Thorpedo Anna's family known for overcoming challenges

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Thorpedo Anna dominated last Friday’s Kentucky Oaks as the second betting choice, leading all the way and splashing clear to a 4 3/4-length victory. But in some ways, the filly was the biggest of longshots. Her mere existence is a credit to breeder and co-owner Judy Hicks, as Thorpedo Anna’s dam, Sataves, had a premature and troubled start to life and required painstaking care.

Sataves is by classic sire Uncle Mo and out of the unraced Stormy Atlantic mare Pacific Sky – in turn a daughter of multiple Grade/Group 1 producer Aldebaran Light. She was bred in the name of Sanford Robertson, who had Pacific Sky boarded at Hicks’s Brookstown Farm in Versailles, Ky., which she and her husband bought in 1983. Sataves was born on Jan. 27, 2015.

“She was premature, seven, eight weeks premature when she was born,” Hicks said.

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The average gestation for mares is 340 days; a foal born before 320 days is considered premature. A foal born at 300 or fewer days of pregnancy has perhaps as low as a 10 percent chance of survival.

“She was 45 inches tall, weighed 60 pounds,” Hicks recalled. “Her hocks were crushed. And there wasn’t much hope of any future for her. So I volunteered to take her from the owners, Mr. Sanford Robertson and Kathryn Nikkel, who bred her. And Mr. Robertson graciously gave her to me when I volunteered to keep her. And I tried to do my magic, and it worked.”

Sataves was unraced, owing to her rough start and hock problems from her early delivery, and never grew much past 15 hands. But the well-bred filly did overcome the odds to become a healthy broodmare at Brookstown. She produced her first foal, the Tourist filly Charlee O, in 2019. Racing as a homebred for Hicks, Charlee O won twice from 18 starts and earned more than $100,000.

Hicks selected Grade 1-placed sprinter Fast Anna, by Medaglia d’Oro and out of champion Dreaming of Anna, for a subsequent mating for Sataves, and she delivered the filly who would become Thorpedo Anna on Jan. 28, 2021. It would turn out to be the last of five crops for Fast Anna, who stood at Three Chimneys Farm, before he succumbed to laminitis at age 10.

“I like to match physicals with physicals,” Hicks said. “When I went and saw Fast Anna, there was no question. Everything about him physically was going to match an Uncle Mo.”

Trainer Kenny McPeek, who selected Thorpedo Anna for $40,000 out of the 2022 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky fall yearling sale, sees a good deal of broodmare sire Uncle Mo in the filly as well.

“She has a lot of Uncle Mo coming out of her,” McPeek said. “She physically looks like an Uncle Mo. Judy has done a magnificent job raising a filly from a mare that was basically, from what I understand, a reject. That’s where the bloodlines come in.”

Hicks liked the filly so much that she asked McPeek to negotiate her staying in for a piece of the action. Thorpedo Anna now races in partnership for Brookdale Racing, Mark Edwards, Hicks, and the McPeek family’s Magdalena Racing.

McPeek described Thorpedo Anna, throughout the two weeks leading up to her Oaks win, as “a grizzly,” and her strong will was apparent in her enthusiastic morning gallops. It’s been ingrained in the filly’s personality since birth.

“She was always a tyrant at the farm,” Hicks said. “You went into the stall to try to catch her with her mother, she would turn and fire at you with everything she had.”

That strong will has served Thorpedo Anna well on the racetrack, as she has continued to elevate the value of her family. Next in the pipeline for Sataves is McAfee, a 2-year-old colt by Cloud Computing. He was a $40,000 purchase by Maddie Mattmiller for Black Type Thoroughbreds at last year’s Keeneland September yearling sale – which now looks like a bargain. Hicks stayed in for a piece on McAfee, as well. Sataves delivered a filly by Known Agenda on March 15, who has already been named After the Storm.

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