The cult of Black Caviar reached its zenith this week when the champion was effectively given human status by winning the Victorian Racing Media Association Personality of the Year Award.
Competing for the ‘prestigious’ award previously won by Bart Cummings, and up against other notable human beings such as jockeys Luke Nolen and Craig Williams, and trainers Peter Moody and Rob Heathcote, the six-year-old – with her even temperament and winning smile – won it in a canter.
A mare of few, if any, words, the award was gratefully accepted on her behalf by her owners. When a couple of dissenting judges complained that she couldn’t talk it was pointed out that most jockeys couldn’t either, and those that could no one wanted to hear anyway.
Those around Black Caviar seem to regard her as more human than horse. The manager of the stud farm where she was conceived, commented: “If your fortunate enough to see Black Caviar she’s got an arse like a bus, and that phenomenal shoulder”.
Peter Moody has said: “I’ve likened her publicly to someone like Serena Williams.” Presumably he was referring to athletic ability, not the enormous arse and muscular shoulders.
Seeing Black Caviar for the first time at the Melbourne Premier Yearling Sale, Moody “instantly fell in love”.
Appreciation from other quarters is often a little too intimate. Gerard Whateley’s Black Caviar: The Horse of a Lifetime, contains descriptions of aesthetic appreciation (“she redefined the notion of perfection”, “alone on the training track, the beauty of her motion”) bordering on zoophilia.
What creature – with the exception of Ozzy Osbourne – has its own website and self-named herbal shampoo and hoof enamel?
Such adulation for a champion animal – one who has excelled in a human devised endeavour – has occurred before, of course, with Phar Lap.
Barry Humphries once mocked the legendary status of Phar Lap by describing him as “the most celebrated dead horse in Australia”. Such was Phar Lap’s revered status, everyone literally wanted a piece of him.
Melbourne got his hide, New Zealand – his birthplace – procured the skeleton, and his enormous heart resides at the National Museum of Australia.
Now while there is something strange about people worshiping a horse “impeccably stuffed in a large glass case”, poet Peter Porter was more generous than Humphries with the champion’s grand legacy: “It is Australian innocence to love/The naturally excessive and be proud/ of a thoroughbred bay gelding who ran fast”.
It will be interesting to see what we do with Black Caviar when her time is up. She definitely won’t get a bullet between the eyes and end up as dog food, glue or a shaving brush which is the fate of thousands of her maimed and untalented contemporaries each year. A state funeral is more likely.
Phar Lap played an important role as a national sporting icon, and as a symbol of hope during the Depression, and his close relationship with strapper Tommy Woodcock further endeared him to the general public. His early mysterious death also made him a martyr.
Black Caviar is also magnificent and endearing but do we still need to idolise a champion animal? As one of her co-owners said: “It’s so remarkable, it’s almost absurd. There has been a dynamic I’ve never understood, the way people have warmed to her”.
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