By Katie Petrunyak
It was perhaps the decision of a lifetime for Judy Hicks when she famously went up to Kenny McPeek after he purchased Thorpedo Anna (Fast Anna) and asked if she could stay in for a small piece of the filly she bred. Just a year later, while still awaiting Thorpedo Anna's debut, Hicks went and made another similar arrangement.
Hicks sold Thorpedo Anna's half-brother for $40,000–coincidentally the same price that 'Anna' had sold for–at the 2023 Keeneland September Sale. Afterwards, she approached Jake Ballis of Black Type Thoroughbreds and asked if she could retain a piece of the colt. Ballis agreed and the partnership that also included Swinbank Stables and Campeche Stables even let Hicks name the colt. She decided to call him McAfee, like the computer software program, as a nod to the colt's sire Cloud Computing.
Hicks said that as a foal, McAfee was completely different from Thorpedo Anna.
McAfee as a foal at Brookstown Farm | courtesy Judy Hicks
“He was a great big colt,” Hicks explained. “He was almost solid black and was really gorgeous.”
Sent to Rick Dutrow, McAfee showed promise from the start and made his debut at Churchill Downs in a six-furlong contest restricted for horses that sold or RNA'd for $50,000 or less on Nov. 1, just a day before Thorpedo Anna was scheduled to cap off a brilliant season in the GI Breeders' Cup Distaff. Tuning in from Del Mar, Hicks watched as McAfee sat off the pace, then shifted out going around the turn and picked off rivals in the stretch to win by over three lengths.
“You should have heard the screaming from all my friends,” Hicks recalled with a laugh. “All the Thorpedo Anna people were going, 'Oh my God, her half-brother just broke his maiden.' It was amazing.”
After putting in a bullet work going four furlongs in :46.80 on Nov. 18, McAfee will make his second start this weekend at Churchill Downs. The juvenile drew the inside post in Race 1, a one-mile $50,000 starter allowance on Sunday, Nov. 24.
Hicks reported that if all goes well, the plan may be to send the colt to New York for a shot on the Kentucky Derby trail. A lot has to go right, but Hicks can't help daydreaming about making another trip to Churchill Downs on the first weekend in May.
“The 'what if's' are crazy,” she said.
Hicks also has a lot to look forward to in 2025 at Brookstown Farm, where Thorpedo Anna and McAfee were both foaled and raised (see video below). Their dam Sataves (Uncle Mo) is in foal to Gun Runner and is due in the middle of April. Hicks noted that she will be bred back to Curlin. Sataves's first foal Charlee O (Tourist) is expecting her first foal by Bolt d'Oro in March and she will then be bred to Good Magic.
Sataves's most recent foal, a filly by Known Agenda, is also showing promise.
“The weanling this year is absolutely stunning,” said Hicks. “I sent Kenny her picture and he said, 'Wow, she's got Anna's hind leg.' I told him that he had suggested that I sell her in September. He goes, 'Oh no, we're going to race that one.' So I really would love to run her. Not that I'll have another Anna, but who knows.”
Hicks knows that she will likely never have another filly like Thorpedo Anna, a top contender for 2024 Horse of the Year who took her ownership group that also includes Brookdale Racing, Mark Edwards and Magdalena Racing on an unforgettable journey this year from the GI Kentucky Oaks and two Grade I wins in Saratoga to a hard-fought victory in the GI Cotillion Stakes and a decisive score at the Breeders' Cup.
“It's almost like it's routine,” Hicks admitted. “I told Kenny, 'When she's gone from our lives, there's going to be such a huge void.' I mean, it's almost like it's expected.”
Thorpedo Anna at Magdalena Farm, which now offers tours through Visit Horse Country | Grace Clark-Sweet
But for all of those trips to the winner's circle this year, Hicks said it was her gutsy runner-up performance against Fierceness (City of Light) in the GI Travers Stakes that she will remember most.
“Just the anxiety and the thrill of the Travers, where everyone was rooting for her, that was a pretty incredible feeling,” Hicks said.
Another favorite memory from Hicks's time in Saratoga was when she stopped in at Spring Street Deli, a Saratoga staple, and learned that a sandwich there had been named the Thorpedo Anna Sammie.
Thorpedo Anna is currently enjoying a layoff at Kenny McPeek's Magdalena Farm and Hicks reported that the superstar filly is soaking in her time there.
“She has a buddy named Cooper,” Hicks said. “She follows him around in the paddock like a puppy and then she puts her head down and grazes.”
After her break, Thorpedo Anna will return to Fair Grounds and McPeek has laid out plans for a potential start in the GI Apple Blossom on April 12 at Oaklawn Park. Hicks is counting down the days.
“I'm very proud and I'm kind of humbled by it,” she admitted. “I drive past the field where her mom is every day.”
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