‘I Didn’t Expect Amazing Things’: Classic Success for Rookie Breeder Lulu Winter

[Wandering Eyes]

We have heard plenty of the major owner-breeders this season, with the six Guineas to have been run in Britain, Ireland and France having gone to Godolphin, Juddmonte, Coolmore, and the Aga Khan Studs. So now it is time to hear from the breeder with one mare, who has just celebrated a Classic victory for the first foal she has bred.

Step forward, Lulu Winter, breeder of Lady Ilze, winner of the G2 German 1,000 Guineas for Westminster Race Horses and Andreas Wohler on Sunday.

As we speak on Monday afternoon, Winter apologises for sounding drowsy. She doesn't, and she could be forgiven anyway as she had been up for almost 24 hours the previous day having flown in to Dusseldorf for the big occasion. 

“My flight was delayed last night getting back from Germany and I don't think I got home until about 2.30, and having got up at 3am it felt like a very long day,” she says.

A long but happy day, and one that resulted from Winter's insistence to buy Lady Ilze's dam Roman Spinner (Intikhab) when she retired from her 45-race career with Rae Guest, for whom she worked in Newmarket. 

“I joined Rae, having never worked in racing, in September 2016 and he bought Roman Spinner as a yearling to put in a three-horse syndicate about a month after I joined him. So I've known her a lot of her life,” explains Winter, who is now working for Jack Jones, Guest's successor at Chestnut Tree Stables.

“She was one of those lovely little tough racing mares. She was never going to set the world alight but she won five, got placed 19 times, and then obviously she got to the stage where everybody felt she had probably had enough of her racing and she got put in an online sale because it was the time of Covid. And I got all emotional about her because she's the sweetest, sweetest girl, so Rae sat on the phone bidding for me.”

She adds, “I had to go 500gns over my limit that I'd set but I just wanted her to have a good onward life. I didn't expect amazing things, but you always hope that something nice will come.”

That something has been more than nice. Bought by Tomas Janda for the Westminster Race Horses syndicate from Tattersalls October Book 3 for 11,000gns, the daughter of Territories went off to Poland. There she won three times as a juvenile before being switched to the stable of one of Germany's leading trainers, Andreas Wohler. 

“As soon as I saw who bought her at the sale, I nipped round and had a chat,” Winter recalls. “Marian from the syndicate was sitting right next to Tomas, so we started our conversation and I kept in touch and the relationship developed.

“They've been very sweet. Tomas keeps me posted about what the plans are or how she's doing, and then he bought the next one, the Lope Y Fernandez filly that I had following year. She's in Poland as a two-year-old now.”

Lady Ilze had run fourth in the G3 Baronin von Ullman-Schwarzgold Rennen on her way to Sunday's Classic, for which hopes were not brimming over. 

“We'd sort of been talking ourselves down a bit in the parade ring because Andreas Wohler said, 'Oh, it's going to be a tough race, and the ground's not what I had hoped for her.' And so we were all thinking, 'Well, it will be lovely if she gets a place.'

“But then she came with that late run, I mean, I was just standing there with my mouth hanging open, shouting, 'Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.' She just blasted past them.”

 

Roman Spinner with Lady Ilze as a foal at Brook Stud

 

At Brook Stud, where Roman Spinner boards, the mare has a foal by A'Ali at foot.

“They do a fantastic job there,” Winter says. “I come up with my shortlist of ideas and then Dwayne  [Woods] walks me through them and  says, 'No. No. Yes. Yes.'

“I knew nothing. I still know nothing. So they've been invaluable in guiding me through the whole process. And of course they look after her beautifully and all the progeny.”

Having used Territories initially because he was nearby at Darley's Dalham Hall Stud, Winter was unable to return to him this season as she had planned as the stallion was sold to stand in India, but she sent Roman Spinner instead to his former stud-mate, Triple Time. 

“I spent all my house extension money, and the dream would be to actually be able to put one in training,” she says. 

With such a major pedigree update for a young mare, that dream could be realised if the prices for some of Roman Spinner's subsequent offspring duly rise in the sale ring. As recent statistics released by the TBA have shown, it is tough for most breeders to make a profit, and small breeders of Winter's ilk are in desperately short supply. Thankfully, a number of them are still lured into breeding at the promise of a result such as this. Here's to the dreamers.

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