So in the news today, Winx's filly by Pierro sold for a lazy AUD $10 million at the Inglis Easter Yearling Sale, the buyer being none other than Winx's part owner Debbie Kepitis, smashing the world record sale for a yearling filly, damn near quadrupling the old Australian record sale for a yearling filly ($2.6m in 2012 for a half-sister to Black Caviar by Redoute's Choice x Helsinge), and doubling the record for the highest-priced Australian yearling ever sold...
Which, until today, was Black Caviar's half-brother Jimmy (also by Redoute's Choice x Helsinge) selling for AUD $5,000,000 to noted Melbourne 'businessman' Bill Vlahos in April 2013, only a week before Black Caviar herself won her farewell appearance in the T.J Smith at Randwick...
That journey would end disastrously/tragically when Jimmy died in December 2013 after a 2-month struggle with laminitis due to a spider bite, having never set foot on a racecourse, and Vlahos/BC3 allegedly never paid a cent of the $5 million owed to Inglis after BC3 Thoroughbreds syndicate went arse up earlier that month, as Vlahos' shady dealings with The Edge Punters Club came to light...
And some 8 years later, Vlahos was sentenced to 9 years in prison for swindling $17.5m out of investors between 2007 and 2013, in one of the more notorious Ponzi schemes in Australian history, let alone Australian racing, where it's just about the biggest ever seen.
Funnily enough, BC3 also bought that aforementioned Redoute's Choice filly in 2012, which was later resold and named Belle Couture, who raced only 4 times for Danny O'Brien throughout 2013-14 (Her only win was at Caulfield on Easter Monday 2014) before going to stud.
So yes, if the Winx filly is anything like most of the progeny of the great mares to race in this country, e.g. Sunline, Makybe Diva and Black Caviar, and the highest-priced yearlings sold in Australia...
Then Debbie Kepitis and Chris Waller better start rubbing their rosaries, because their records are nothing short of grim:
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