Without big budgets and a stream of wealthy backers, Queensland breeder Murray Webster has had to be thrifty to make ends meet in the ruthless pursuit of thoroughbred breeding.
And on Saturday Webster’s family run Hopetoun Farm, a stone’s throw away from Eureka Stud on Queensland’s fertile Darling Downs, will have two runners in the Group 3 BJ McLachlan at Eagle Farm.
It’s no mean feat considering Webster has been breeding thoroughbreds for only 10 years and the fact that he paid a paltry $10,000 combined for the dams of Secret Sort and Cuddles For Kimmy, the two juveniles set to line up in the McLachlan, a traditional lead-up to January 11’s Magic Millions 2YO Classic.
Secret Sort, a second crop son of Tassort, won at Doomben in November at his second start and ran third in the Phelan Ready three weeks later in which Cuddles For Kimmy finished second to Hi Barbie, another rival in the McLachlan.
Webster outlaid $6000 for the stakes-placed Follonica, who was in foal with Secret Sort at the time, out of an Inglis Digital sale in 2022.
Aushorse Investor’s Guide 2025
- More Races worth $1 million+ than Europe & America combined
- More than 140,000 Australians involved in racehorse ownership
After withdrawing him from a weanling sale, Secret Sort was sold at the Gold Coast in January to leviathan Queensland owner and pool magnate Mike Crooks for $50,000.
“Mike Crooks bought him, but he probably stole him in hindsight,” Webster joked.
“But Mike is a good man, and he does a lot for Queensland racing, so I always knew the horse would get every opportunity with Mike Crooks' outfit, so I was quite happy to see him go there.
“He was a November foal, so to do what he’s done so far is a pretty good effort.”
To keep the financial wheels turning at Hopetoun Farm, Webster flipped Follonica in 2023 for more than six times what he paid for her a year earlier, selling her to Ben Duncan’s Forest View Farm in Western Australia for $40,000 on the back of one of her foals, Dissident’s Bigboyroy, performing well in stakes races at the time.
“That's how you get going, really. We just trade hard, we'll buy them in foal, foal them down, maybe get another foal out of the mare and keep them rolling,” Webster says.
“It's how we sort of got going. We've managed to get some pretty good broodmares doing that, and it looks like we've got a couple of nice race fillies that we're racing at the moment that'll come back to the farm to be broodmares later on, too.”
One of those fillies is Cuddles For Kimmy, who may not have been as profitable as Secret Sort and Follonica initially, but she’s heading in the right direction.
Webster couldn’t find a buyer at the Spirit Of Boom filly’s reserve of $50,000 last January, having bred her out of another bargain buy, the stakes-placed Cuddles For Naara who was a $4000 online purchase in 2021.
🏇 CUDDLES FOR KIMMY wins today's QTIS 2YO Plate over 1050m at Doomben for Queensland breeders, Hopetoun Farm and @geranracing 👏
— Thoroughbred Breeders Queensland (@QldBreeders) October 16, 2024
Debut winner for @eurekastud's SPIRIT OF BOOM and the filly collects $15,750 in QTIS Bonuses for her connections. pic.twitter.com/1IiHa1M2Ip
The forced decision to retain the filly and put her into training with Corey and Kylie Geran at Toowoomba has paid off, with Cuddles For Kimmy winning on debut at Doomben in October, and defeating Secret Sort in the process.
In three starts to date, she has banked almost $78,000 in prize money and has added black type to her own and her mother’s pedigree, with the promise of more to come.
“A lot of horses will when you bring them out of a racing stable and you put them in a paddock, they'll sort of be on their toes and they'll be walking a fence,” Webster says of Cuddles For Kimmy’s temperament.
“They'll be a bit anxious for the first few days before they settle in, but she just gets off the truck and puts her head down and eats grass, so a week’s freshen up for her is like two weeks off for another horse.”
Hopetoun Farm has a dozen yearlings heading to the Magic Millions next month, one of them an impressive Aclaim half-brother to Cuddles For Kimmy,
“The ones that are coming through, the ones we're prepping for this sale coming up, they look just as good as this lot did, so yeah, you know, it's a pretty exciting time, isn't it?” Webster says.
“I was only looking at the field last night and thinking, ‘for a small farm, we're obviously doing something right’.”
