'This is the one': The Next Episode kicks off Cunningham's Australian adventure with a bang

Cover image courtesy of Magic Millions

When The Next Episode (Snitzel) accelerated past his rivals on Friday night to take out the $1 million Magic Millions National 2YO Classic, the celebrations were felt across both hemispheres, with majority owner Phil Cunningham watching live from England.

The journey that led the $2.8 million Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale graduate to his third win in five starts began more than three years ago, some 10,000 miles away, with an Irishman and a dream of the G1 Melbourne Cup.

Cup dreams

Irish owner Peter Trainor has always admired Australian racing.

“Every big race day in Australia is treated like a holiday,” he said. “It feels like everyone buys into the idea of a day at the races. Being an avid racing fan myself, I've always said to myself, ‘if I ever get a horse good enough, I'd definitely send them down’.

“A mutual friend introduced me to Ciaron Maher, and I said to him, ‘I'm going to send you a horse’. I am sure he hears that every day of the week, he meets so many people and everyone says they're sending him a horse, but I actually did.”

Trainor purchased the then 4-year-old Future History (GB) (Showcasing {GB}) for 140,000 gns ($277,000) at Tattersalls in 2022, and sent the four-time winner south to Maher, with the hopes of gaining a berth in the Melbourne Cup, a race Trainor had long admired.

“He obviously has excelled in Ciaron’s care,” Trainor said. While Future History may have run 15th in the race that stops the nation in 2023, he has more than made his mark on the Australian racing landscape, with wins in the G3 JRA Cup and the G3 Bart Cummings Classic amongst his six victories down under.

“He’s won five stakes races down here. When I travelled down to the Melbourne Cup, I was there for nine days and it was probably the best nine days I've ever had since being involved in racing.

“I am very friendly with Phil Cunningham and we follow all of the major racing carnivals with a group of friends, and I suppose I was waxing lyrical to him about racing in Australia so he bought a horse down there to pacify me - then it turns out to be The Next Episode.”

A racing rebel

Englishman Cunningham describes his enterprise Rebel Racing as “a hobby that got a bit out of hand”.

Cunningham's private stable is named after the first English horse he ever bought a share in; trained by Geoff Huffer, Cockney Rebel (Ire) won the G1 2000 Guineas and the G1 Irish 2000 Guineas in the spring of 2007 to cement himself a spot at stud. He was only the sixth horse in history to complete the double, five years after the feat was achieved at Rock Of Gibraltar (Ire).

Cunningham opened Rebel Racing at Newmarket in 2016, employing Richard Spencer to train his stock. His horses in work number around 50 at any given time and he adds around 20 yearlings to that number every year. He also has The Rebel Stud, a 10-minute drive from Newmarket, where he breeds and raises his youngstock.

“We’re going very well at the moment,” Cunningham said. “Last year we won the Ayr Gold Cup, the Ayr Silver Cup, the Stewards Cup.”

But before Trainor’s ambitious trip south, he hadn’t dabbled in the Australian scene.

“I had never been to Australia before,” said Cunningham. “So we went over at last New Years (2024) for a holiday and did a little bit of a tour. I had bought a leg in a filly called Life After Love with Ciaron, so obviously we kept in touch, and I decided eventually that I wanted to be more involved.”

Enter Gabrielle Nutt, then the Client Relations and Sales Manager for Maher Racing; when Cunningham made his first trip down under, Nutt ensured he received the full tour of Maher’s facilities ahead of the sale.

“When Peter came down for Future History’s Melbourne Cup run, I looked after him, and he had such a great time that he wanted to have a few more horses down here and bring some of his friends,” she said. “I did the same when Phil came with his son Aidan and his wife Emma - we went to Bong Bong Farm and Ballarat, and I showed them how we Aussies do things, which is a bit different to England.

“He loved what he saw down here, and we have built a real friendship as a result. We keep in touch all the time.”

As the 2025 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale drew near, Cunningham was keen to attend and deepen his investment in Maher’s stable, one yearling at a time.

This is the one

The first yearling sale of the season is always an exciting one, and Book 1 of the 2025 Magic Millions sale featured 27 sons of Snitzel - but only one was at the top of Maher’s list.

“I remember exactly how it happened,” said Trainor. “Phil was over there travelling and I had said to him, ‘make sure you go see Ciaron’s stables and make sure you go up to Magic Millions’. So Phil said, ‘I might go to the sales, I might even buy one’, and that’s how it was left.”

“Phil said, ‘I’ll be there on the day and we will buy something. I won’t buy if I’m not on complex’,” Nutt recalled. “Phil drove to the complex from Byron with his son Aidan, and we sat down with Ciaron and gave Phil a shortlist.

“We looked at this Snitzel colt in the pre-parade ring and Phil said, ‘isn’t he a bit small?’ And I said to him, ‘you got to look a little bit differently to these horses to what they are in Europe, we breed a different kind of animal down here’. Back at the table, Phil asks Ciaron’s opinion on the colt, and Ciaron says, ‘this is the one. This is the horse of the sale’.”

Maher was not the only potential purchaser to share that opinion of Lot 489, with Cunningham and Maher stretching to $2.8 million to purchase the most expensive colt in the sale. The son of Group 3-winning Humma Humma (Denman) was only edged out by a daughter of Home Affairs, sold for $3.2 million, as the sale’s top lot.

“I was sitting there feeling a little reluctant as the bidding went past $2 million,” Nutt said. “But Phil and Ciaron landed it. It was all very exciting, there was a bit of madness at the table afterwards.”

“It was 10pm my time,” said Trainor. “I put the phone down and went to bed, and when I woke up the next morning at 5am, there must have been 40 messages saying, ‘Phil’s bought the best horse in the sale!’”

“Normally if I was going to spend that sort of money (that was spent on The Next Episode), I would spread that money around and purchase five or six yearlings, but with the time difference and everything else, in the end I decided we would probably go all in with one,” Cunningham said.

“That was the brief that he gave to Ciaron - he told him, ‘I don't want to buy 10% of 10 horses’,” Trainor continued. “‘I want to buy the best horse in the sale’. And to be fair to Ciaron, he selected the Humma Humma colt and they went and bought him.”

“They didn’t expect him to go for quite as much as he did,” Cunningham added. “But he was their pick of the sale, and it would be the worst thing in the world now if he was trained and owned by somebody else, and we were sitting there watching him achieve what he's achieving now.

“And there was a fair bit of research put into it. It wasn’t all crazy speculation. If we were to spend the equivalent money in the Book 1 at Tattersalls, that wouldn’t be a record-breaking price. The value for money with the exchange rate makes sense, and the prize money is significantly better than in the UK, so there's a much bigger chance of getting it all back.”

Cunningham kept 50% of the colt and Trainor came in for a share, as did Widden Stud’s Antony Thompson and a number of Maher’s major clients.

“The grand dream was that he'd be running in the Magic Millions and then the Golden Slipper, which didn't quite time out,” said Nutt. “But what he's done this preparation has just been so exciting. He arguably should be undefeated, and Phil and Pete are over the moon following the race on Friday night. They’re already planning a trip down to watch him race at the end of October.”

This year, the autumn carnival’s greatest allure for Cunningham and Trainor comes a few days earlier than the Cup, when they hope to see The Next Episode line up in the G1 Coolmore Stud Stakes.

Getting himself out of trouble

With the seven-figure colt named The Next Episode - following Cunningham’s favoured trend of naming his horses after songs - he kicked off his career in the $1 million Golden Gift in the spring, where things didn’t go to plan and he finished at the tail of the field.

In fact, things haven’t gone to plan for most of the colt’s starts, despite him pulling off three wins in four starts in the autumn and running second to Blue Door (Stay Inside) in the G3 Kindergarten Stakes. But he made up for it all on Friday night.

“I’ve never seen one, let alone owned one, with such an electric turn of foot,” said Cunningham. “And fortunately for him, it gets him out of trouble because he does his best to get into trouble in the first place.

“His first run didn’t go to plan, and he has been quite unlucky with the barrier draws since. It was unlucky as well when he reared in the gates a couple of starts ago, as that probably cost him the Group 3 race.

“But it was just amazing to watch him on Friday. We were watching live from the UK and he was eight wide at one stage. The pace from the 300 metres to the 100 metres was just frightening.”

“One of these days, it’s all going to click for him,” Trainor said. “And when it does click, it’s going to be electric.”

It’s a small world

The colt’s success has also drawn considerable attention in the Northern Hemisphere.

“It's actually drummed up a lot of interest from a lot of other big owners up here,” said Trainor. “Regularly I'm answering questions about how do you get involved, how does the billing work, how does the updates work, how do you stay in touch. I do think there's going to be an influx of Northern Hemisphere owners coming down.

“Henry Dwyer has had success with bringing Asfoora up here, and now he has a group of British owners who own horses in Australia. And it’s working the other way, there’s more Australians coming to Royal Ascot as well. The world is getting smaller and smaller.”

“It’s great to see this industry become more and more global,” said Nutt. “Peter has a lot of faith in the Australian market and product, and he is enjoying having horses with Ciaron. Word of mouth is the greatest marketing tool you can have.

“If people like Peter continue to explain how fun it is to have a horse down here, and what a great experience it is to be involved with different trainers, then I can only see more people coming down here to join in.”

Trainor credited the experiences European owners have had at Australian racedays as a big influence on drawing more and more international owners into the country.

“When I was in the Melbourne Cup, I can't even describe to you how taken I was with the ownership experience,” he said. “The treatment of the owners was second to none. I did a television interview recently where we were talking about Irish racing, and they asked me, ‘what should we do here to improve the ownership experience?’

"And I told them, ‘I can talk about it, but the best thing you can do is take yourself down to the Melbourne Cup next year, and spend time with Racing Victoria and see how they treat owners, because that's the only way you want to improve the experience here’.”

A spot at stud

With the Coolmore firmly on the agenda for The Next Episode’s future, talk turns to securing him a spot at stud at the end of his racing career.

All three acknowledged the role of multiple Champion Sire Snitzel in shaping the colt’s genetics.

“He’s like the Galileo of the Southern Hemisphere,” Trainor said. “Any trip, any ground, any type of mare, he covers them all.”

“That is the beauty of The Next Episode’s genetics,” Nutt added. “His pedigree is so quintessentially Australian. He’s out of a very fast Australian mare by Snitzel, he's just everything that Australian speed is. There are many sons of Snitzel at stud already, but it is always nice to see more, given what a phenomenal season he is having and the record of his current sons at stud.”

“There’s possibly a gap for an heir apparent since Snitzel’s passing, and this guy could be the one,” Cunningham said. “He’s in the hands of the right trainer, and Antony being involved in him already is great. I feel very lucky in that way. And I'm led to believe by people that are much more well informed than I am that he's definitely worth more than his purchase price at the moment.”

The Coolmore will hopefully tick something else off Cunningham’s agenda; actually watching an Australian race live at a racetrack.

“Believe it or not, I haven’t actually managed to watch one live in person yet,” he said. “We missed the first race at the Gold Coast last year, and then they had that downpour and had to postpone the rest of the races. Hopefully that will be fixed for me in October.”