Remembering Lovely Jubly on the eve of Saturday’s Magic Millions

Cover image courtesy of Sportpix

Imagine rolling up at the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale, spending $36,000 on one grey filly and then rolling home. Imagine that filly taking out the R. Listed Magic Millions 2YO Classic the following year, and then two Group 1s and a Group 3 as the year went on.

Imagine that filly earning over $1.5 million in prizemoney, nearly 42 times her sale price, and then foaling two stakes winners, among them the $8.8 million earner Chautauqua (Encosta De Lago).

“The odds of it were ridiculous,” said Edwina Throsby. “You just couldn’t believe it would happen.”

This was the story of Lovely Jubly, a daughter of the Danehill (USA) stallion Lion Hunter. It’s been exactly 20 years since she won the 2002 Magic Millions 2YO Classic, a race that, even then, was career-defining.

Lovely Jubly was a cheap grey filly, bought on the Gold Coast in 2001 by the late trainer David Throsby. She was the only horse Throsby bought at that Sale, and she has remained in the Throsby family ever since, right up to the present as a 22-year-old retiree.

“She is exactly the same today as when she was two,” said Edwina, the late trainer’s daughter. “She’s very easy to handle and always has been. She’s in charge of the paddock, always number one, and they follow her everywhere. She’s got her own presence about her. She always had and always will.”

One horse

On paper, Lovely Jubly was a half-sister to the dual Group winner Sir Howard (Alannon). On the bottom line, the family is largely a Kiwi one through the broodmare Jaboulet (NZ) (Vice Regal {NZ}).

Lovely Jubly was bred in 1999 by Carnation Lodge in Queensland, which was the small breeding empire of studmaster Dan Hayes. The property was in Delaneys Creek north of Brisbane.

At the time of her sale in 2001, Lovely Jubly wasn’t in fashion. Her sire, Lion Hunter, was consistent but he wasn’t yet an Australian star. He’d been consistent as a racehorse with three wins in eight starts, none at stakes level, but he was Group 1 and Group 3 placed in Sydney and Melbourne.

The grey stallion stood the entirety of his stallion career at Neville Stewart’s Oaklands Stud, Toowoomba and, from day dot, he was an impressionable sire.

Lion Hunter was Champion First Season Sire in 2001/2002 and, before his premature death in 2004 at just 11 years old, he was one of the most prolific producers of winners in Australia.

He was the sire of 17 stakes winners across just six crops, and they included the brilliant mare Gold Edition, the four-time Group winner Chinchilla Rose and Lovely Jubly. Three years after his death, in 2007, Lion Hunter broke a world record for siring the most number of seasonal winners in one country (240).

Gallery: Some of Lion Hunter's stakes-winning progeny, images courtesy of Sportpix

Lovely Jubly was from the first book of Lion Hunter progeny, one of 73 live foals from 104 mares the stallion covered in his first season. She headed to the 2001 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale as a neat, average-sized but masculine grey filly on David Throsby’s radar.

“Everyone goes to the sales these days and buys dozens of horses, but my father went to buy one horse and she was it,” Edwina said. “We were there for 10 minutes, he bought her for $36,000 and we left.”

Throsby had picked Lovely Jubly on her pedigree. He liked the family. He was an abattoir operator in the Hunter district but he was a very decent trainer too, keeping at one time a row of stables opposite Gosford racecourse.

More than this, he was a very good judge of horse.

“My father picked this filly on her pedigree initially,” Edwina said. “She was speed on speed and, as a breeder, you always like to look for that. On paper she looked to be a very fast horse and physically she was so masculine, and that’s what you want in an early runner, especially in a filly.”

Attitude is everything

Lovely Jubly first appeared in silks at Kensington in December 2001, in a 2-year-old handicap won by no less than Victory Vein (Mr Henrysee {USA}). That filly was subsequently Champion 2-Year-Old of Australia.

Thereafter, Throsby’s filly clattered through her juvenile season being first or second in her next seven races, and among them were wins in the Magic Millions 2YO Classic, the G3 Champagne Classic, G1 BTC Sires’ Produce S. and G1 TJ Smith Classic.

She was second in the Listed Doomben Slipper, and her final 2-year-old record read eight starts for five wins and two seconds. Her electric juvenile form didn’t surprise the Throsby family.

“She always showed ability from day one,” Edwina said. “She wanted to get up and get going, so she showed us early that want to race and will to win. I think that went right through to Chautauqua too. They’ve got a great will to win and they’ve got to have that, and we saw it very early in this family.”

That strength of attitude is something that has made this equine family very famous in the last handful of years.

Chautauqua, who was Lovely Jubly’s sixth foal, was as obstinate in the twilight of his career as he was brilliant, and none of his antics came as a surprise to Edwina.

“I was in a different world to everybody when that was going on,” she said. “They all thought they could change him but they were never going to change him. They’re very special horses.

“Even in the paddock, if Lovely Jubly doesn’t want to be caught one day she won’t be caught. She’ll come back the next day and we don’t mess around with that. They’re one-in-a-million types of personalities.”

The last laugh

As a 3-year-old, Lovely Jubly was there or thereabouts but without the same cutting dash as her juvenile season.

Among her significant efforts was a second to Bollinger (Dehere {USA}) in the G1 Coolmore Classic, while her final win was for trainer Brian Mayfield-Smith in the Listed Era S. at Caulfield in 2003. The mare was retired to stud after picking up a cannon bone injury at her final start in the G3 Tristarc S.

Lovely Jubly was sent back to Magic Millions to sell as an untried broodmare, but the market wasn’t like it is today and she was passed in at $720,000.

Thereafter she came home to the Throsby family’s Hunter Valley property Woodbury, and she embarked on a breeding career that produced Chautauqua in 2010 and his stakes-winning half-sister London Lolly (Charge Forward) the following year.

Woodbury is a boutique operation. It keeps its mares onsite but it's aligned with Neale Bruce's nearby Berkeley Park Stud for walk-on services, and Bruce also assists with the sales.

Over the years, while the Throsbys have sent a few of Lovely Jubly's offspring to sale, Chautauqua was the first of note and he appeared in the draft of Berkeley Park Stud.

He went to the Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale in 2012 and was famously passed in at $300,000. His reserve was $400,000 and, in hindsight, Edwina is still unsure why it happened.

“I took him to the Sale and he didn’t get a bid,” she said. “No one liked him but after all his races he was suddenly an imposing, beautiful animal. I’m still not sure how that works.”

Edwina said fashions probably had something to do it, much like it had when Lovely Jubly sold in 2001.

“Encosta De Lago wasn’t the flavour of the month, and so much of the sales these days is all about what’s in vogue,” she said. “In 2012 it wasn’t Encosta, but Chautauqua had the last laugh in every way.”

Chautauqua was the defining progeny for Lovely Jubly, but his half-sister London Lolly was a winner of the G3 SAJC Breeders’ S. and Listed St Albans S. at Moonee Valley.

Edwina didn’t get the option to return Lovely Jubly to Encosta De Lago when Chautauqua started doing his thing, with the Coolmore stallion retiring in 2014. In his place, the mare went to a succession of great sires including Street Sense (USA), More Than Ready (USA) and All Too Hard.

Last spring, she settled on an Encosta son for Lovely Jubly’s final foal which resulted in a colt by Rubick.

“This Rubick is probably the most similar to Chautauqua to date,” Edwina said. “I would have sent her to Encosta every year if I could have, so this was the next best thing. If he’s a third as good as Chautauqua with all that blood, then that will be great.”

Woodbury’s beating heart

The Lovely Jubly family is the beating heart of the Woodbury operation, but it’s not been a lucky one.

The mare had 14 foals in total and very few have been sent to the sale ring but, while Edwina has tried to retain the family, she has only Lovely Jubly, London Lolly and Mulberry Walk (More Than Ready {USA}) as breeding stock. The rest have largely met with accidents or illness.

“We would have had more Chautauquas but we’ve met with extreme bad luck,” Edwina said. “A lot of them have died in unforeseen accidents during racing or such. I lost one the other day to colic. Out of 14 foals seven have died, so it's really what could have been.”

Edwina calls it obscene bad luck. Her horses have succumbed to leg infections, track accidents and sickness, and it’s happened to the foals, to the 3-year-olds and to the older horses.

Her most recent loss was a 2018 filly by Air Force Blue (USA). It’s a frustrating example of fate and fortune.

Of the surviving stock, London Lolly has produced the promising Snitzel horse Britain, who races in the red and green silks of Lovely Jubly. The 4-year-old gelding is with Greg Hickman at Warwick Farm and he’s won two races to date from 10 starts.

His I Am Invincible half-brother, All England, is a lightly raced 3-year-old with the Snowdens at Randwick.

“London Lolly is a great producer,” Edwina said. “She’s got a lovely Nicconi filly on the ground and she’s definitely one we’ll hold on to in hope of passing on that great family. She’s not like her mother. She’a bit more relaxed and a bit more laid back, which happens as they get older.”

Edwina said the last of Lovely Jubly’s foals, the Rubick colt, is certainly the most like his dam and the most like his famous, millionaire three-quarter brother.

“He’s every bit like them both and he’s only the one that I’ve had like Chautauqua,” she said. “So we’ll be hanging onto to him to race.”

There’s a certain wistfulness about the Rubick foal, like the story has come full circle. There’ll be no more foals from 22-year-old Lovely Jubly, and it’s fitting that the last one is as closely related to her best son as is physically possible.

“If I’d had more surviving foals, I might have been in a position to sell more,” Edwina said. “But with the luck I’ve had, it’s left me no choice but to hang on to everything I’ve got.”

That being said, Woodbury will be sending a Not A Single Doubt colt from London Lolly to the upcoming Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale, one of the very last foals from that sire. It will be a promising lot because Not A Single Doubt has been very hot on the Gold Coast this week.

“He’s a lovely colt and there’s no more of them, they’re not making Not A Single Doubts anymore,” Edwina said. “So he’s something to look forward to and hopefully he’ll bring a bit at Easter.”