IT’S A KIND OF MAGIC
Golden girl Delfina can’t get enough of the Magic Millions adrenaline rush
IT’S been a week Argentinian model Delfina Blaquier will never forget.
After starring at the polo and galloping bareback on the beach – and helping raise much-needed funds for the nation’s bushfire crisis along the way – the 39-year-old will be among more than 20,000 racegoers set to send off the carnival in style at Queensland’s richest race day today, the $10 million Magic Millions.
“I must be crazy but I love the adrenaline I guess,” she said of her dawn beach ride. Organisers are tipping today’s turnout will break the event record.
THE champagne is chilled, the horses are raring to go and the punters are studying the form guide, as the day dawns on Queensland’s richest race day.
It’s the crescendo in the week-long Magic Millions carnival and it’s lining up to be one of if not the biggest ever held, as more than 20,000 people are expected to flock to Aquis Gold Coast Turf Club.
The glitz and glamour of the race day will be as important as the action on the track, with the fashions on the field getting as much attention as Farnan and Aim, the $6 equal favourites for the $2 million Magic Millions 2YO Classic.
Gold Coast Turf Club CEO Steve Lines said they were expecting perhaps the biggest Magic Millions race day they’ve had.
“It’s an enormous day from a turnover point of view. It’s the biggest in Queensland and we will have, if not the biggest crowd we’ve had, definitely the biggest in the state,” Mr Lines said.
“Lots of racing people are in town of course.
“We’re all loaded food-wise, we’ve got a couple of tonnes of prawns, hundreds of dozens of oysters and the Moet Ice Beach Club down in the event centre has 900 bottles in there.
“It’s a premium race day and so we treat it as such.”
Sky Racing expert Lizzie Jelfs said Magic Millions had “skyrocketed” in the past 20 years and the 2020 festivities “had been breathtaking”.
“I am really looking forward to the race meet and hopefully I will back a winner,” Ms Jelfs said.
Argentinian model Delfina Blaquier has spent the week on the Coast for the Carnival and will be at the $10 million race day today, but not before she went for a gallop along the shoreline of a Gold Coast beach.
“I must be crazy but I love the adrenaline I guess,” the 39year-old wife of polo heart throb Nacho Figueras said.
“You can have coffee or you can go riding on a horse with no saddle along the beach, either will wake you up,” she said.
She wore a gold gown by Australia-based Italian designer Nicola Finetti for the dawn ride along the beach on the Gold Coast.
There may have been an adrenaline rush but there were no nerves. “I don’t feel fear when I am on a horse,” she said.
Even when, at full gallop, retrained racehorse Glonass decided he was having too much fun charging through the surf and did not want to stop.
“I was going towards the ocean and then the fence,” Delfina said. “I am used to polo ponies that stop on a dime when you pull them up but he did not want to stop.”
Happily he pulled up before they reached Main Beach and trotted back happily in time for Delfina to put on another dry – not sandy – gown for the races today.
Following the races, punters and owners will turn their attention to the future, with the Yearling Sales held across the road from 6pm.
Magic Millions managing director Barry Bowditch said by the time the sales finish tonight $150 million would have changed hands for bloodstock, and the carnival would have raised almost $1 million for bushfire victims.
Mr Bowditch said the Magic Millions Yearling Sales was on the way to beat last year’s record $169 million sales figure.
“The 2020 line-up of Australasia’s best yearlings is like no other sale,” he said.
“Breeders have supported the sale with unparalleled enthusiasm and support.
“We are on track to beat last year’s Book 1 record.
“We have sold eight $1 million lots.
“We are selling yearlings for an average of $250,000, which is up from last year.
“There has been a great atmosphere with the amount of people that are here.”
Trainer Wayne Hawkes took “a leap of faith” yesterday and spent $1.8 million on an untested colt he believed could one day be worth “telephone numbers”.
“I thought he was the horse that would shape up to be the best two-year-old in the sale,” Mr Hawkes said.
“But it is a lot of money. You would spend a lot of time with a pick and shovel earning that kind of coin.”
The sales have attracted a who’s who of national and international racing to Queensland to try to buy the next Winx.
The champion mare was sold at the same sale six years ago for $230,000 and went on to win more than $26 million in 33 consecutive wins.
We’ve got a couple of tonnes of prawns