Best Australian Racing Stories (37 page)

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.

Three fillies and eleven mares have won the Melbourne Cup and several others probably deserved to win it.

Of the three three-year-old fillies that won the Cup, one was great, one was pretty good, and the third was good enough.

Sister Olive had won only once before taking out the big race, in the Maribyrnong Trial as a two-year-old. She had run well for a fourth in the Caulfield Cup and carried a light weight, as you would expect for a horse with few credentials. She was good enough to defeat John Wren's good stayer The Rover, three Sydney Cup winners in Eurythmic, David and Kennequhair, a WS Cox Plate winner,Violoncello, and a Caulfield Cup winner in Purser, so she took some good scalps on that day in November 1921.

Auraria, the Cup winner of 1895, was a good filly that won the South Australian Derby and ran third in the VRC Derby behind Carbine's best son, Wallace. She then won the Cup at 33 to 1 and won the Oaks two days later. She was a daughter of the great stayer Trenton and therefore a grand-daughter of Carbine's sire, Musket. She also carried the blood of the great imported stallion Fisherman on both sides. Her full brother, Aurum, was a champion on the track and at stud in England, but could not emulate his sister, although he ran third in the Cup carrying a record weight for a three-year-old in 1897.

The greatest three-year-old filly to win the Cup was Briseis, the first of her sex to win the race, in 1876, and she was probably the best three-year-old filly ever to start in the race.

At two Briseis, a daughter of imported stallion Tim Whiffler, went to Sydney and won the Doncaster Handicap, a flying handicap, and the All-Aged Stakes, at weight for age, in a week. She then set a record that has never been broken by winning theVRC Derby, Melbourne Cup and Oaks, all within six days. In the Derby she took 1.75 seconds off the race record and ran the second-fastest time ever recorded for the distance, in the world.

Sadly Briseis died in a freak accident in the breeding barn. Hobbled for her first mating, to King of The Ring, she reared up, slipped over and fractured her skull, and it was left to her full sister, Idalia, to carry the bloodline successfully into the future.

The first tough staying mare to win the Cup was the 1904 winner Acrasia. She was aged seven and had run fourth in the Cup two years before. Her sire was Gozo, who also sired full brothers Gaulus and The Grafter to win the Cup in 1897 and 1898.

Acrasia was owned by colourful Sydney bookmaker Humphrey Oxenham, who bred her from his Sydney Cup-winning mare Cerise and Blue. He famously lost her to Lord Cardigan's owner, John Mayo, in a card game on the eve of the Caulfield Cup and bought her back for £2000. Lord Cardigan, carrying 6 st 8 lb (41.5 kg), had defeated the mighty Wakeful, carrying 10 st (63.5 kg), in the Melbourne Cup the previous year.

The tables were turned by the fair sex in 1904 with Lord Cardigan, carrying 9 st 6 lb (60 kg), chasing home Acrasia, carrying 7 st 6 lb (47 kg). The tough mare equalled Carbine's race record, but sadly, Lord Cardigan ruptured himself in his effort to catch her with his big weight and died several days later.

After Acrasia's win there was a gap of 17 years before another female horse, the filly Sister Olive, won the great race in 1921. Then there was an even longer gap of 18 years before Rivette came along to make history in 1939.

Rivette had an interesting pedigree: she had the great sire Isonomy on both sides through her two grand-dams, and her dam, Riv, was a grand-daughter of Carbine's Epsom Derby-winning son Spearmint. Isonomy started 14 times for ten wins, two seconds and a third, and his wins included two Ascot Gold Cups, in 1879 and 1880. He then became a highly influential sire.

Rivette was bred, owned and trained by an amazing man, Harry Bamber. Oddly enough, the only other Cup winner to be bred, owned and trained by one man was the first female winner, the black filly Briseis, who was owned, trained and bred by Jim Wilson, of the famous St Albans Stud near Geelong.

Harry Bamber was the archetypal ‘battling trainer'. He was a blacksmith by trade and served in the Light Horse in World War I. As a dairy farmer on a soldier-settler block he studied veterinary science, and he and his brother and a friend bought Rivette's dam for 200 guineas at auction. She was originally named Riverside and raced as a ‘14.2 pony', winning many races on the unregistered tracks.

Bamber thought the little mare was good enough to race against thoroughbreds. She had the required pedigree, although she was not in the studbook, so he raced her at Sandown and she duly won. At registered meetings she raced as Riv, since the name Riverside was not available.

The Depression forced the Bamber brothers off their farm, and Harry milked cows to pay the agistment for his mare and her foals, the second of which was Rivette.

Bamber then acquired stables at Mordialloc, and his training techniques were considered quirky. He walked his horses and didn't over-train them, but kept them in work far longer than other trainers. In fact he trained much more like a ‘pony' trainer than a thoroughbred trainer.

Rivette did not start at two as she was injured while training on the road. She had her first win at Packenham late in her three-year-old season and was being prepared for the Caulfield–Melbourne Cups double of 1938 when she cut herself badly while rolling on the beach and had to be spelled.

The following year she was in training from February right through to the Melbourne Cup. She started ten times in welters and handicaps and never missed a place. When the pressure was on she responded and, on that odd preparation, easily won both the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups, making history by being the first mare, and only the third horse, to do so. Had she not completely missed the start in the Moonee Valley Gold Cup, in which she finished third within a length of the winner Gilltown, she would undoubtedly have made more history by being the first horse to win all three Cups.

At the Melbourne Cup presentation ceremony she kicked the holy grail out of Harry Bamber's hands, but he didn't mind one bit.

‘She set me up for life,' the battling trainer said.

Rivette had a career severely interrupted by injury, but she was a good hard racehorse who made history in winning the Cups double in the early, dark days of World War II. Her offspring were not registered, as she was not eligible for the studbook.

Racing was severely interrupted in the eastern states during the war, and completely banned in South Australia, which certainly affected the career of Rainbird, the next mare to win the Cup, just after the war ended in 1945.

Rainbird was owned by South Australian racing identity C.H. Reid, whose brother had bred the mare. Rainbird's dam, Sequoia, was a daughter of the great Australian champion Heroic, and she was by the imported stallion The Buzzard, who also sired the 1940 Cup winner, Old Rowley. The Buzzard was a son of Epsom Derby winner Spion Kop, who was himself a son of an Epsom Derby winner Spearmint, who was by Carbine. It is an amusing reflection on Australian–prudery that The Buzzard raced, quite successfully, in Britain as The Bastard. His name was changed when he came to Australia.

When racing was closed down in South Australia in 1942, Rain-bird's trainer, Sam Evans, moved to Victoria where he trained the filly to win the Wakeful Stakes of 1944 and run an unlucky second in The Oaks.

Rainbird went home to win the 1945 South Australian St Leger, the first since 1941, and her training schedule was again interrupted by lack of shipping at the end of the war. Most trading vessels had been taken over by the navy and took ages to return to normal duties, which meant Rainbird did not arrive back in Melbourne until late September. Although ‘under done' she ran a good second in the Caulfield Cup.

She then ran unplaced on a heavy track in the Moonee Valley Gold Cup, and Evans thought that the only thing that could prevent her winning the Melbourne Cup was rain. Like the later great champion Rain Lover, Rainbird was, ironically, a duffer in the wet! The weather stayed fine for the big race, however, and she won the Cup easily by 2½ lengths.

Rainbird went on to win the Port Adelaide Cup and ran second in the Sydney Cup, before heading to the breeding barn where she was a great success. Her daughter Raindear won the South Australian Oaks, and her descendants include the great sire Centaine, the good staying mare Allez Wonder, and many others.

The well-named mare Evening Peal won the Cup a decade after Rainbird, in 1956. She was by the great sire Delville Wood out of Mission Chimes, and had the Spearmint/Carbine/Musket bloodline on both sides of her pedigree.

She was a bonny mare who won 11 races from 51 starts. Her wins included the Wakeful Stakes and the VRC, Queensland and AJC Oaks (then known as the Adrian Knox Stakes). She often raced against mighty horses like Redcraze and Rising Fast and carried a record-winning weight for a female of 8 st (50.5 kg) to beat Redcraze, carrying 10 st 3 lb (65 kg), by a neck in record time in the Melbourne Cup of 1956.

The New Zealand mare Hi-Jinx had one of the least distinguished records of any Melbourne Cup winner. She started three times only in Australia, running unplaced in the Caulfield Cup and a good second in the Moonee Valley Cup before winning the historic 100th Melbourne Cup at 50 to 1.

There was great hype around the 100th Cup and record prize money. Hi-Jinx's win was an anticlimax for the crowd, who had hoped to see the mighty Tulloch carry 10 st 1 lb (64 kg) to victory. Tulloch, who had returned to racing after two years spent overcoming a crippling illness, ran seventh; it was the only time he was unplaced in 51 starts.

Hi-Jinx, a plain mare described as the ugliest horse in the race by one unkind journalist, returned to one of the mildest receptions in Cup history. She had the breeding to win, however, being bred at the famous Trelawney Stud in New Zealand from a Foxbridge mare, Lady's Bridge. Trelawney Stud had produced three previous Melbourne Cup winners—Hiraji, Foxzami and MacDougal—all from mares by the great sire Foxbridge. Hi-Jinx cost 500 guineas as a yearling, and took out the largest prize ever offered for a race in Australia when she won $40,000 for her Cup victory.

The brave little chestnut mare Light Fingers was spotted as a yearling in New Zealand by Bart Cummings and raced on lease in the white with royal blue spots and cap of Wally Broderick, a Melbourne grain merchant who owned her older full brother, The Dip, also trained by Bart.

The two were well named, being by the French stallion Le Filou, which translates as ‘pickpocket', out of a New Zealand mare Cuddlesome. In fact, Light Fingers was originally named Close Embrace by her breeders, the Dawson family, but Broderick wanted a name from the sire's side to match her full brother, so he changed her name before she raced.

Changing a horse's registered name is supposed to be unlucky, but Broderick and Bart struck it lucky with Light Fingers. She was an out-and-out champion, considered ‘the best since Wakeful' by older racing men. She started four times at two for three wins and a second, beaten a head. In her three-year-old season she started 12 times for seven wins, two seconds and two thirds; the wins included the VRC Wakeful, Manifold and Oaks Stakes, the Sandown Guineas, and the AJC Princess Handicap and Oaks.

Light Fingers suffered a serious virus attack, which delayed her return to racing in the spring of 1965. She also was plagued by back problems and missed the Caulfield Cup after she won but pulled a shoulder muscle in the Craiglee Stakes. She went into the Melbourne Cup on the limited preparation of just five starts.

In one of the greatest Cup finishes of all time the tiny chestnut mare defeated her huge black stablemate, Ziema, by a lip to give Bart his first Cup win and his first Cup quinella.

Her bad back worsened after her four-year-old season, which meant Bart needed all his skill and care to keep her racing. She went into the 1966 Cup carrying a massive weight, on an even lighter preparation than 1965, just four starts; Bart's better-conditioned champion, Galilee, defeated her by 2 lengths even though she ran a great race, hitting the front halfway down the straight and hanging on for a gallant second to give Bart his second Cup quinella in a row.