invested in it.”
The eight-year-old Mozzie Monster has an as yet unnamed two-year-old son of Shamus Award (Snitzel) and a foal by Nicconi (Bianconi), but missed on a return to Written Tycoon last spring. Digney intends to race both colts at this stage, unless Well Written’s deeds prompt offers worth considering.
At the same time, Digney has downsized, with Mozzie Monster now his only mare, after he had eight at one point.
Digney made a solid play to buy Mozzie Monster as a yearling for $150,000 at Magic Millions Gold Coast in 2019.
She’d been bred by Widden Stud, Bill Duncan Bloodstock and Hatta Bloodstock, by Widden sire Sebring out of the very useful mare Valentine Miss (Danetime).
A daughter of a Perth Group 3 placegetter in Torolosa (Housebuster), whose dam Yuleda (One Pound Sterling) won a Listed in the west, Valentine Miss also kicked off in Perth. Trained by Shane Edwards, she won her first two starts at Ascot, and added another win at Belmont alongside four city seconds before being sent east to the flying stable of Mark Kavanagh.
There she won three more races, including Caulfield’s How Now Stakes (Gr 3, 1200m). She added four Group 3 placings and ran fourth twice at the top level in Morphettville’s major 1200-metre sprints, the Robert Sangster Stakes and The Goodwood, in 2011.
At stud her first runner Asterius (Sebring) became a dual Sydney city winner for Chris Waller, before his deeds were eclipsed by his younger full-sister, Valentine Miss’s second runner Mozzie Monster.
Valentine Miss has gone on to boast four city winners from as many runners, the latter pair being triple Brisbane victor Argyle Pink (Star Witness) and Caulfield winner Landmark (Nicconi).
Now 20, Valentine Miss has Landmark’s full-sister heading to the Inglis Premier Yearling Sale as Lot 749 and has a King Colorado (Kingman) filly at foot, but wasn’t covered last spring.
“I bought Mozzie Monster mostly on type,” Digney said. “We had three or four marked out, but most of them went to over $400,000, and Mozzie fell into the price bracket we thought was value. She had a couple of little faults, which stopped her racing too much, but she was high quality.”
Sent by Digney to then Caulfield trainer John Sadler, Mozzie Monster looked extremely handy from the outset, emulating her dam by winning her first two starts. In the early spring of 2020, she debuted with a 1200-metre Cranbourne maiden victory then completed the relatively rare feat of taking a Benchmark 64 at her subsequent start, over 1300 metres. Both times she scored by 3.5 lengths as a short-priced favourite.
That earned her a trip to town in black type grade for Caulfield’s Jim Moloney Stakes (Listed, 1400m), where she ran a creditable third.
The following autumn she added more catalogue value with a second in the Bendigo Guineas (Listed, 1400m), but her career was cut short after two more starts and she retired still with just those first two wins, and three placings, from nine outings.
“You don’t often get trainers saying there’s something special about a horse, but that’s what John felt about Mozzie,” Digney said. “Unfortunately, she ended up going in the knee.”
Digney chose astutely, and presciently, in picking Written Tycoon for Mozzie Monster’s first mating.
Written Tycoon over Mozzie Monster’s sire Sebring had not a lot of form at the time, but has since been shown to work fairly well, with nine winners from 13 runners including the one stakes winner in Well Written, at seven per cent stakes winners to runners (SWTR).
But Written Tycoon over Sebring’s sire More Than Ready (Southern Halo) is dynamite, with four stakes winners from 35 runners, and 28 winners. That 11 per cent SWTR ratio isn’t quite Written Tycoon’s best, but it grows an extra leg on realisation that three of the four stakes winners scored at the elite level: Ciaron Maher’s pair Coolangatta and Southport Tycoon, and Murray Baker’s New Zealand filly Luna Rossa.
Mozzie Monster’s dam Valentine Miss hails from a Danehill (Danzig) sireline, which also runs well with Written Tycoon. Danehill gives the Yulong sire six winners from seven runners, but his son Danehill Dancer provides Written Tycoon’s finest SWTR ratio (from ten or more runners), with 15 winners from 17 runners and three stakes winners at 17 per cent. They include one top-tier victor in 2016 Doomben 10,000 (Gr 1, 1400m) hero Music Magnate.
“Over the years I’ve studied many stallion books and pedigrees, and for Sebring mares at the time, there wasn’t a lot really matching, though they’re a bit more exposed now,” Digney said.
“But we found Written Tycoon was the best match. When you looked at the More Than Ready nick with Written Tycoon, it was working pretty well.
“And she [Well Written] is looking pretty amazing at the moment.
“It’s a great feeling that this horse is making a lot of people happy. It was very important that she landed in the right hands and was given the time that she needed.”
Well Written’s is a relatively clean pedigree with no in-breeding, and the first double-ups emerging once the sixth generation is revealed.
There’s an interesting one for fans of sires with a major influence in Australia, with Irish import Better Boy (My Babu) at 5f x 6f, in handy places. He’s the third damsire of both Written Tycoon and Sebring.
Northern Dancer (Nearctic) bobs up six times, sprinkled through columns five through eight. He’s only once in the top half, as Written Tycoon’s fourth sire, but has a heavy hand in Mozzie Monster, appearing overall through five different offspring at 5m x 6f, 7m, 8f, 6m, 7m.
Mumtaz Begum (Blenheim) and Nogara (Havresac) are the most present females, with ten spots each, ahead of Natalma’s (Native Dancer) eight.
The great and ever-present Nearco (Pharos) is the equal–most dominant stallion with 18 appearances, but he’s matched on that number, more unusually, by his son Nasrullah.
Written Tycoon over Sebring/More Than Ready might have produced a plain looking foal in this case, but there’s no doubting Well Written’s ability.