Purchased for just $30,000 from the 2024 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale Book 2, the filly has now returned just shy of $140,000 in prizemoney, and the promise of much more to come. Ridden by Rachel King for the first time, Spicy Lu enjoyed an unchallenged lead and was never seriously threatened, drawing clear to win comfortably by 1.89l and hand Olive his first stakes win since 2017.
“It’s unreal, it’s just so hard to find a really good one,” Olive said.
“You always dream of finding another good one, and Spicy Lu is really giving us that excitement again. I only buy three or four yearlings a year and my budget is between $20,000 and $50,000. We’ve had a lot of success from our purchases from very small numbers. We bought Single Gaze for $70,000 so if we could do a quarter of what Single Gaze achieved, I’d be pretty happy!”
Another astute purchase
Nick Olive has always trusted his eye for athleticism, and it paid dividends once again with Spicy Lu who was purchased for just $30,000 from the 2024 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale Book 2. The daughter of Tagaloa wasn’t an immediate standout on type, but Olive was drawn to something less obvious.
“I’m very big on how a horse moves—just their athletic movement. That’s what I’m really looking for,” Olive explained. “She’s well put together, but I wouldn’t say she’s a cracking type. If you see her in the stable, she doesn’t look like much, but then you see her walk or watch her on the track and she’s a totally different horse.”
It’s not the first time Olive has struck gold at the Magic Millions. A decade earlier, he unearthed his Group 1-winning mare and fan favourite Single Gaze (Not A Single Doubt), who was secured for just $70,000 at the 2014 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale. With Spicy Lu now adding black type to her page, Olive’s knack for finding value in the ring continues to stand the test of time.
Tagaloa beginning to make his mark
Spicy Lu became the first stakes winner for Yulong Stud’s first-season sire Tagaloa, who stood for $22,000 inc. GST in 2024 and yesterday stamped himself a serious source of juvenile talent.
A son of Japanese sprinting star Lord Kanaloa (Jpn), Tagaloa was a Gr.1 Blue Diamond winner on the track, and now off it, his first crop is beginning to hit their straps. Saturday was a landmark day for the stallion with three black-type performers:
• Spicy Lu – Winner, Listed Fernhill Mile
• Meisho – Runner-up, Listed Without Fear Stakes (SA)
• Alottago – Third, Listed Welcome Stakes (NZ)
“He’s (Tagaloa) doing very well. Obviously, it’s come out of the blue a little bit, but they’ve all been knocking on the door,” Yulong Stud’s nominations manager Harry King said.
“Yesterday’s race results probably solidify what we have always thought about his 2-year-olds and what they could do.
Gr.1 Blue Diamond Winner Tagaloa | Standing at Yulong
“Just looking at them physically, they’re big horses, but they’re very forward and they’ve got great minds on them. So, they have been going to the races – he’s had 15 runners now as 2-year-olds – and we are starting to see the fruits of the mares that have gone to him in his first crop.
“Talking to trainers and agents and sales companies, the positive there of them has been that they have gotten up and going. It proved that you could break them in and give them a preparation, and now, as we have seen with Spicy Lu and the three other runners yesterday, they’ve come back in and they’re really starting to prove themselves at the back end of their 2-year-old campaigns.
“He’s (Tagaloa) obviously a Blue Diamond winner, so sometimes you do expect them to be real quick up and going, but I guess they have gotten the back end of a 2-year-old campaign. It really excites us a lot going into the 3-year-old campaign with these horses, which a lot of them do look physically like 3-year-olds.”
From just a small sample of 14 early runners, Tagaloa has produced six placegetters and 3 stakes performers, all of which are showing speed and versatility across states – and in Spicy Lu, he’s struck early black-type gold.
Rated to win
Coming off two country wins, Olive revealed that he had his reservations about taking the giant leap into the Listed Fernhill Mile but put his faith in friend and ratings expert Simon Dinopoulos that the filly would measure up.
“Coming from the country you don’t really expect it but we knew she was going well,” Olive said. “You always have a question mark when you are going to town with that country form but we thought that win at Albury was really good and it was worth having a crack.
“Simon Dinopoulos is a good mate of mine and he just helps me with form, ratings and placement of horses. He’s been a crucial part of improving our strike rate over the past year or two. After the Cowra win on debut, he rated it good enough to be competitive in Highway grade. Then we went to Albury and Simon said, if we win this then you have to give her a crack at the Fernhill, because we knew they had a bit of an opinion of Matt Dale’s horse Rose Aye, which ended up finishing second. Just the way she knuckled down and won that day, it was a very good win. There was a big gap back to third, 6l I think, and after that he said, here we go, let’s go!
A glimpse of Group 1 potential?
While Olive was quick to keep a lid on expectations, the echoes of his past Group 1 glory are impossible to ignore. His only previous Group 1 winner, Single Gaze, took the 2015 Vinery Stud Stakes and became a $2.3 million earner with nine stakes placings, and just like Spicy Lu, she was tough, tenacious, and underrated early on.
“She is similar in a lot of ways to Single Gaze,” Olive said.
“Single Gaze, she kept getting thrown in the deep end and she kept stepping up. I guess, that’s the sign of a decent horse, isn’t it? There’s not much to Spicy Lu, she’s not a big horse. She has a beautiful stride like Single Gaze, she’s gutsy, eats well and does everything right around the stable – there’s definitely a lot of similarities there.
“I think she maybe was a little under rated yesterday, not unlike Single Gaze, which played to our favour. We thought if we jump and lead, although it’s probably not the best way to ride her, that they might just leave us alone because they wouldn’t respect us. As it turned out, it was a jog early and she ramped it up from the 600 metres and they couldn’t run her down.”
What’s next?
With the Fernhill Mile (1600 metres) now under her belt, connections will weigh their options with backing up into the Gr.1 Champagne Stakes still under serious consideration.
“We are tempted to back up next week,” Olive said.
“We’ll see how she pulls up and see how she is over the course of the week. We’ll definitely nominate tomorrow and then just give her a few days for her to let us know where she is at. If she is thriving after this run, we would probably be mad not to have a crack at the Champagne Stakes. If she’s not, then we can wait and maybe she can go to Brisbane for a crack at a couple of races up there. As things are at the moment, she’s a 2-year-old that gets over a trip and that eliminates a lot of horses. I feel if she backs up at her best next week, she’ll definitely be competitive.”
The path from $30,000 yearling to Group 1 hopeful is never straightforward but if Spicy Lu continues on her upward trajectory, the filly may soon find herself on Australian racing’s biggest stage.
Bred to be good
Spicy Lu was bred by the Esplin family and is the best of three winners from All Salsa, a metro-winning daughter of Charge Forward.
While maybe a little thin on first inspection, a deep dive into Spicy Lu’s pedigree reveals a family boasting plenty of depth and quality. Spicy Lu’s female line traces directly back to the European Champion 3YO Filly Salsabil (Sadler’s Wells {USA}), winner of the 1000 Guineas, Epsom Oaks, Irish Derby and Prix Vermeille. It’s a deep and durable international family, and Spicy Lu is the first in generations to claim stakes status in Australia.
Unfortunately, All Salsa passed away in 2023 with her last foal, a half-sister to Spicy Lu by Victor Ludorum (GB), to be offered by Vinery Stud later this month at the 2025 Inglis HTBA Yearling Sale as Lot 138.
Spicy Lu also became the 16th Stakes winner for top broodmare sireCharge Forward who has also produced three Gr.1 winners in Sunlight (Zoustar), She Will Reign (Manhattan Rain) and Estijaab (Snitzel).
Written for TTRAusNZ
