The dictionary meaning of the term ‘protectionism’ is “to insulate local interests against foreign (company) invasion”. So It’s quite ironic that a German trained import named Protectionist thrashed our own local horses (and other imports) in the Melbourne Cup on that first Tuesday in November last year.
Since then Australian trainer Kris Lees acquired the horse for his Newcastle stables.
Given what he did in the Cup, Aussie racegoers expected a repeat of what we saw last Spring in the weaker Autumn Group 1 races. After all, he did win the big race by a widening four lengths, running a very fast time of 3.17.71, some 2.5 seconds faster than Fiorente the previous year and carrying 1.5kg more weight.
It was perhaps the most impressive Melbourne Cup win in the past 40 years
There were murmurs before his first-up run over 1800m (Peter Young Stakes) at the end of February that his trackwork/race trials weren’t setting the world on fire. I’m not an avid follower of either, so I took that with a pinch of salt.
The price put up by early fixed-odds operators seemed generous (not a great sign), and although the distance was well short of the Melbourne Cup, he had won at 1600m and placed at 1700 in Germany. His German counterpart Lucas Cranach had also won this race in a canter in 2013, after running a good third in the Melbourne Cup in 2012. Protectionist wasn’t meeting a great field, so punters were entitled to wager confidently on him, and they did.
The horse ended up running a dismal sixth, four lengths from the winner. Jockey Craig Williams reported post-race that he just didn’t enjoy the Caulfield track, but the run was “very acceptable”.
That effort sent alarm bells ringing for me, but most punters seemed prepared to forgive the effort, preferring to look forward to the horse getting to the roomier stretches of Flemington (in the Australian Cup), the scene of his greatest triumph.
Williams rode him again, and he settled near last early in the race. The horse again did very little, finishing eighth, some 4.5 lengths astern. The victor was Spillway, who was rated a double-figure chance, not having won under weight-for-age conditions, and seemingly well short of the class of Protectionist.
Even worse, the runner-up was a fairly despised handicapper named Extra Zero who couldn’t even get within 10 lengths of the winner in the Albury Cup last year, carrying the minimum weight. A horse that couldn’t even win a Kyneton Cup!
Now if that wasn’t a message to connections that all was not right, then it’s hard to imagine what would have been. Well and truly time to abort his Autumn campaign right there was my sentiment. This was a horse that obliterated a Melbourne Cup field conceding weight to the majority of runners. Now he was carrying level weight, against inferior fields, and finishing well off the pace.
Williams comments later were that he didn’t put himself into the race and “they were a bit too sharp for him today”. Hardly comforting for those who wagered on the horse.
Connections persisted and pushed on with a Sydney campaign, again assigning the navigation duties to Williams. Up to 2400m in the BMW, that will do the trick. More distance is obviously required.
Great in theory, and it has to be said he did run a better race, finishing 2.5 lengths back, and running on at the end of proceedings. Realistically though, it was still a performance well short of his best, some six lengths inferior to what we could have expected.
I’m not sure that was enough encouragement to push on to the Sydney Cup, where he would lump 58kg, and concede a massive amount of weight to a few horses that beat him home in the BMW. It seemed unlikely he could win under those circumstances, but connections were bullish, thinking that the distance was going to bring out the best in him.
Williams was aboard again (0/4 aboard thus far), and it’s history now that the horse was beaten a long way, and pulled up in a distressed state.
So distressed that he may never race again.
So how did it come to this? My first thought after the Melbourne Cup last year was how on earth is anything going to beat him in this race next year? Yes he would be alotted 58kg or more, but the dominance he displayed suggested that weight would not stop a train. Just a matter of looking after the horse in the next 12 months and negating a weight penalty by planning a WFA preparation to the Cup via the Cox Plate.
Instead his owners set him on an Autumn path culminating in Sydney. Looking back it was a preparation of four runs in 42 days. His previous campaign in Europe had included four runs in 126 days, and that followed a spell of 10 months, typical of how European stayers are raced.
Here he was in Australia, maybe not fully acclimatised, resuming off a break of three months and having three consecutive runs with only two weeks break between them. Before the Melbourne Cup he’d had a 21-day break, and the shortest break he had ever had between runs in Europe was 28 days.
Apparently his previous trainer, Andreas Wohler, had suggested the horse would need 2400m to show his best here this Autumn. Fair enough, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he required two runs to prepare for that distance, which is often the Australian way of training. Maybe he should have gone straight to the BMW at that distance in Sydney, as did Japanese horse To The World, who ran a good second (off a three month break)?
The signs were there form the start of his Autumn campaign that something wasn’t quite right. You would assume that he was injury-free and routine veterinary checks were carried out. A horse can’t tell you that it’s fatigued – whether mentally or physically – but performances probably can. A jockey might also be able to offer some insight.
Owners are obviously entitled to pursue whatever races they choose, as they pay the bills. But maybe a harsh lesson has been learnt? We can’t race European stayers as often we do our own in Australia, and we need to give them time to fully acclimatise.
Lucas Cranach was another horse owned by the same interests, brought back in the Autumn after a Spring campaign. He won the same race that Protectionist failed in first-up, but alas that was the last we ever saw of him because of injury.
On the flipside, Gai Waterhouse gave Fiorente five months off and only one Autumn start after his Melbourne Cup second in 2012. By the time the Spring of 2013 came around Fiorente was rearing to go, and was at his peak when winning the Cup that year, with four runs in 56 days before his triumph.
There’s a sad irony in the name of Protectionist, because his best interests don’t seem to have been protected – not to mention the interests of the betting public, who were entitled to expect far better performances.
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