You’d be taking shorts odds that Saturday’s $1m VOBIS Platinum Showdown winner Stanley Express will end up in Hong Kong one day.
A lot of “Express” horses race there at the top level and of course we all know Stanley and its markets.
Stanley Express is already mostly owned there anyway, but that’s where the inaugural winner, only five years ago, of the showcase Victorian Owners and Breeders race day ended up, that’s Prince of Sussex, or Lucky Express as he was renamed by new owners who paid plenty to race him there.
But Stanley will have to produce something even more spectacular than Caulfield’s stunning debut, to match the story of Prince, or Lucky, or “Harlow” as he became known, before amazingly going full circle and landing back in the Moorooduc stables of Matt Laurie last Thursday.
Which is where it all started, Laurie buying him (for $145,000 at Inglis Premier), breaking him in personally, selling him (for $1.75m) after only his third start in that Showdown, watching him amass HK $12m in stakes before finding him in an obscure mixed sale early this month and getting him back for just $2000. That's right, just $2k for a multi-millionaire racehorse.
That’s some journey, and naturally some story goes with it.
And it goes a little bit like this. Working backwards.
Andrew Wilson and Co run a fortnightly horse, livestock, gear, and sundry items sale online. And there in the April 4-5 catalogue, some 448 lots, Welsh ponies, standardbreds, quarter-horses and donkeys, Paint and Miniatures, Galloways and goats, heifers, lambs and Land Cruisers, sheds, chaff bins, riding gear and anything else you could think of was Lot 5 – Lucky Express
“Prince” he was called, “He is for sale because on occasions he will windsuck,” said the blurb.
“Prince has been at a boarding school for a term, and it was not an issue. It was not an issue when he raced, so I do wonder it being in a large paddock might be the issue.”
There were videos of him being ridden and some pre-sale pics which were very unlike the original Prince of Sussex.
Enter Laurie and his partner Kate Brideoake.
“One of my former staff alerted me to it, otherwise I would never have known, I’d always wanted to know where he was and was always keen to get him back because he was so good to me, but I never expected it to be like this,” Laurie said.
“I just said to Kate, make sure you buy him.”
They did and Prince arrived back home last week, glad to have him, and now to nurse him back to something like showroom condition.
“We did get a bit of a shock when he walked in, but he is coming good, we are just thrilled to have him back.”
“I’d had some handy horses, Escado (won a South Australian) Derby, but he (Prince of Sussex) was probably my first really good horse, even though it was so short and sweet.
"I suppose I never knew what his ceiling was and how good he could have been here, but the money was too good to knock back for the owners at the time. For many it was life changing."
“But having broken him in myself, you do get a close connection with him, so naturally I followed him over there (Hong Kong).”
Prince of Sussex was bought for one of John Size’s key clients, Larry Yung, whose “Express” name is added to all of his horses, he has raced 19 there, but the Hong Kong Derby is always the goal.
Lucky Express made it to the Derby, but failed to see out the 2000m, and Yung’s son, Andy, continued the Express theme, they raced the highly touted Helios Express in this year’s Derby.
There were just two wins (including the Panasonic Cup for Zac Purton) from 25 starts in Hong Kong, 10 other top three placings, and he ran in all the majors, a Chairman’s Sprint, Silver Jubilee Cup, Hong Kong International Mie, 2nd in the HK Mile to Excellent proposal, and a second to Beauty Joy in the Premier Cup, that horse running in Golden Sixty’s Champion Mile on the weekend and a perennial top level performer.
But Lucky Express was retired in July 2022, and where he went for the next year remains a mystery before he ended up in the care of eventer Breeana Tillitzk at Martindale near Denman, north-west of Sydney.
“To me he was Harlow,” said Bree.
“He was owned by a lady (Janette Mayne), who has some stock horses and others, and I was basically schooling him up to see if he was good for her kids to ride,” she said
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“He came here a little scrawny, I didn’t know anything about his background, but with work and feeding he left here in good shape.
“He was a really nice horse, he did everything I asked of him, he wasn’t a proper dressage horse, but he wanted to learn and kept getting better and better. Anyway, he was going to be safe for the kids.”
Bree, who has about eight horses in work, mostly warmbloods, for her eventing and dressage career, has been surprised to learn of the real "Harlow" story.
“I’m just so glad that they got him back and I’ll be keeping in touch to find out how he is going.”
Laurie admits it will take some time to see the spright in Prince Of Sussex again, any thoughts of a return to the racetrack, buried in a long-range fanciful dream at best.
“Not even going down that path yet, but to think of what we’ve been through with him, and his family has been quite amazing,” Laurie said.
“We had two full sisters after him, one died being broken-in, the next one was a gorgeous filly ready to go, but she broke a splint bone in a hind leg, and then injured herself in surgery and couldn’t be saved.”
Laurie bought the full brother to Prince of Sussex at Magic Millions in January for $280,000.
He too has much to live up to, but maybe his older brother Prince can give him some life advice and what’s ahead.
Even if he doesn’t believe it.
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