Stefi Magnetica, who scored a rousing win in the $3 million Stradbroke on Saturday, will now head to the paddock with ambitions of taking on the likes of The Everest or the Golden Eagle in the Spring after the connections of the Bjorn Baker trained filly set aside the temptation to press on to the Group 1 Tatts Tiara at Eagle Farm on June 29.
The total prize-money pool in the Tatts Tiara is $700,000 while The Everest is worth $20 million and the Golden Eagle is worth $10 million.
It might not have been as easy a decision as the figures suggest, with the Tatts Tiara possibly there for the taking right now … and with Stefi Magnetica racing in fantastic form … but with the daughter of All Too Hard already attracting serious attention regarding a possible place in The Everest lineup, the shift of focus to future possibilities is quite understandable.
Mitch Cunningham put it best when he told Racenet … “there are some bigger fish to fry in the spring.”
In that same interview, Cunningham confirmed that … “There’s some high-level discussions going on about The Everest and I suspect there will be more in the coming weeks.”
Exciting times indeed for the connections of the 2024 Stradbroke winner whose rapid rise in performance since the start of the year stands as a credit to everybody involved with the horse.
To put that in context, Stefi Magnetica has seven starts in 2023 … claiming her first win at the fifth time of asking in a country meeting at Wellington. She was then spelled and came back to make it two on the trot with a win in a BM58 Handicap when resuming at Orange in December 2023.
Even though she had found winning form, there was nothing to seriously suggest a Stradbroke win might be on the cards at that stage, but her solid progression continued in that preparation as Stefi Magnetica claimed a third and a fourth place in town before making a double statement of intent when finishing fourth in the Group 2 Lightfinger at Randwick and then rubber-stamping the fact that she was a coming force by finishing a close-up second in the Group 1 Surround Stakes.
That improvement held steady in Brisbane where Stefi Magnetica finished less than two lengths off the winner in both the Doomben 10 000 and the Fred Best … runs which arguably allowed her to peak when it mattered most, going third-up into the Stradbroke.
Now Stefi Magnetica goes to the paddock … with her name already entrenched in the list a genuine candidates for big race success in the Spring.
It has been a big six months for the three-year-old filly who has now banked $2 285 800 in prize-money courtesy of three wins and six minor placings from thirteen starts.