Owners resist sale ring riches to retain Stefi Magnetica

Trainer Bjorn Baker’s prized Group 1 winner Stefi Magnetica has been retired from racing, with her owners set to retain the highly valuable mare for breeding rather than cashing her in at the broodmare sales.

Confirmation on Wednesday that the daughter of All Too Hard would not be seen on the racetrack again has prompted her owners to enact on the second phase of their long-term plan by letting Stefi Magnetica join their Hunter Valley broodmare band at Newgate.

Ridgmont Farm’s Cunningham family, Ken Salagic, Jakob Vitek and the Currie family, who raced Stefi Magnetica, will hold a round table meeting to decide which stallion will be the rising six-year-old mare’s maiden mating.

“We made the decision early on in her career that we’d be breeding from her, given our model of buying fillies with pedigrees at the yearling sales and she’s really ticked all the boxes for us, and she’s the sort of mare that we want to be breeding from,” Ridgmont’s Mitch Cunningham said.

“She’s got plenty of time now to get her head down in some Newgate pasture and we’ll be excited to announce closer to the season who she’ll be visiting (in the stallion barn).”

A $140,000 Magic Millions purchase by the Cunninghams, agent Jim Clarke and Baker from the Cressfield Stud draft, Stefi Magnetica was Australia’s champion sprinter in 2023/24 and retires as the winner of five races and earner of $7.36 million in prize money from 26 starts.

The winner of a Stradbroke Handicap and Doncaster Mile, Stefi Magnetica raced twice this preparation, with her latest start at Flemington when seventh in the All-Star Mile.

If Stefi Magnetica were to be sold at public auction, either at the Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale or the Inglis Chairman’s Sale, she would have commanded a multimillion-dollar price tag.

All Too Hard’s other elite level-winning mare, three-time Group 1 winner Forbidden Love, was sold for $4.1 million to Yulong at the 2023 Magic Millions National Sale.

“She’s not a mare who we’d be able to go to a sale and typically buy and (by retaining her) it also opens up an opportunity for us to keep a filly or two out of her,” Cunningham said. 

“We’ll be breeding her with a focus on continuing the one pedigree that Mid Summer Music has established.

“The sister (Hellfast, by Fastnet Rock) is owned by Godolphin and she has a Frankel on the ground and is being bred up and we’ve brought another one out of Steffi’s sister in Euphoric Summer at the most recent Classic sale.

“The opportunity to have a mare of Stefi’s standing is a really exciting prospect for all of us.”

As a broodmare sire, All Too Hard, the half-brother to unbeaten champion Black Caviar, has produced five stakes winners and 11 stakes horses, highlighted by Group 2 winners Sass Appeal and Cristal Clear and last year’s Black Opal Stakes winner King Of Pop.

The Cunninghams, whose Ridgmont Farm property in the Hunter Valley is on the market, have become major players in the Australian thoroughbred industry over the past eight years.

Despite their shock decision to sell their property, they retain significant bloodstock holdings, with patriarch, the Queensland-based Gary Cunningham, announced as a new Racing Queensland board member earlier this month.

They had two runners in last Saturday’s Golden Slipper, Stefi Magnetica’s stablemates Warwoven and Paradoxium.

They finished sixth and 11th, respectively, behind Guest House.