Happy-go-lucky way to breed $6m winner
CANBERRA hobby breeder Michael Thomas has turned a $13,000 broodmare-in-foal purchase into a $6.5 million ride of a lifetime within the space of 10 years.
And there is the promise of another big payday today as the resultant foal from the mare he initially bred, sold years earlier only to buy her back again — the ever popular galloper Happy Clapper — races for a share of the $5 million on offer in the inaugural All-Star Mile.
It’s an extraordinary tale often overlooked in the Happy Clapper story, a horse who isn’t just a perennial bridesmaid to wonder mare Winx, but is a popular superstar in his own right.
“It’s been a thrilling journey, not so much about the money, but just about the scoreboard,” Thomas said. “I’m a hobby breeder, and I breed to race, so it is incredible to think of what has happened with Happy Clapper.
“He is a popular horse. A bit like that other good horse, Happy Trails, whenever you put ‘Happy’ into a name, there’s that instant recognition from people.
“It’s a combination of things, I guess [as to why he is so popular]. It’s his consistency, his toughness and I suppose the [low] profile of the trainer [Pat Webster].”
Thomas initially bought Happy Clapper’s great grandam — Vale Nymph — as a broodmare after her racing career was over to have some fun in the early 1990s.
One of Vale Nymph’s daughters — Winifreds Prayer — produced some talented nice horses, including Thankgodyourehere and Gunfire Messiah, as well as a filly by Encosta De Lago from that stallion’s cheapest early service fee of $7700.
By the time the yearling sales came around, Encosta De Lago had transformed into one of the most sought-after stallions in the country, and Thomas sold the filly for $40,000 to help fund his future breeding plans.
That filly raced as Busking, and after the death of Winifreds Prayer, Thomas searched for a replacement broodmare. He was able to reconnect with Busking at a Darley dispersal sale at the March Inglis Sales in 2010, and it proved the best $13,000 has ever spent.
She was in foal to Teofilio at the time, and the foal that came along was “never really a sales prospect”.
Thomas kept the foal, and it would go on to become Happy Clapper, who has amassed $6,539,600 from his 39 starts.
Thomas is not fazed by the fact that but for Winx, his courageous eight-year-old gelding would almost certainly have pushed well beyond the $10 million mark. He prefers to think of how lucky he was that fate brought Busking back to him — and left him with Happy Clapper.
“Pat [Webster] has a saying that [Happy Clapper] will be remembered for the rest of our lives because people will be looking at grabs of Winx forever,” he said.
“There are lots of ifs and buts in this whole equation.
“A lot of people say woe betide, ‘you ran into Winx’. But it is good for your mental wellbeing to think of what you have got rather than what you don’t.”