Breeder has more reasons to smile

If Golden Slipper She Will Reign winner doesn’t add the inaugural $10 million Everest to her already impressive record, the joy Garry Bachell has experienced as her breeder will not diminish.

Bachell retained a share in She Will Reign who Darby Racing secured for $20,000 at the Inglis Classic Sale with another 18 people buying into the filly.

“I’ve had winners before, but nothing like this. You don’t win a Golden Slipper every year, especially with one you’ve bred,” Bachell said.

“Say you watch Wimbledon and see the winner getting interviewed. I used to think ‘Imagine that’, now I know exactly how those people feel.

“I never thought I’d be here, I don’t think anybody did.”

Bachell has had previous experience in the Golden Slipper, and it wasn’t particularly memorable.

Saramenha only beat Empress Rock home when Sepoy won the 2011 edition.

By Manhattan Rain, She Will Reign is the first foal from Courgette.

She began her training with Michael Costa but when he relocated to the Gold Coast, her owners decided to keep her in Sydney and she joined Gary Portelli’s Warwick Farm stable.

“Before her first race at Kembla, Gary wasn’t even worried about her winning, he just wanted a run under her belt before the Inglis (Nursery) a week later,” Bachell said.

She Will Reign blitzed her rivals at Kembla Grange by 8-1/4 lengths, won the Inglis Nursery by four and in six starts she has only been beaten once, by Frolic in the Group Two Riesling Stakes in March.

Bachell said She Will Reign was set for the Golden Slipper after the Inglis Nursery and she met those expectations by claiming the world’s richest race for two-year-olds by 2-1/4 lengths from Frolic.

When The Everest was announced in February, it appealed to Bachell but there were a few problems.

“The initial thought was ‘We’ve just won $2 million in the Slipper, why not take $600,000 and buy our own slot, why do we need a sponsor?” he said.

“Then came all the complications. People had already spent the money on overseas trips. Then we found out you had to sign up for three years.”

Ultimately Yu Long Investments sponsored the slot.

“They wanted to buy She Will Reign after she won at Kembla, so we’d already developed a relationship,” Bachell said.

She Will Reign has already ticked an important box in her first start as a three-year-old, defying the so-called Golden Slipper hoodoo to win the Group One Moir Stakes.