An emotional Debbie Kepitis signs for the official sale of Winx’s first live foal at the Inglis Easter Yearling Sales. (Picture: The Age.com.au)
Debbie Kepitis is the popular part-owner of Winx and is now the sole owner of the legendary mare’s only living daughter to date.
Winx’s daughter fetched a record Aus$10 million at the Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale on Monday.
The previous world record for a yearling filly was 5 million guineas (Aus$9 million) in Europe in 2013.
The previous highest priced yearling sold in Australia was A$5 million for a half-brother to Black Caviar in 2013.
The previous sale record for a yearling filly in Australia was $2.6 million in 2012, which was a half-sister to Black Caviar, by Redoute’s Choice.
The buyer of the Aus$10 million Pierro yearling filly, Debbie Kepitis, was a member of the partnership who had put her up for auction.
Debbie Kepitis raced the wonderhorse Winx with two other partners and still owns a third of her.
One of the other two has since passed away and his family inherited the shareholding.
Therefore, in order to break the partnership in the yearling filly she needed to be sold at the auction.
Debbie was initially going to sell her share too, but had a change of heart and revealed to racing.com, “I didn’t come here to buy this horse originally. We put her up for auction and then in the last few weeks, the family started to miss our ‘granddaughter’, so we decided that, as best we could, if we could get her, we would.”
“I’m privileged to be able to secure this filly on behalf on my family. She’s Australian forever and she’s going to be just fabulous. Hopefully she’ll do a Winx, but it doesn’t matter if she doesn’t.”
As she owned a third of the filly before the auction she would have had to fork out Aus$6.6 million to secure her.
That would still constitute an Australian record for a yearling anyway.
However, Debbie can afford it.
She is the daughter of the late Jack Ingham.
The Ingham empire started in 1918 when Jack’s father started in poultry with a cockerel and four hens. Folklore has it that the cockerel was called Big Jack.
His sons Bob and Jack Ingham built the company into the largest producer of chickens and turkeys in Australia.
Ingham Enterprises Pty Limited was sold in 2014 for A$880 million.
Walter Ingham had had an interest in breeding horses and, in addition to the poultry business, the brothers also inherited a broodmare named Valiant Rose. The mare was a descendant of the great British racehorse Bend Or, an Epsom Derby winner and Champion broodmare sire. The Ingham brothers used Valiant Rose to begin building what became a A$250 million breeding and racing operation, the largest in Australia. Their equine empire included Woodlands Stud at Denman in the Hunter Valley, Crown Lodge racing stables at Warwick Farm Racecourse, Sydney and Carbine Lodge racing stables at Flemington Racecourse, Melbourne, plus racing stables in Adelaide and Brisbane. The most famous of the Inghams’ successful horses was Octagonal, the 1996 Australian Horse of the Year and a winner of multiple Group One races including the Cox Plate and the Australian Derby.
The Woodland Stud operation was sold to Dubai’s ruler, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, for $500 million (according to wikipedia) in 2008.
Debbie Kepitis could therefore afford to say about Winx’s daughter, “Hopefully she can get to the racetrack, and if she can’t, she will be an amazing mum.”
However, more importantly, the Australian racing public are thrilled that Winx’s only living daughter to date will stay in Australia and be owned by a truly great horseracing family who always put the horse first.
