Derby day is hailed as the best day’s racing in Australia and on Saturday its ingredients included a super colt recently sold for a dizzying fortune, sheikhs both happy and sad, posh men in morning suits cheering a gelding that might have been Black Beauty, and a 50-year-old imp with a shady past. All played their part, yet were bumped from the spotlight by a $4000 horse and its spit-and-sawdust trainer.
”Yeah, an absolute fairytale,” Robbie Laing said of Polanski’s romping Derby win, after seeing off a trio of Sheikh Mohammed’s colts so well-bred they could have been in pin-stripes and tails themselves. Laing has 18 horses in work at his Cranbourne stables, the sheikh’s Darley operation stands stallions in almost that many countries.
Laing spoke of the beginning of a new era, and, at 54 and having trained Australian Cup and Thousand Guineas winners before dominating jumps racing through the 2000s, he agreed this was the best win of an all-encompassing career. As a younger man he rode, too, but deferred to jockey Hugh Bowman in Saturday’s pre-race instructions. ”I had 45 rides for one win, who am I to tell you anything?”
His Thousand Guineas triumph came in 1983, the same year a tiny New Zealander with the pluck of a yapping terrier took Kiwi from last at the turn and into Melbourne Cup legend. His first group 1 win had been the Brisbane Cup two years earlier, and on Saturday Jimmy Cassidy brought up the ton with a customary bang.
”I’ll treasure it for the rest of me life,” Cassidy said of joining George Moore and Roy Higgins. His choice of words – ”they can’t take it away from me now” – were those of a man who has been around the block. Cassidy estimates he’s missed six years through suspension, a mixed blessing that has prolonged his career.
He reached 100 with the racing equivalent of a six over the bowler’s head, and in the ”straight six” sprint to boot. Zoustar was last week purchased by Hunter Valley stud Widden, with a clause in the sale meaning Saturday’s Coolmore Stakes carried a $4 million bonus.
Added to the colt’s rumoured sale price, and with a further bonus on offer for a seemingly inevitable third group 1 win next autumn, Zoustar is effectively a $20 million horse. That’s more than the total prizemoney over the four days of Cup week, and was enough to make Cassidy nervous.
”I’ve had more pressure on me today than I think I’ve had in 30 years,” he said of riding Zoustar, who gave the crowd of 95,223 a close-up look by heading to the outside rail, raced without cover, and still exploded away at the clock tower. ”He was a machine today,” Cassidy said of a colt he believes could go anywhere, but this time next year will most likely be serving mares for fees that would make a high class courtesan blush.
The Lexus and Mackinnon stakes are the traditional last throw at the stumps for a Melbourne Cup berth, and for much of the afternoon it seemed the winners of both would take their bat and ball and head home. But a group of pretend choralists from Malvern did some smooth talking and their Lexus winner Ruscello will take its place at the bottom of the Cup weights after all.
”It has to be no … he’s only four, just run the biggest race of his life, and to ask him to run the next biggest race of his life is probably a bit unfair,” said English trainer Ed Walker, who by 4.30pm had been talked around by the locals among the horse’s owners, including a syndicate who call themselves the Malvern Choir Group – because that’s where they tell their kids they’re going when they head off to meet at the pub.
The Mackinnon winner won’t be seen on Tuesday, but Side Glance put a jolly fine full stop on the latest chapter of a jet-setting career. ”My mother bred him and he’s always been a good looker,” said Andrew Balding, the son of English training royalty who a decade ago took over the family business and inherited clients including the Queen and Alex Ferguson.
Sheikh Fahad of Qatar was happy to sing his praises on Saturday, slapping backs with the morning-suited men, while Balding shifted the credit to Irish jockey Jamie Spencer and the stable’s head girl, who has been with their magnificent animal throughout a Cox Plate campaign that ended with unexpected bubbles.
Derby day is as much about what is to come as the here and now, and finished with confirmation there’s only room for so many Robbie Laing-style fairytales. Lloyd Williams will take six runners into his title defence in Tuesday’s Cup, boom Sydney trainer Chris Waller two, advertising mogul John Singleton will be there, too, and a whopping 10 internationals. Good luck finding a battler.
Ruscello was the last horse to get in. Next in line was an old stager named Precedence, trained by James Cummings and his 86-year-old grandfather Bart.
