Best Australian Racing Stories (10 page)

Mind you, Sunline was an awesome force on any racetrack at any age, even at seven. She was strong and robust and towered over most of her male counterparts. She never looked frail, weak or delicate of disposition, attributes which many consider to be feminine. In fact, Greg Childs, who rode her for 32 of her 48 starts, described her as ‘a freak of nature' and attributed her amazing ability to what he called her ‘masculine qualities'.

She was feminine enough, however, to leave behind two sons and two daughters when she passed away prematurely at the age of just 13.

As usual the crowd at Caulfield that day mostly supported Sunline. Not many Victorian racegoers were fans of the New South Wales horse in the cerise colours, although they would come to admire him—and his progeny—in seasons to follow.

It was a mighty struggle between the young stallion and the seven-year-old mare, all the way down the straight, but neither horse shirked the task. Lonhro won by a head, with the rest of the field fighting out third place 6 lengths behind.

But Sunline will be remembered for the races she won, not those she barely lost.

Her two Cox Plate wins are enough to place her among the immortals. In the first she defeated Redoute's Choice, Commands, Testa Rossa, Tie The Knot and Sky Heights—an impressive line-up of legendary horses! And she won the second by a record 7 lengths, defeating Derby and Caulfield Cup winner Diatribe along with Referral, Show A Heart and Shogun Lodge, as well as Testa Rossa, Tie The Knot and Sky Heights yet again.

Add to those two Cox Plate wins her other Group 1 victories, two Doncaster Handicaps, two All-Aged Stakes, two Waikato Sprints, two Coolmore Classics (carrying 60 kg each time), a Flight Stakes, a Manikato Stakes, her controversial second to Northerly in a third Cox Plate, and her international victory in Hong Kong, and you have a record unbeaten in Australasian racing history.

From her Group 3 victory in the Moonee Valley Oaks, as a three-year-old filly, until the end of her career at age seven, Sunline only ever competed in races at Group 1 or Group 2 level.

Her win rate was 68 per cent and her place rate 94 per cent, and she raced at least two seasons beyond what most consider to be the correct age for racing mares to retire. She was the top stakes-winning horse in Australasian history in her day, and the top stakes-winning mare in the world. She is the only horse ever voted Australian Horse of the Year three times.

How does her record compare to other great mares?

Well, given that comparisons from different eras are rather silly to begin with, the only racing mares who even come close to Sunline are Wakeful, Desert Gold, Tranquil Star, Flight, Emancipation and Makybe Diva.

Wakeful had a win rate of 58 per cent, well below Sunline's a century later. Her place rate, at 41 from 44 starts, is amazingly close (at 93.3 per cent) to Sunline's 45 from 48 (94 per cent). Each mare was unplaced only three times.

Wakeful was more versatile than Sunline, winning from 5 furlongs to 3 miles and carrying 10 st (63.5 kg) to run second in the Melbourne Cup, less than a length behind Lord Cardigan, carrying 22 kilos less at 6 st 8 lb. Wakeful comes very close to giving Sunline a run for her money, but where she won ten races that would now be considered Group 1 level, Sunline won 13.

Desert Gold was a New Zealander like Sunline. Her amazing run of 19 wins in a row easily eclipses Sunline's best run of eight consecutive wins. Desert Gold, however, did most of her racing in New Zealand at a very different level to Sunline and, although she won a number of classic New Zealand races and had a great five-year-old season in Australia, winning quite a few weight-for-age events, her record at the very top level does not match Sunline's.

Desert Gold raced through the dark days of World War I for an overall record of 36 wins, 13 seconds and four thirds from 59 starts, very close to Sunline's record. Her place rate is a very respectable 90 per cent, 4 per cent less than Sunline's. Her win rate, at 61 per cent, again comes close to Sunline's 69 per cent, but not close enough.

Tranquil Star had an iron constitution. She started 111 times for 23 wins. That was her main claim to fame, her amazing stamina. She would have been a match for the great masculine mare, Sunline, as far as stamina went, and, like our heroine, she raced until she was past the age when most mares retired; in fact Tranquil Star raced a season more than Sunline, well into her eighth year. Unfortunately, she doesn't really measure up in other ways.

In her three-year-old season Tranquil Star became only the second female to win the St Leger. In her fourth year, however, Tranquil Star raced 21 times for only two wins and eight placings. Her Caulfield Cup win was commendable and, like Sunline, she won the Cox Plate twice in a row.

Also, despite breaking her jaw in a bad fall at Moonee Valley, Tranquil Star went on, with a wired jaw, to win the Memsie Stakes, William Reid Stakes and the Mackinnon Stakes for the third time!

Tranquil Star was, however, a beaten favourite on a record 18 occasions! The racegoers who had time to go on the punt during World War II must have been far more tolerant than they were in Sunline's day!

Within months of Tranquil Star's retirement, a new heroine emerged to excite the wartime and post-war crowds. Flight, famously bought for 60 guineas by Brian Crowley, would go on to race 65 times for 24 wins, 19 seconds and nine thirds.

While her statistics don't measure up to Sunline's, we are often told that Flight had to race against one of the greatest horses of all time in Bernborough, who she only managed to beat the day he broke down in the Mackinnon Stakes in 1946. She did, however, race into her sixth year and managed to emulate Sunline with two wins in the Cox Plate, in 1945 and 1946. She also won two Craven Plates, and the Mackinnon, CF Orr, Adrian Knox and Colin Stephen Stakes.

Like Sunline, Flight produced only four foals before passing away. The only filly foal was Flight's Daughter, who became the mother of champion Golden Slipper winners, Skyline and Sky High. Sky High stood at stud in the USA and sired Autobiography, best handicapper in the USA in 1972.

Flight won only six Group 1 races, less than half of Sunline's total. Her claim to fame is based as much on her impact as a broodmare as it is on her two Cox Plate wins. So any real comparison to Sunline may take years to assess.

Emancipation had many characteristics in common with Sunline. She was a great middle-distance mare and won many of the same races Sunline won: the Doncaster, All-Aged Stakes and George Main Stakes among them. In her three-year-old season she won ten from 13 starts and her record overall was nine from 15; and as a four-year-old, her Group 1 tally was seven.

Emancipation failed when she travelled away from Sydney and she also failed to run out 2000 metres. She was unplaced behind Strawberry Road in the Cox Plate.

As a broodmare Emancipation, like Flight and Wakeful, made her mark. Her son Royal Pardon was placed in the AJC Derby and won good races; her daughters, Suffragette and Virage, produced champions in Railings and Virage De Fortune.

We may have to wait a generation or two before we see if Sunline's blood will resurface into champions, as did the blood of Flight, Wakeful and Emancipation. With only four living foals before her untimely death, it may be hard for Sunline to match the broodmare record of her predecessors. However, with the miraculous Sunline, who knows?

It is a strange fact that the brilliance of great race mares appears to skip a generation and reappear in the foals of their daughters, and sons to a lesser extent.

There is ample proof, as we have seen, of the daughters of great race mares being poor performers but great producers. There are also examples of sons and grandsons being great sires. Wakeful's son Baverstock only managed to win one race, but became a hugely successful sire, as did Flight's grandson Sky High.

We will have to wait to see what influence Sunline has on future generations. And that is also true of one other great mare to whom she is often compared.

Nine days before Sunline scored her last race win in the Group 2 Mudgeway Stakes at Hasting in New Zealand, a mare having her second race start and bred to northern hemisphere seasons won her maiden at Wangaratta. The mighty staying mare Makybe Diva had arrived.

There is an account of her career and place in racing history later in this collection, so I will make her comparison to Sunline quite brief.

We are possibly comparing the greatest middle-distance mare that ever lived to the greatest staying mare Australia has ever seen.

However, we can go through the process of comparing records, just for the sake of it.

As a stayer, Makybe Diva obviously ran in more ‘lead-up' races towards her major goals, so her record of 15 wins, four seconds and three thirds from 36 starts looks quite poor against Sunline's 33 wins, nine seconds and three thirds from 48.

The figures give Makybe Diva a win rate of 42 per cent and a place rate of 61 per cent, well below Sunline's remarkable 69 per cent and 94 per cent. But we are doing no more with such statistics than comparing oranges to apples.

Group 1 wins? Well, it's no contest. Sunline won almost twice as many times at Group 1, with 13 victories at the elite level to Makybe Diva's seven. And when we look at overall wins at group level, it's ten to Makybe Diva and 27 to Sunline.

It's tempting to do what many have done, including the Melbourne
Herald-Sun
in an article comparing contemporary champions in December 2009, and say ‘Sunline was simply a one-off freak'.

That's hardly good enough though—you can't dismiss a champion because he or she was ‘freakishly talented'. After all, that's what being a champion often amounts to!

When she died her regular jockey Greg Childs, who had taken his family to visit her after her retirement, described her as ‘a freak of nature' who took all New Zealand on a great journey.

‘She was a big influence on my life,' Childs said. ‘She lifted my profile and my bank balance . . . she helped pay for the house we are living in.

‘It's not only the jockey, it is the family as well, my wife and my kids,' said Childs, ‘they all love Sunline.'

Firecracker

JIM BENDRODT

I
TURNED AND LOOKED
back. Now, that is something many folk contend should not be done. But I did.

I'd sat all day at the edge of the sale ring while the thoroughbreds paraded and men paid tens of thousands for them. I'd looked with covetous eyes at horses I'd have given my very soul to own, but this was a place where hard cash talked, and I had no cash, hard or otherwise.

And so at last I had walked away because the prices were beyond me, and when I'd travelled some 50 yards towards the exit, I heard the auctioneer's derisive roar upbraiding those whose highest bid was 50 guineas.

I said I turned and looked back, and in the distance I saw a tall black horse, and once again I heard the auctioneer roar, ‘What, 50 guineas? Surely, gentlemen, you haven't looked at this one!'

I started walking back, and I heard someone call 52 and a half and then, after a bit, 55, and the auctioneer shouted, ‘I've got 57 and a half just over here.'

I said, ‘You've got 60, mister.' And then his hammer smashed onto the rostrum.

That's how I bought Firecracker, by Cistercian out of Persian Nan. And the folk who knew Persian Nan said the mare was mad.

Well, maybe so, I didn't know his mother, so I couldn't tell you, but I do know that her son was equine dynamite. I've had so many horses but, among them all, I've never owned a horse like him.

I paid my 60 guineas at the auctioneer's desk, and I remember that the balance in my wallet wasn't much. Then I found the number of his stall, and went to see him. I found the man who cared for him and seven other yearlings. I gave him a little money, and then I said, ‘Well, let's have a look at him.'

‘So
you
bought the blighter, did you?' the man asked, and added, ‘Well, you've got a handful.' He pulled the top and bottom bolts of the heavy door and opened it. ‘You be careful,' he said, ‘this coot is mad. I come from the station he was bred on, and it took five of us three days to catch him in the paddock where he's been running wild for months.'

He sidled cautiously towards the colt's near side. He had tied the horse's head to a strong ringbolt with a heavy length of rope, a thing no horseman worthy of his salt would do. ‘Get over, you!' he roared, and smashed the horse in the soft underbelly with his clenched fist, and the colt struck at him with the speed of light . . . and so did I.

My right hand took his shoulder and whirled him round so that he looked at me in blank astonishment. ‘Take it easy, lad,' I said, and looked at him for a little time. ‘Now get out,' I ordered, ‘and stay out.' He left the stall without another word, and did not come back.

We got the black colt home eventually to the humble stable that I rented for him, and began to break him in. I say ‘began' because that about describes it. We couldn't break him in, and we never did, to the degree that is desirable. He was a queer horse, lean and hard and streamlined, with a lovely fine-drawn head and a remorseless wicked eye.

They are usually so gentle, so easily handled, these baby horses from the famous studs. A little touchy maybe, a trifle nervous, perhaps more difficult than a pleasant-natured dog, but not much trouble as a general rule. But Firecracker! Well, why go into it in detail? By an imported English stallion from the black mare Persian Nan, and knowing folk said Persian Nan was mad!

Well, her son was surely crazy in his first four months with us, and then he settled down and, up to a point, but not beyond it, would do as he was told, but it was always the horse that drew the line as I remember it, though we tried to.

It was in the midst of the Depression years when I bought Firecracker, and 60 guineas was a lot of money then. You may know the Palais Royal, or you may have heard of it, no doubt. The giant dance hall I owned was staggering through the lean hard times with every sail set to catch its hard-won silver pieces. We didn't get 6000 people back then, as we did in better times.