Fortuna Racing secures an outstanding Yearling Filly at the Magic Millions Gold Coast Sale

We went into the sale with four lovely yearlings on our shortlist, although in the end two of those failed their vet check, so we were left with two and we were keen to buy both of them, however the first one, which was the full sister to the Fortuna 2yo Filly Marokopa Falls, who we bought at the sale last year, went over our budget – however we got lucky with this lovely Ole Kirk Filly, who we were able to secure at significantly under budget – read all about this beautiful Filly below and you can see her parading at the link below also

PEDIGREE

By Ole Kirk (Written Tycoon), the Champion 3yo Colt in Aus 2020/21 and the winner of the two Group Ones as a 3yo, the Caulfield Guineas and the Golden Rose – he has commenced his Stud career in sensational fashion with 11 winners (15 wins) from just 22 runners, including 5 Stakes winners and leads the 1st Season Sires table in Australia over Wootten Bassett and Farnan

The Dam, Empress Ali (Holy Roman Empire) won 6 times in the UK from 9 Furlongs to 11 Furlongs and has one foal to the races (Thunder Gulch) who is a winner in Australia – she is a half sister to Shared Ambition who won 8 times at trips from 1600m to 2800m in Ireland and Australia, winning at Group 3 level (ATCNeville Sellwood Stakes) and 2nd placings at Group 2 level (MRC Peter Young Stakes, Moonee Valley Gold Cup and the ATC Kingston Town Stakes), collecting just under A$1m in the process

Click HERE to see her pedigree

Physical Type

A Filly of genuine size, she is an early October foal with a strong free flowing walk – you can see her parade Video  HERE – Mark Walker had picked her out from the Video Clips as one for our list and our on site Team of David Ellis, Marcus Corban and Mikey Grey, all loved her physical type when they conducted physical inspections

Mark Walker comments “Beautiful Filly, wonderful walk, great hindquarter, she really caught my eye when I was going through the parade videos – she is by a high flying 1st season Stallion in Ole Kirk, who is taking all before him as a freshman Sire and she is out of an Irish bred multi time winning racemare from a family with considerable Black Type success in the UK and Europe. She was bought for incredible value as John and Dave had a budget of A$150k for her and managed to secure her for just A$65k. Looking ahead, I think she can run as a 2yo, but will definitely train on as a 3yo and she has 1000 Guineas type written all over her”

John says “it was an interesting day for us on day two of the sale – on day one we had had a couple on our original list but they failed the vet and so on day two we had just two Fillies on our list and we were prepared to buy both of them – the first one was the full sister to Marokopa Falls (lot 1406) who we bought at this sale last year and I thought that we had a really good chance to secure her within budget, but she was chased down by another party who seemed to have an unlimited budget and then with the Ole Kirk Filly (lot 1470), I was doubtful if we could secure her within budget, but in the end, she was knocked down to the bid of David Ellis for less than half her budget – its a funny old game at times, but just rapt that we have secured her”

Ongoing Plans

Having secured this Filly at an Australian sale, we are open minded about where she will eventually finish up to race, but what we have decided to do is to keep her in Queensland where the weather is significantly warmer than it is in New Zealand, have her broken in by Julian Blaxland and his team at Newington Farm, about an hour from the Gold Coast – Julian has broken in 80 years this year to date and is a great horseman with a great set up  – click HERE to see their website – on top of that Julian’s wife, Kacy, is a licenced trainer and so after our Filly has been broken, she will give her an initial preparation and then give us an opinion as to whether she would be better suited to Australian or New Zealand conditions – at this stage our own view is that she probably is going to be well suited to Cranbourne rather than Matamata, but we are open minded on that and will await Kacy and Julian’s opinion

The Numbers

All up, she will be syndicated for NZ$130,000 – this includes her purchase price, GST, Promoters Fees, Magic Millions Series Fee (this gives potential entry to A$20m of races restricted to those runners who are Series registered), Insurance to 31 Jan 2026 and working capital of just under $14k

10% share is NZ$13k, 5% NZ$6.5k, 2.5% NZ$3.25k, 1% NZ$1.3k – ongoing costs are NZ$60 per month per each 1% commencing 1 August 2025

Syndication paperwork is still being finalised, but what we are doing at this stage is taking “expressions of interest and if you give an expression of interest it means you are guaranteed whatever percentage you have advised and then once you have had the opportunity of perusing the finalised paperwork you can make a final decision – all you need to do to go on the list is respond to this email with your preferred percentage.