- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Black Caviar’s owners made a decision last week that ensures the mare will retire undefeated.
Black Caviar will bypass the Newmarket Handicap (1200m, Group One) on March 9 where she would have carried 61.5kgs down the Flemington straight. Instead Peter Moody will prepare the six-year-old for the weight-for-age William Reid Stakes (1200m, Group One) on March 22.
It is likely to be her last race in Melbourne.
If Black Caviar is retired before this year’s spring carnival – and that has always been the plan – winning the Newmarket with 61.5kgs was the second-last chance for the mare to achieve another extraordinary feat.
Now that the Newmarket has been ruled out, the last box left for Black Caviar to tick off is a perfect record at the end of her career.
And considering there are no serious challengers willing to take on the mare – not even her arch rival Hay List – we can assume Black Caviar will have an unimpeded path, running in set weights and weight-for-age races, to completing her undefeated career.
In many ways, bypassing the Newmarket was an easy decision to make. Black Caviar’s big and injury-prone frame will benefit from the five-week break between last weekend’s Lightning Stakes victory and the William Reid.
And more importantly Black Caviar’s hallmark – her unblemished record – will almost inevitably be intact after her Moonee Valley outing.
In any case, winning at weight-for-age is the measure of a great horse. Feature handicaps are usually the domain of those horses not up to the absolute top level.
That is of course unless we are talking about a champion.
Victories with big weights in the feature handicaps (for example, races like the Melbourne Cup, Caulfield Cup, Sydney Cup, Doncaster Mile, Newmarket Handicap and Oakleigh Plate) separate legends like Phar Lap and Tulloch from great horses like So You Think and Lonhro.
Phar Lap raced in four feature handicaps in which he carried weights of 47kgs (third, 1929 Melbourne Cup at three years of age), 59.5kgs (first, 1929 King’s Cup at three), 62.5kgs (first, 1930 Melbourne Cup at four) and 68kgs (eighth, 1931 Melbourne Cup at five).
Tulloch raced in many feature handicaps. He won his last race, the 1961 Brisbane Cup with 62.5kgs. In the 1960 Melbourne Cup he carried 64kgs into seventh place before running second in the same season’s Sydney Cup with 63kgs.
Black Caviar has raced in one feature handicap, the 2011 Newmarket Handicap when she carried 58kgs to an easy victory. It was biggest weight ever carried to victory by a mare in the race and the highest winning weight in the Newmarket since Shaftesbury Avenue in 1991.
You could argue that if Black Caviar was to win the 2013 edition with 61.5kgs, and then retire, she would be held in equal or higher regard than any horse that has ever raced in this country. And that’s without ever being extended past a distance of 1400m.
Black Caviar may have more ability than any Australian thoroughbred to have ever raced. She may be better than Phar Lap.
But no-one can categorically declare it. She hasn’t done enough. In fact, she hasn’t even been given a chance.
But Phar Lap was. And he rose to the challenge. Five times he was asked to win three races in the space of a week. He delivered on all but one of those occasions.
Most famously, he won on all four days of the 1930 Melbourne Cup Carnival. On Derby Day, hours after bullets were fired at him by a would-be assassin, he won the Melbourne (now known as the Mackinnon) Stakes over 2000m.
On the Tuesday he waltzed to victory in the Melbourne Cup (two miles) with 62.5kgs on his back. Two days later, on Oaks Day, he won the Linlithgow (now known as the Patinack Farm Classic) over a mile before taking out the now-defunct CB Fisher Plate over 2400m on the final Saturday.
Phar Lap, like every Australian champion other than Black Caviar, sometimes lost. After ten outings, he had only amassed one victory and one second. ‘The Red Terror’ never completed a season without defeat. He lost more Melbourne Cups than he won.
But nobody talks about that.
They talk about the hope he gave Australians during the depression. They talk about his 1930 Melbourne Cup – and Cup week – and they talk about his victory in Mexico and the size of his heart.
Phar Lap was far from perfect. But he is remembered as the greatest. When he was thrown a challenge, he rose. When he was asked to back-up, he won, regardless of the distance. And when he was made to carry huge top weights, he did it with class.
Black Caviar will enter the record books as a legend of Australian racing when she retires. For many years, people will talk about her soft victories and effortless stride, her rivalry with Hay List and heart-stopping victory at Royal Ascot.
But history won’t remember her as a modern-day Phar Lap, let alone the best.
History will remember Black Caviar as the sprinter that never lost and, in doing so, captured the public’s imagination.
It’s an accurate description, but somehow I feel Black Caviar could’ve been so much more.
Have you ever tried your skills in a Racing daily fantasy competition? Put your best picks to the test for one day and see if you can scoop the pot with Draftstars. Looking for great odds on racing and sport? PlayUp is your best bet. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.