It’s not a bad problem to have, working out when and where to sell a half-sister to a champion racehorse. At the moment, that’s the problem facing Element Hill, a thoroughbred farm in the Scenic Rim district of Running Creek in southern Queensland.
Element Hill is known the length of Australian breeding for the Hong Kong champion Golden Sixty, which it bred in 2015, and right now the farm has a half-sister to that horse heading to the yearling sales in 2024.
But which sale?
“We’re not 100 per cent certain right now,” says Mitchell Frazer, the farm manager at Element Hill. The filly, a smart type by the Coolmore shuttler Wootton Bassett, was initially catalogued as Lot 704 for the first sale of the year, the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale.
However, a small injury, 'nothing serious', means she won’t be ready for the January catalogue, leaving the Inglis Easter Yearling Sale a likely destination in April.
“It’s a blow for Magic Millions but it’s a blow for us too,” Frazer says. “We were really looking forward to taking her to the Gold Coast. She’s a beautiful filly, one of the best we’ve ever bred on type and on temperament, but unfortunately she’s got an injury that just meant she would have been only borderline ready for Magic Millions.
“We didn’t want to take the risk and not have her perfect for that sale.”
Element Hill’s filly would have been one of the stars of the January catalogue, almost completely because of her famous half-brother.
Last weekend, Golden Sixty sailed into immortality when winning the Hong Kong Mile during the Hong Kong International Races (HKIR) at Sha Tin. It was the gelding’s third victory in the race, but it also pushed his world-record winnings even higher.
Golden Sixty is the highest-earning racehorse in history, edging out Winx and Orfevre, and he is also the only horse in Hong Kong history to win nine Group 1 ribbons. The Hong Kong Mile was the gelding’s 25th victory.
“He’s been an incredible story for the farm,” Frazer says. “My phone was running hot after that run the other day. He’s a remarkable horse and I think people are sitting back now, thinking he surely must be classed as a champion.
“He’s the highest money-earner in the world and he’s still racing. There could be still more prizemoney to get, and it will take a good bit to knock him off that pedestal, at least for a while.”
The Element Hill operation is owned by John and Fu Mei Hutchins and their son Josh Hutchins. In private enterprise, the family owns the footwear distribution business Asco International, based on the Gold Coast.
At one time, the Hutchins owned Turangga Farm in Scone, before its Stuart Ramsey era, and they bought Element Hill in 2009 to be closer to the Gold Coast. The farm was operational by 2011, and selling under its own steam at the yearling sales by 2015.
Golden Sixty came along at about that time when the broodmare Gaudeamus, who was American-bred and owned by Bob Scarborough’s Wood Nook Farm, was bought for $160,000 at the Magic Millions National Sale in 2015. She was carrying a foal by the shuttle stallion Medaglia d’Oro, the result of which was Golden Sixty.
Element Hill sold Golden Sixty as a January yearling 18 months later, getting $120,000. The horse was then resold to his trainer Francis Lui as a breeze-up option in New Zealand.
At the HKIR, Golden Sixty tipped over the $HK148 million mark in earnings, which equates to $A28.9 million. That’s about $A3 million more than Winx pocketed, and it makes Golden Sixty one of bloodstock’s greatest bargains. It also makes him one of Element Hill’s greatest advertisements.
“We are very proud,” Frazer says. “Gaudeamus got covered the other day by Home Affairs, which we’re really pleased about because she’s not a young mare anymore.
"We’ll test her next week and fingers crossed we’ll have her in foal, but if not, we’ll line her up again maybe one more time next year.”
The broodmare Gaudeamus has been a ‘farm-maker’ for Element Hill, with Golden Sixty a years-long headline. But the Hutchins family also bred the six-time Group One winner Typhoon Tracy, who raced in the family’s familiar yellow silks with red epaulettes.
Typhoon Tracy, trained throughout her career by Peter Moody, was a public darling and it was a tragedy when she died birthing her first foal in 2012.
“John and Fu Mei were just starting up the farm when Typhoon Tracy was racing and it would have been great to still have her,” Frazer says, although he admits there are two half-sisters to the champion race mare on the farm. It’s the next best thing in this business.
Gaudeamus has had 11 foals, five of which emerged from Element Hill.
The farm has retained the now two-year-old filly, now named Golden Millions. who is in her two-year-old preparation with Ciaron Maher and David Eustace.
She is by Vancouver, making her a three-quarter sister to Golden Sixty.
There was also a Capitalist filly from Gaudeamus, foaled in 2019 and called Golden Sister. Element Hill opted to sell this one as a January yearling in 2021, getting $425,000 when she was bought by the Hong Kong-based All Winners Thoroughbreds.
Retired without racing, Golden Sister is currently at Winchester Farm in Kentucky, co-owned by Marie Yoshida, and she is in-foal to Medaglia d’Oro for a three-quarter sibling to Golden Sixty.
“Gaudeamus has been a very good mare for us,” says Josh Hutchins, whose name was on the ticket in 2015 when he bought Gaudeamus carrying Golden Sixty.
“We’ve retained a couple of half-sisters in this family, and we’ll probably keep some of her fillies going forward, if she can have a couple more foals before retiring.
“Golden Sixty has been a freak horse. It was incredible to see him achieve what he did on the weekend after such a long break, and at the highest level with the quality of horses he beat. He smashed them. It’s a credit to him, to his trainer and to everyone involved.”
Hutchins confirmed that Golden Sixty’s Wootton Bassett half-sister will almost certainly head to the Easter catalogue now, despite the bulk of Element Hill’s annual draft going to the Gold Coast shortly. The filly was nominated for both sales.
She’s a valuable prospect in the wake of Golden Sixty’s weekend, and there are only limited opportunities for farms like Element Hill to ‘cash in’ on the bandwagon of champions.
Bloodstock agent Neil Jenkinson, who worked closely with the Hutchins in their earliest days of breeding, says horses like Golden Sixty are critical for the future of small breeders in Australia.
“When you go to the Hunter Valley these days, you’re looking at drafts of up to 60 horses going to Magic Millions for the big farms,” he says. “The big farms are getting bigger and bigger, and we’re seeing small farms, like Element Hill and others, disappearing.
“You can’t have enough of these small farms holding mares and doing walk-ons. These are the people who pay service fees and things like that, and the industry can’t live without them.”
Jenkinson says if the small farms can’t compete at the sales, the big farms will swallow up the clients, and so it’s critical that the smaller operators continue to churn out headline horses like Golden Sixty.
He adds that the lifespan of the spin machine is infinite in this regard, especially when it comes to promoting success stories like Golden Sixty.
“It can last as long as the marketing team wants it to,” Jenkinson says. “It might be restricted to people’s memories, in this case to when people forget because the next champion has come along, but I think Element Hill can keep trotting out Golden Sixty for a while, as I think they should because breeding horses of that quality, it’s really hard to do.”
