THE HEADLINE STORY OF SAVING FRONT PAGE’S DAM

Broodmare Stacey Lee still has the scars on her legs which were shredded when she took fright during a ferocious storm and smashed through a succession of fences during a wild night at Euroa.

It was no shock that veterinary surgeons suggested to euthanize the broodmare which had a filly foal at foot by Magnus and was also in foal to the Widden Stud stallion.

But Suzanne Royal, who operates Asscher Park Equine in Violet Town and had managed Scone Veterinary Hospital’s intensive care unit for a decade, was up for the challenge to save the mare.

“They said to put her down,” Royal said.

The foal at foot was to race as News Girl – a winner of five races – and the foal Stacey Lee was carrying was to become Front Page, the Listed winner of the Creswick Stakes (12000m) and the winner of last Saturday’s $2m Kosciuszko (1200m) which carried a first prize of $1m.

Stacey Lee (Bel Esprit x Curio Jade) was trained by Geoff Duryea at Corowa and his son Peter, along with family and friends, have bred from the mare and raced the progeny, including Front Page.

Royal said she had treated horses with lacerations in the past for Damian Gleeson of Phoenix Broodmare Farm and he asked her if could again work some magic.

But this time it was a massive job.

“I told Damian that I was absolutely willing to give it a crack and I spoke to Geoff and Maureen Duryea about the mare and I said there was a high possibility that we may lose the pregnancy inside of her,” Royal said.

“We literally had to teach her walk again and worked night and day to get her to look after News Girl and to keep the pregnancy inside of her which was Front Page.’’

It got to the stage where Stacey Lee was taught how to walk in a small grass yard and then she moved more freely in a bigger yard before being transport back to Gleeson’s Phoenix Broodmare Farm.

“It was a very long process and I was very grateful to Geoff and Maureen and the team behind Stacey Lee who were willing to entrust her with me, going through the ups and downs of what she was going through,” Royal said.

“The wounds get worse before they get better and they absolutely supported me through that and they came down to visit her on a regular basis.

“They came down the second day she was out in the yard and saw her move around and at that stage her toes were bungeed up to her bandage because she would just knuckle down on them from behind due to the fact that she had lost all of her tendon.”

And while Royal described it as a tough battle to recover from the wounds and to learn how to walk again, she said the mare was tough at the beginning.

And in the end Stacey Lee survived, News Girl didn’t miss it on anything and Front Page was born without any complications.

For a mare that went through so much, Royal said it was great to see Stacey Lee continue to thrive.

And she kept a photographic diary of the mare’s road to recovery which started when Stacey Lee arrived at her property on December 13, 2015.  She spent two months locked up and ventured out to a small yard in early February.

“She went through multiple fences and it was a horrendous storm if I remember rightly,” Royal said of the accident.

“There were a lot of trees hit by lightning. A lot of thunder and all that sort of stuff, and Damian has a super-safer property, but it just rumbled over those hills.”

Royal foals down for multiple farms, including Willaroon Thoroughbreds, and works with a lot of high risk pregnancy mares, has foster mares, and raises orphan foals.

Because of her work as a qualified vet running Scone Veterinary Hospital’s intensive care unit, she has the background and knowledge in the medical and intensive treatment of horses.

And she admits she wasn’t afraid of having a “red hot crack” at Stacey Lee’s wounds which she said were simply horrific and required daily treatment and care.

“I was crying on Saturday because I was so happy because I knew how close we really were to losing that pregnancy,” Royal said. Of Front Page’s $1m win.

“Unless you are in the industry you just don’t realise how a mare in pain can just absorb it and it was only an early pregnancy. They can get rid of them so quickly, but she was a tough girl and all credit to the mare that she held on to that pregnancy and she understood and supported what I was trying to do to help her out.

“Some of those mares can really give up the ghost and pack it in, but she was tough and lived for News Girl, that filly at foot, and all credit to her and the owners for entrusting her to me and bandaging her legs and having a crack at it.”

Royal said Stacey Lee went back to Phoenix Broodmare Farm in March when she didn’t require bandaging, but the wounds obviously still hadn’t healed, but they won the battle.

News Girl was Stacey Lee’s first foal, followed by Front Page and then Page Three (Stryker), Deeling Aces, Group Chat (Rubick) and she had a Magnus filly last month. The unraced Page Three has been retained by the Duryea family but missed to Magnus last year.

With the exception of Front Page, Stacey Lee’s five other foals are fillies.

And after Front Page’s Listed Creswick Stakes win up the Flemington straight in June of 2020, a decision had to be made whether to accept a lucrative offer from Hong Kong.

Duryea said Front Page’s next assignment would probably be back at Flemington on the last day of the carnival on November 5 to tackle the Group 1 Champions Sprint (1200m).