Graded Stakes Winning Owners - Judy Hicks with Thorpedo Anna
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Judy Hicks, who is forever linked to her incredible home-bred three-year-old filly Thorpedo Anna, overpaid for another filly 35 years ago: $10. That filly, Phoenix Sunshine, posted nine wins, nine seconds and three thirds in 47 starts, earning more than a quarter of a million. She was even better off the track, foaling six winners including half-a-million dollar-earner Boss Ego. Hicks calls Phoenix Sunshine “the anchor of my broodmare band.”
Learning from her Phoenix Sunshine purchase, Hicks only paid $6 for the foal of a mare whom the original owner kept eight years later. The foal was Miss Pink Diva, who was one-for-14 and made $111,780. She was second by a head in the 2016 Grade 3 Locust Grove Stakes, but in her next start, the Grade 1 Spinster Stakes, she broke down and had to be euthanized.
Both purchases came from an unpaying owner for boarding his horses at Hicks’ farm. “I’m stubborn,” Hicks said. “I’m a California girl. I didn’t know male chauvinism existed until I moved to Kentucky and that women weren’t allowed to speak. When I had somebody not pay their bill, I said, `This isn’t going to happen, so what do I have to do?’”
Hicks began researching state law and found out that if you give a client a month to pay and if you don’t hear from them, you have a legal right to have a sheriff’s sale, which is then advertised. “Nobody goes to them,” Hicks said. “There were two horses. The colt, I just let him go. But the filly I really liked.”
She liked her even more as the years went by.
Now Hicks owns Thorpedo Anna, five-for-six with one second and earnings of more than $1.7 million in her career. If there was an eclipse vote in mid-2024, she’d be a walk-over three-year-old filly champion and a contender for the Horse of the Year.
But Thorpedo Anna would never have been born if Hicks didn’t save her dam, Sataves, when common sense and logic suggested to give up on her.
Hicks has never believed in giving up.
Born in Chicago, Hicks’ family moved to California when she was six. “We had a little farm,” Hicks said. “We started having horses and go-karts.”
She chose horse racing over a career in NASCAR.
She spent five years finishing a double major of biological and animal sciences at California Poly. She wanted to go to vet school at UC-Davis, but didn’t get in.
Through her grandfather’s connections – he knew the president of Texas A & M - she got into vet school there. She didn’t stick. “I was in vet school for six months, cleaning lab cages,” she said. “They had this Great Dane puppy in one of the experimental cages.” When she didn’t see him in his cage one morning, she asked, “Where’s Duke?’” She was told Duke’s remains were in several jars. “They had killed him,” she said.
That killed her desire to be a veterinarian.
Through another of her grandfather’s connections Hicks journeyed to Kentucky and was an intern at Forest Retreat Farm. While she was there, she met Dr. Donald Applegate and Cecil Horne. They were looking for a farm manager at their Mint Springs Farm. That’s where she met her husband, R.W.
In 1983, they purchased 600-acre Brookstown Farm in Versailles. It needed a lot of work, which has never stopped Hicks from doing anything she wanted. They began boarding Thoroughbreds, then began breeding and racing them.
Sataves, a daughter of Uncle Mo out of the unraced Stormy Atlantic mare Pacific Sky, was born extremely premature.
“She was born six weeks premature,” Hicks said. “She was 40 inches tall. I didn’t weigh her, but she was maybe 60 pounds. A few weeks later, her owner came and saw her. Her hocks were crushed. The owner gave her to me. I said, `Let me see if I can keep her alive.’ I named her for Sataves, a Buddhist god.”
Hicks waited three years until conceding to the reality that Sataves was never going to race. “Because of her hocks,” Hicks said. “I bred her to Tourist.”
That foal, Charlee O, won two of 18 starts and earned more than $100,000 for Hicks and R.W.
They bred her back to Fast Anna, a Grade 1-placed sprinting son of Medaglia d’ Oro. Fast Anna’s crop that year was his last. He died of laminitis at the age of 10.
Thorpedo Anna was born on January 27th, 2021. “She was tough,” Hicks said. “She had a mind of her own. She was not an easy foal to raise.”
Trainer Kenny McPeek bought her for $40,000 at the 2022 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky Fall Yearling Sale.
“I didn’t know Kenny,” Hicks said. “I went over and introduced myself. I asked him for 45 percent. All he did was laugh.”
Regardless, she maintained an undisclosed percentage of Thorpedo Anna, joining partners Brookdale Racing, Mark Edwards and Magdalena Racing’s Sheri McPeek, Kenny’s wife.
“I wasn’t familiar with Judy,” McPeek said. “She approached me after I signed the ticket. It worked out.”
Thorpedo Anna’s first race was at Keeneland. “Kenny couldn’t be there,” Hicks said. “He said, `you better go because she’s going to win by a lot.’”
She did, by 8 ½ lengths. She then won an allowance race by nine lengths and finished second by 5 ¼ lengths in the Grade 2 Golden Rod in her final start at two at Churchill Downs.
This year, no filly has been close to her. She won the Grade 2 Fantasy Stakes at Oaklawn Park by four lengths. She captured the Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks by 4 ¾ lengths, the first half of McPeek’s incredible weekend. The next day, McPeek’s Mystik Dan won the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby by a nose.
Asked about the Oaks, Hicks said, “I don’t think I expected her to win, but when she started drawing away, I went crazy. I was hugging Kenny. It was amazing. People said, `You don’t realize what you’ve done. The ultimate dream if you own a mare is winning the Oaks.’”
How about winning the Grade 1 Acorn Stakes at Saratoga, too? Despite losing a shoe during the race, she triumphed by 5 ½ lengths. Her next planned start is the Grade 1 Coaching Club American Oaks at Saratoga July 20th.
“We have yet to ask her to run,” Hicks said. “I think she’s going to go down as one of the greatest fillies in history.”
