Moods

by Helen Thomas

  Knowing they were already holding a rare card, the Hutchins were keen to see if their filly had the athletic talent to match her blueblood credentials. Nevertheless, there were still no expectations about what she might achieve on the track, and she did not take pride of place in the Moody yard.

  Neil Jenkinson remembers the first time he and John Hutchins visited to see their youngster. ‘Peter said, “I’ll get that filly for you.” So we’re standing around chatting, laughing, whatever, and we’d been there, I don’t know, 10, 12, 15 minutes and there was no sign of this horse, and I thought, “What the bloody hell is going on here?” And then, sort of out of the clouds, you could see them coming from a million miles away – this filly being led towards us. I thought, “I wonder where he keeps her? She must be way down the back!”

  ‘Wherever she was, she took forever to come over for us. Anyway, she was there and she was a fine, fine little thing. She didn’t have a lot of carriage to her, she didn’t have a lot of strength at this stage, and that was her first time through the stables. Peter said, “Look, I can’t tell you whether she’s got any ability – she’s just poking along. But you know, she moves nice enough and I’m happy with her.”’

  Months later, after the filly had spelled and the pair returned to check on her progress, she was in the main stable. ‘That sort of gave us a great feeling that perhaps we had something that was worth persevering with anyway,’ Jenkinson says. Even so, the trainer was reticent about getting their hopes up. ‘Peter said, “She doesn’t carry enough weight for me to really gas her, or really put the screws on her, but I’m very happy with the way she’s going.”’

  They didn’t have to wait long to find out. The trainer pencilled her in for her racing debut at Moonee Valley, one of Melbourne’s premier tracks, on 26 September 2008 – not quite the height of the Spring Carnival, but not far off it. With Luke Nolen in the saddle to put her through her paces, Moody allowed Typhoon Tracy the privilege of starting her race career in the city, albeit in a race for maiden fillies and mares.

  The trainer had no preconceptions about how she would go in her first start, but he had to roll the dice. Starting at odds of 6/1, one of the few times she was not one of the favourites, the three-year-old repaid Moody’s and her owners’ patience with aplomb, five and a half lengths clear at the winning post. A new era had dawned.

  ‘We had [had] a great trot,’ the trainer says, ‘but she was the first dominant horse. When she came out, I think she won her first five or six straight, culminating in a Coolmore [Classic], and that probably said we can look after and manage a good horse. I think that probably gives people confidence, you know?’

  Moody is almost right. The filly won her first five starts, working her way up from the humble maiden on debut to a Group 3 event at Flemington at her fourth outing, a performance good enough to earn her a trip interstate to tackle the Group 1 Coolmore Classic in Sydney. This was a heady, audacious move for both horse and trainer. But the she franked her good form, winning the $600,000 fillies’ and mares’ event in style.

  This was one of only two occasions Luke Nolen didn’t ride her. Glen Boss, famous for his three Melbourne Cup victories on Makybe Diva, and a perennial star at Sydney’s Autumn Carnival, took over as her pilot, and the pair controlled the race from the start – at least until Typhoon Tracy seemed to lose her way when turning into the home stretch, drifting off the corner towards the centre of the track. Rebalancing, and with the winning post in sight, she had to fend off two other fillies – Culminate and Chinchilla Rose – with Culminate actually getting her head in front for a stride, before she lengthened for Boss and regained the lead.

  It was a performance full of grace and heart, and from this point Tracy’s popularity started to grow. This filly was the ‘real deal’, the kind of horse that breeders ‘plan’ by pouring over pedigree pages late into the night. She was a horse most owners only dream about, a special galloper most trainers spend their careers trying to nurture.

  Nearly five months later, the now four-year-old mare took her place in the J.J. Liston Stakes, one of the important early-spring events at Caulfield. This time she was up against the boys in a Group 2 weight-for-age event. She was impressive in defeat, running third to the more seasoned Predatory Pricer (rags-to-riches sprinter Takeover Target’s half-brother) and Whobegotyou, who was heading towards that year’s W.S. Cox Plate.

  Second at her next start, the Group 2 Makybe Diva Stakes, Typhoon Tracy then blotted her impeccable record by running an uncharacteristic eighth in the elite Underwood Stakes, her first unplaced performance. Heart of Dreams, a horse she would have worked near on many a morning at her home track, took out the race for Mick Price.

  Peter Moody was forced to take stock, and switched his star mare back to slightly easier tasks: the Group 2 Tristarc Stakes over 1400 metres, then the Group 1 Myer Classic, two affairs for fillies and mares. She won them both. Was that her true level? Or was she strong enough to turn the tables on the boys?

  Three months later, in the early autumn of 2010, Tracy put the issue to rest with emphatic wins in the C.F. Orr Stakes, the Futurity Stakes and the Queen of the Turf Stakes – making it four Group 1 races in a row, two in open company.

  Now, having won 10 of her 13 starts, including four at Group 1 level, Typhoon Tracy was suddenly being compared to the mighty New Zealand mare Sunline. Her usually cocky trainer was unwilling to line the two up. But even Sunline’s regular jockey was a fan. ‘I like her, she’s done everything she’s been asked to do,’ said Greg Childs. ‘Every time she’s raced, she’s lifted the bar.’

  He saw the same adaptability in her galloping style as in his favourite race horse, yet noted the mares’ very different physiques. ‘Sunline was a masculine individual, whereas to me, Typhoon Tracy is finer-boned, not as robust,’ Childs said. And he believed she still had to prove a few things on the track before she could stand up to Sunline. ‘She’s got a long way to go, but she’s going in the right fashion.’

  Greg Carpenter, Victoria’s chief handicapper and Australia’s representative on the World’s Best Racehorses panel, was more forensic in his assessment of Australasia’s two equine heroines. He told racing journalists that Typhoon Tracy’s international rating was 118, which meant she was ‘one length, or two points, behind Sunline, who rated 120 after her Doncaster win as a three-year-old filly’.

  Peter Moody steadfastly refrained from joining the debate, preferring to report on his pretty mare’s wellbeing. As sometimes happens in racing, Typhoon Tracy would not win again that year, though she continued to compete at the highest level for the next 12 months. But this wonderful mare eventually ended her career as she had started it, with Luke Nolen on her back as she raced ahead of the field – eyes bright, ears pricked until they flattened back for the fight – to capture her second C.F. Orr Stakes in 2011. For good measure she had again beaten her old foe, Heart of Dreams. It had been an extraordinary journey for all involved.

  ‘She was an owner’s dream,’ Neil Jenkinson says simply. He believes her most emphatic win, the one that meant the most to the Hutchins family, came in the Group 1 Myer Classic at Flemington. ‘That was the day she really stamped herself not just as a good filly or mare; she stamped herself as a world-class miler that day. She didn’t get many opportunities, funnily enough, to run on really firm ground, but that day was really hard and she flew. She was dynamic.’

  The mare’s final start, and win, at Caulfield was also special. ‘I think that gave them great satisfaction,’ Jenkinson continues, ‘because she’d come off a Spring Carnival where she’d run second in the Myer on really wet ground, which was against her, and we’d had … not an argument, [that’s] too strong a word, but Pete was very keen to run her in the Cox Plate. But we just didn’t think it was the right race and the right way for us to go at the time.’

  Bart Cummings’ outstanding galloper So You Think was on track for his second consecutive Cox Plate victory, and while Moody was keen to let the mare take
her place against the young stallion in the weight-for-age contest, John and Fu Mei Hutchins wanted to avoid taking him on over 2040 metres. ‘I think it stuck a bit in Pete’s craw that we didn’t go that way,’ Jenkinson muses. ‘But So You Think was going so well, and Typhoon Tracy had run at 2000 metres the previous start, and our opinion was that she wasn’t strong enough.

  ‘So we thought we’d come back to the Myer, and she was beaten in the wet that day, and it was only the wet that beat her. And I remember the look of disgust that Pete gave me across the mounting yard when she was beaten.’

  Indeed, Moody was extremely disappointed the mare didn’t line up in the 2010 W.S. Cox Plate. But looking back, that was the only frustration he recalls, and a small smile appears as he acknowledges the ‘big, lean’ filly who first arrived in his yard from Queensland. ‘She was a nice filly,’ he says, ‘but you didn’t look at her in awe. She was a very feminine filly, and experience tells me those fillies aren’t as dominant as she became. She was a beautiful, lovely-natured girl and always had a great attitude, and always showed us great ability.

  ‘Once again, I don’t think anyone can ever say when they’ve got a young horse, “This is gonna win five or six Group 1s.” But she was just a beautiful horse to do anything with. She was just a pleasure to have around the place.’

  *

  Typhoon Tracy’s red and yellow silks became synonymous with Moody’s stable and his rise through the training ranks, and she retired with an enviable record. Perhaps more importantly, she set the scene for another triumph.

  ‘She came into the fold at the same time [that] I had about eight or 10 top-line fillies, they were all showing good ability,’ her trainer says. ‘But I’ll always credit Typhoon Tracy for probably allowing Black Caviar to be as good as she was. We thought Black Caviar was pretty bloody good, but we didn’t know how good; when she won a couple and had a few little issues, we were able to stop and be patient, because when we walked out the back gate, there was Typhoon Tracy.’

  There were other good fillies and mares coming through the yard at the time, who helped ease the pressure to have Black Caviar performing. But Typhoon Tracy was always centre-stage. ‘It really enabled me to take my foot off the pedal,’ he says. ‘If a trainer hadn’t been in a situation just as fortunate, they may have pushed that one gallop or one race too far with Black Caviar. It might have been all over, you know?’

  By the time she retired to become a broodmare, Typhoon Tracy had won 11 of her 20 races and amassed just over $2.4 million in prize money. Her favourite distance was probably 1400 metres, at which she won four times; she also won three races at 1200 metres, twice at 1500 metres and twice at a mile. Crowned Australian Racehorse of the Year in 2010, she had managed what few thoroughbred ‘bluebloods’ ever achieve: she had surpassed the lofty ambition promised by her pedigree. Her future as a broodmare looked assured.

  Yet the postscript to this splendid mare’s story was as sad as her racing career was glorious. Typhoon Tracy died just minutes after giving birth to her first foal, a colt by Street Cry. Such was her popularity and status, on and off the track, that Vinery Stud’s manager issued a statement for the national media.

  ‘Tracy passed away quietly following a straightforward foaling, from a suspected ruptured broad ligament,’ Peter Orton wrote. ‘The family has been with us for a long time and this is a sad morning. Typhoon Tracy’s dam, Tracy’s Element, now 22 years of age, was born and reared here, and the family has been an integral part of the farm for years. This is an extremely sad morning for the Hutchins family and the stud.’

  Tracy’s trainer was also dismayed. ‘It’s a real loss and it’s such a big hole to fill,’ he said. ‘She won the Australian Horse of the Year [title], and it takes a good horse to do that. She’s probably been a bit overlooked. She was my flag-bearer and I owe her more credit.’

  John and Fu Mei Hutchins were distraught; the mare had become part of their family. Neil Jenkinson says that to describe Typhoon Tracy as ‘much loved is probably an understatement. The morning I got the phone call to say she’d passed away delivering her first foal was a horrible, horrible morning. God, it was a horrible morning.

  ‘The day that Peter rang me and we talked about her future, and Pete said, “Look, I think she’s done enough for you – we should retire her,” that was quite emotional for everybody, the day we retired her. But to lose her, to actually lose her in foaling was horrific. The Hutchins were overseas, unfortunately, and to say there were tears would be an understatement. We were all bawling. It was like losing part of the family that morning. And as horrific as it was for us, I always feel worse for the people that were there with her.

  ‘She was back on the farm where she was born, her mother was still there at that time … She carried the Vinery brand too, [so] they were as much a part of the ride as we were, and to have her come back to their farm was great. But for people like David White and Peter Orton, who had to be there to watch her die, that would have been horrific.’

  Jenkinson called the mare’s trainer. ‘I wanted to ring him myself and let him know we’d lost her,’ he says, ‘and I remember the first thing I said to him was, “Don’t you ever retire Black Caviar, because this breeding game sucks.” And he was actually quite devastated.’

  The mare’s death made national headlines, and still moves Sarah Moody. ‘Well, Trace was … Oh, she was a greyhound, really, there was not much to her,’ she says, her eyes filling with tears. ‘I was definitely very close to Trace. She was all heart, she was absolutely all heart.’

  A month later, the news from Vinery was brighter. Tracy’s only foal had not only survived his traumatic first day of life, but also bonded with a ‘foster mum’ and was ‘doing extremely well’. A crossbred Clydesdale mare named Heidi, provided to the farm by Hunter Valley Nurse Mares, had been brought in to rear him. The pair had become inseparable.

  ‘He is developing like any normal foal,’ Vinery Stud’s Adam White said. ‘We are extremely pleased with the type of foal he is. He has that great quality that the Typhoon Tracy family is renowned for. Both he and Heidi are out in a larger paddock now with other mares and foals, and he is certainly enjoying life.’

  Nearly two years on, the Hutchins clan surprised many in racing and breeding circles by listing their special colt for sale in the upmarket Easter Yearling Sale in Sydney. Such was Typhoon Tracy’s reputation and the strength of her son’s pedigree that his inclusion in the sale created genuine excitement among international buyers as well as locals.

  What they didn’t know was that John Hutchins had set a high reserve price of $3 million for his favourite mare’s only offspring, and the colt was passed in on a final bid of $2.1 million. Minor uproar followed, but Hutchins maintained that his reasoning was sound.

  ‘We put a price on the horse,’ he said, ‘and the key is we want him to stay in Australia. At $2.2 million, I’m willing to keep half and maybe someone can do a deal. To go overseas, the price is $3 million, which is cheap for a horse over there. In the end, it’s about the love of the horse and we want to keep him here.’

  No doubt it was also about the love of his mother. Typhoon Tracy’s only offspring now races for the Hutchins as Last Typhoon. As Neil Jenkinson watches his career unfold, he thinks back to his mother. ‘She was just a phenomenal mare,’ he says. ‘She gave us everything she had, every time she went to the races, and that’s why she probably ended up with a shorter racing career than some. She raced on the pace, she did it hard; just a great, great mare. To have lost her when we did was such a tragedy, because we had so many wonderful matings lined up for her for the coming years.’

  Typhoon Tracy was always a kind horse, he says. And during her 11 months as a mare in foal, ‘she just became a beautiful mare, and you could just go in and spend hours with her in the paddock. She was just a really lovely mare.’

  He has another vivid memory of this horse who changed so many lives. It was early in her career, and even earlier in Black Caviar�
�s, when both were spelling at the Moody family’s property in Belgrave.

  ‘Those two great mares were standing in the paddock together in front of Peter’s house,’ Jenkinson recalls, ‘and I never even thought to get a photo of them. I don’t even know if there’s one floating around. But it was obviously quite a time for Peter and his family, and the owners of Black Caviar and us, to have those two mares back to back.’

  As the trainer admits, Typhoon Tracy was his flag-bearer. He, and Australian racing, owe her more credit.

  PICTURE SECTION

  Quintessential: Peter Moody ‘at the office’, on track. (Scott Barbour/Getty Images)

  Top team: General Nediym, Tony Haydon and Moody at Caulfield in 1997. (Vince Caliguri)

  Top team #2: Moody with Haydon (left), Bill Mitchell (right) and General Nediym after his great Newmarket win at Flemington in 1998. (Bronwen Healy)

  Classic winners: Moody and Amalfi, his 2001 Victoria Derby winner. (Vince Caliguri)

  Kind soul: Moody and exceptional mare Typhoon Tracy, in her stall at the Caulfield stable. (Michael Dodge/Newspix)

  Queen of the Turf: Typhoon Tracy, winning in style at Rosehill in 2010, with Luke Nolen in the saddle. (Brett Costello/Newspix)

  Special gear: Nelly (aka Black Caviar) with her compression suit at Newmarket, getting ready for her date with the Queen. (Michael Bryant)

  Two lads: Moody and his friend and equine chiropractor Michael Bryant in top hats at Royal Ascot, June 2012. (Michael Bryant)

  The world was watching: Black Caviar, Luke Nolen and the team head out for the 2012 Diamond Jubilee Stakes, with Queen Elizabeth looking on from the grandstand. (Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images)