'She improved like magic': Racehorse no one wanted goes on to win big
A young racehorse no one believed had the genes or drive needed to win races proved everyone wrong this season. Purchased for just $1,000, Stevie Wonder Girl has since climbed her way to the top, winning fifty times that.
Alivia Kettleson and her husband have been involved in horse racing their entire lives. Her husband was at a yearling sale when he came home with the unproven horse.
"I did not want him to buy horses, but he came back with two," Kettleson told CTV News Edmonton.
"When they go through the sales ring, they have to have a minimum bid of $1,000. If no one puts their hands up for that minimum bid," she added, "they just go back to the barn."
"So he was the only one who put his hand up."
As a two-year-old, Kettleson said Stevie Wonder Girl wasn't raising any eyebrows.
"She was looking like she was just a horse," Kettleson said. "Maybe not a dud but like one better than a dud."
Despite training, Stevie Wonder Girl wasn't showing an interest in being a competitive racing horse, her jockey Dane Nelson recalled.
"She wasn't going nowhere," Nelson said. "She was at the back, lie every race in a cheap maiden, she was at the back. Like, come on."
"She started the year off very slow," Kettleson added.
"We (then) put her in a race that was as low as you can go," she explained. "So this is the bottom of the barrel, and she won that day. Then the next time she raced, she won again."
Kettleson said she never expected for Stevie Wonder Girl to get to the level she's at now.
"She didn't really have a proven winning father," she said. "He just hasn't really bred that many horses either."
"It was uncharted waters… You weren't really sure what you were going to get."
Nelson has been riding for 20 years and has won two championships in Jamaica. He's never seen a horse with a trajectory like Stevie Wonder Girl.
"She improved like magic," he said. "Not many horses do that… She just keeps going and climbing."
"She was at the bottom," he added. "To be at this level now, she's truly a wonder horse."
He expects she will only get better next season.
"She's just gaining strength and ability," Nelson said. "She lives up to her name, just like Wonder Woman."
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