Best Australian Racing Stories
Page 26
Two great ladies of the turf. Trainer Sheila Laxon and the champion mare Ethereal, two weeks before the mare’s 2001 Melbourne Cup victory. (Courtesy of Colin Murty/ Newspix)
Vintage Crop wins the Melbourne Cup in 1993, the first horse to do so who was owned, trained and bred overseas. (Courtesy of Steve Hart Photographics)
Glen Boss celebrates Makybe Diva’s first Melbourne Cup victory on 4 November 2003.
(Courtesy of Darren McNamara/Newspix)
A moment in history—Makybe Diva wins her third Melbourne Cup on 1 November 2005. (Courtesy of Kelly Barnes/Newspix)
Damien Oliver looks heavenward after winning the 2002 Melbourne Cup on Media Puzzle. (Courtesy of Richard Cisar-Wright/Newspix)
Bart Cummings shows Viewed the Melbourne Cup, Bart’s 12th, after the horse’s victory in the big race on 4 November 2008. (Courtesy of David Geraghty/Newspix)
That Percy Podgrass gave us for the Cup?
. . . Of course he’s sure to win.
As the ‘battle’ proceeds to its inevitable conclusion—victory for the wife—we share the catch-22 frustration of the husband who knows that the only way he will get to the Cup is by being ‘conned’ out of his stake money:
‘Of course, I wouldn’t have my wife look shabby.
Take what you need. We’ll make a smaller bet . . .
Eight . . . ten . . . twelve quid! Whew! Not much left for betting.
Still, just a flutter and expenses . . . What?
Listen, Elaine. What could I be forgetting?
Hat? Stockings? Shoes to match? . . . Here . . . Take the lot!’
Ouch! I can still feel the pain of the defeated husband 80 years after that piece was written. Some things don’t change.
Dennis proved to be a man ahead of his time in his efforts to maintain gender balance and show the wickedness of husbands and the lengths to which they go to deceive their wives. Infidelity takes many forms, especially in Cup Week when there is a chance to get to ‘the races’ and waste the housekeeping money ‘on the punt’.
Here is another one-sided conversation, which Dennis wrote in 1933, in which the husband attempts to escape his family obligations and get to the Cup meeting. Of course, Cup Day is a public holiday in Victoria and one might expect a family man to take the opportunity to spend time with his wife and children once in a busy year.
With spring in the air and the prospect of a day away from housework with hubby to help with the children, a devoted wife is perfectly entitled to expect that a family picnic is ‘just the thing’.
The husband, however, has other selfish and devious plans . . .
Why a Picnic Jane?
C.J. Dennis
But, why a picnic, Jane? We went last year,
And missed the Cup; and you know how you grieved
Because we lost . . . Oh! Yes, you did, my dear.
I had the tip, but I was not believed.
It’s just sheer nonsense to deny it all.
And when he won, you said, if you recall,
You’d never miss a chance like that again.
Well, cut the Cup. But why a picnic, Jane?
You know how I hate picnics, sticky things,
The grizzling children and the dusty road,
The flies and all those crawlywigs with stings—
My dear, I am not selfish! But that load
Of baskets . . . Eh? Back him at starting price?
That’s an idea. And then I could remain
To take you and the children? Hmm’yes. Quite nice.
Jolly, of course. But, why a picnic, Jane?
Wait! Have you thought of burglars? There you are!
The empty house. Remember that last case
Near here? . . . Bright thought, my dear! You take the car.
You’ve solved it. I’ll stay at home and mind the place.
Lonely? Not I. You take the car, of course.
I’ve a good book; I’ll be all right alone.
That’s settled then . . . And now, about the horse.
Wait here, and while I think of it, I’ll phone.
‘’Lo! That you, Sam? All set! I can’t talk loud.
’Lo! Can you hear me? Listen, lad. It’s on.
Tomorrow, yes. Count me in the crowd.
Your car . . . about eleven. They’ll be gone.
Great stunt, that picnic! If we make the pace
We ought to get there for the second race.’
Well, Jane, that’s all fixed up. I’ve backed our horse.
Eh? Help cut sandwiches? Why, dear, of course.
It wasn’t in Dennis’s nature to question or analyse the morality of racing or the social behaviour it generated. He was always less concerned with the heroic deeds of the winners and the jockeys than he was with the everyday thoughts and schemes and disappointments of the nameless normal battlers, office workers, tradesmen and pretentious middle-class pretenders who adored his writing in their daily paper.
‘Den’ always pitched his writing in the common ruck; he was never concerned with attempting to be more ‘informed’ than all the other ‘mug punters’.
In one Cup Week poem, titled the ‘Pondering Punter’, he considers all the elements of the form guide and, after expressing the typical ‘mug punter’s’ confusion, concludes: ‘I give up . . . has anybody got a pin?’
Dennis loved the confusion and enthusiasm of Cup Week; for him, not picking the winner was far more ‘Australian’ than some tall tale of good luck or a dream which led to a fortune.
This is illustrated in many poems he wrote in Cup Week over the years. It was always the human spectacle and human behaviour that fascinated C.J. Dennis.
In the year of Peter Pan’s second Cup win Dennis wrote a wonderful parody of Adam Lindsay Gordon’s famous racing poem, ‘How We Beat The Favourite’.
Dennis’s poem was called ‘How We Backed the Favourite’.
While Gordon’s poem is a heroic tale of a titanic struggle which celebrates the nobility and bravery of the racehorse, Dennis’s poem typically concentrates on the confidence shown by the everyday ‘mug punters’ in the Cup favourite, Peter Pan.
Banjo Paterson also famously parodied Gordon’s poem with a tall tale with a twist, called ‘How The Favourite Beat Us’, in which a racehorse owner inadvertently signals a jockey to win a race by brushing away a mosquito and subsequently loses his fortune.
There are no heroic struggles and no tall tales of lost fortunes in Dennis’s poem, simply the everyday hopes of the ‘one shilling’ punters. Dennis sees the horse himself as merely another player in the whole drama and excitement of a week, which gives our humdrum, mundane lives a yearly highlight.
Having been told that Peter Pan will win, the poet goes to see the horse and make up his own mind:
I saw Peter Pan; there was nothing he lacked.
And, as he looked willing, I plonked down my shilling
And triumphed, and that’s how the favourite was backed.
Now, Peter Pan—the flashy chestnut with the flaxen mane and tail—was arguably the most beautiful horse to ever win the Cup. His bravery in recovering from illness to win two Melbourne Cups is the stuff of legend in Australian turf history. C.J. Dennis sums up the horse in the mundane and prosaic phrase ‘there was nothing he lacked’. You can’t get more Aussie than that!
Similarly, when Trivalve won in 1927, Dennis wrote ‘A Post Cup Tale’ in which a poor mug punter tells us how he ‘switched’ at the last minute from his own original choice for the Cup, the eventual winner Trivalve, to some other horse due to the ‘urging’ of a mate. There is no real concern with the wonderful three-year-old AJC Derby winner who valiantly and famously won the Cup against older, more seasoned stayers. Instead we have an amazingly accurate and timeless portrayal of the punter’s eternal frustration with picking winners and not backing them; as the protagonist tells us, over and over again, ‘I had the money in me ’and, just making for the bookie’s stand’.
The wonderful thing about Den
nis’s poem about Trivalve’s Cup win is that it has outlived any other poems written about Cup winners in various years because it contains a greater human story and captures an elemental truth about all punters, anytime, anywhere.
There is one poem which illustrates Dennis’s ability to capture the everyday human element of the Cup not only dramatically, but with great understanding and humour. In ‘An Anticipatory Picture’, written in Cup Week 1931, he gives us all the excitement of the race and concludes with a blank space in which we can live out our own Cup dream.
An Anticipatory Picture
C.J. Dennis
The scene upon the frock-flecked lawn
Is, as you please, a picture fair,
Or just a hunk of human brawn,
With blobs of faces here and there.
Stilled are the clamours of the Ring;
The famous race is on at last;
All eyes are on the lengthening string
Of brilliant jackets moving fast.
Torn, trampled tickets mark the birth
Of broken hopes all now would mend,
As quickening hoof-beats spurn the earth,
And the field thunders to the bend.
All men are equal for the nonce,
Bound by an urgency intense,
And eager questionings win response
From strangers tiptoe with suspense.
‘What’s that in front?’ All faces yearn
Toward the track in serried rows.
The field comes round the homeward turn,
As, wave on wave, the murmuring grows,
Waxes and swells from out that host
Till pandemonium begins,
And flecks of colour pass the post
To mighty cries of ‘(________*) wins’.
[* N.B.—Write your own ticket.]
Queens of the Cup
JIM HAYNES
MANY WOULD ARGUE THAT Makybe Diva, three times Melbourne Cup winner, is the greatest staying mare of the modern era. Others would say that she was one of the greatest stayers ever—regardless of age, era or gender.
Makybe Diva was bred and born in Britain and so was always six months out of sync to her Australian rivals. This made it near impossible to train her for classic two- and three-year-old races, as she was six months younger than all Australian horses of the same official age.
After she was born, Makybe Diva was offered for sale at the famous Tatts Newmarket sales but, luckily for Tony Santic, she was passed in and so was shipped out to Australia with her mother, Tugela, who had been bought in foal to Desert King by Santic, an Aussie who migrated from Croatia as a child and made his money in the tuna fishing industry in South Australia before moving full-time into the thoroughbred industry.
Santic had Tugela taken to Dick Fowlston’s Britton House Stud in Somerset before being sent on to Australia, and Makybe Diva was born there on 21 March 1999.
The filly’s name was derived from the first two letters of the names of five women who worked in Santic’s office and she raced in his now famous colours, a combination of the Croatian and Australian flags. Apart from two starts in Japan, she did all her racing in Australia.
With two lines back to Northern Dancer on her sire side and Northern Dancer and Nasrullah twice on her dam side, Makybe Diva was line-bred to stay all day and had plenty of Carbine blood.
She was broken in and conditioned in two spells at Scone with legendary horseman Greg Bennett.
Like all the thousands of horses he has educated, Bennett taught her ‘to be a horse’ before she became a racehorse. ‘I think there’s more to life than running around a racetrack,’ Bennett often said.
Makybe Diva stood out as special when it became obvious she could carry Bennett’s 85 kg up ‘Heartbreak Hill’, the rough rise at the back of his Scone property, and not be even be blowing. Plenty of horses don’t even get halfway, according to Bennett.
Bennett, a tough man who admitted he cried when the great mare won the Cox Plate, remembered she was ‘very smooth to ride’.
‘You could almost sit on her back,’ he said, ‘canter along, roll a smoke and drink a cup of tea at the same time.’
As she never started in the classic races at two and three, it is hard to line up a comparison between the tough bay mare and other great staying fillies and mares. She started once at three and finished fourth. She then went on a winning spree and won six in a row, starting with a maiden at Wangaratta and concluding with wins in the Werribee Cup and Queen Elizabeth Stakes of 2002. Although classed as a four-year-old mare, Makybe was actually a three-year-old filly when she won those major races. The win in the Queen Elizabeth Stakes qualified her for the Melbourne Cup the following year and meant that her trainer, David Hall, could plan a light autumn and toughen the horse up slowly for her first attempt at the Melbourne Cup.
After two unplaced runs in the autumn she was rested for her spring campaign of 2003. She returned to run a series of fourth placings, culminating in the Caulfield Cup, and then took out her first Melbourne Cup by a length and a half carrying 51 kg.
This pattern was repeated in the autumn of 2004. Trained by Lee Freedman, after David Hall left to train in Hong Kong, she ran unplaced in the Chester Manifold Stakes and Australian Cup, third in the Carlyon Cup, and then went to Sydney where she finished third in the Ranvet and the BMW before winning the Sydney Cup.
In the spring the familiar pattern emerged again, with the mare running four times before winning the Melbourne Cup for two unplaced runs and two seconds, notably a close second, from barrier 18, to Elvstroem in the Caulfield Cup.
She returned for the most successful autumn campaign of her career in 2005. After an unplaced run in the CF Orr Stakes, she was a close second to Elvstroem in the St George Stakes, before winning the Australian Cup in record time. She then won the BMW in Sydney in a remarkable fashion, coming from the tail of the field to make up 10 lengths and run down Gai Waterhouse’s old warhorse Grand Armee. The Diva was sent to Japan and ran seventh in two international races over 2000 metres and 3200 metres, carrying 56 kg and 59 kg.
After her disappointing overseas campaign it appeared she was being weighted out of handicaps and had perhaps reached the twilight of her great career, but the best was yet to come.
In her final campaign, the spring of 2005, the great mare won the Memsie first up; then ran second, beaten a nose by a great middle-distance horse in Lad of The Manor, in the Feehan Stakes.
She then won the Turnbull Stakes and showed her class by winning the WS Cox Plate, coming six wide around the field on the turn to win running away from Lotteria and two-time winner Fields of Omagh.
From that moment on, all talk was about the great mare winning her third Melbourne Cup. If she did, she would become the only horse in history to win three Cups; and only four others had ever won it twice! She would also have to smash her own weight- carrying record of 55.5 kg for a winning mare by lumping top weight of 58 kg, and she would have to do it from barrier 14.
The nation was in a state of expectation and every aspect of the great mare’s life was examined in detail. Her relationship with jockey Glen Boss, who first rode her in the 2003 Caulfield Cup and was to be her jockey for 18 of her subsequent 24 starts, was told from all angles by the media. The fairytale of the migrant fisherman made good and the great mare bred to northern hemisphere time became the main media story of the spring in Australia in 2005. The whole nation was ‘Makybe Diva mad’ as the Cup approached and it seemed the entire population had backed the great mare.
Of course, we all know that she did it, with relative ease, ridden perfectly by Glen Boss, and was then immediately retired to Tony Santic’s stud, appropriately named after her, where a life-size statue of the great horse stands at the gate. There are also statues of her at Flemington and in Tony Santic’s home town of Port Lincoln.
In a great piece of tactical riding, Glen Boss had the Diva on the rails as they came down the straight the first time and he ‘put her to sleep’
and then brought her into the race five deep at the turn. The euphoria that gripped the nation as Makybe Diva hit the lead and then dug deep under her record weight to race into immortality by over a length would be hard for anyone not versed in the history of the Cup to understand.
Australia had found a new idol and a new legend was born; one broadcaster called it ‘the greatest Melbourne Cup win of all time’ as she passed the post.
Her first foal, a colt by Epsom Derby winner Galileo, sold for $1.5 million at the Inglis Easter Yearling Sales in 2009 and her second, a filly by Kentucky Derby winner Fusaichi Pegasus, fetched $1.2 million the following year.
Makybe Diva’s career differed from that of some other great race mares in that she was always conditioned in shorter races for her victories in longer races. This makes her win and place rates look poor in comparison to some other great mares, like Wakeful and Sunline. The Diva started 36 times for 15 wins, four seconds, three thirds, six fourths, and eight other unplaced runs. So, while Sunline and Wakeful have win rates of 69 per cent and 61 per cent respectively, Makybe Diva’s win rate was 41.5 per cent and her place rate 69 per cent, compared to 94 per cent and 93 per cent for Sunline and Wakeful.
Of course, when you make history by winning three Melbourne Cups, such statistics become meaningless and, as has been stated several times in this collection, comparing champions of different eras is mere folly, but we all do it anyway!
The nature of racing and weight allocation has changed dramatically in the 200-year history of Australian racing. The nature of the Melbourne Cup, too, has changed throughout its history.