Champions Day tops off a dynamic Flemington carnival, with three topliners, Via Sistina, Pride Of Jenni and Bella Nipotina striving for their best, following a Melbourne Cup, mercifully more traditional than International.
Naysayers who whinge and harp on the negatives should sit back and wallow in grief elsewhere while the Melbourne Cup this year flashbacked to past glory.
While nowhere near our best race, the Melbourne Cup is still the Big One in grass roots popularity and punter appeal.
However this Saturday at Flemington lives up to the title. Can the remarkably durable seven-year-old mare, Bella Nipotina, the Everest winner, maintain her excellence in the Champions Sprint after scoring at Rosehill last Saturday? Anyway $4.2 was on offer about her yesterday.
Will Pride Of Jenni, last season’s Horse Of The Year, return to her gut busting razzle dazzle in the VRC Champions Mile, listed in Best Bets as “the race of the carnival”.
Still Via Sistina, hot favourite in Champions Stakes, put up the performance of this season and most others bolting away with the Cox Plate recently. Alas being a seven-year-old mare wise guys reckon she will never produce the Moonee Valley figures again.
Surely there have never been few if ever three more intriguing races on one program. Without the Mackinnon, now the Champions Stakes, Derby Day may have lacked former substance but was still strong.
Sure, the Melbourne Cup popularity dropped, in my opinion, due to the international involvement which lifted the standard, but increased break-downs which Racing Victoria has taken the necessary steps to rectify.
Tuesday’s winner, Knight’s Choice won’t make the annals of the all-time great but responded to the lilting tone of Robbie Dolan, Irish bred but Aussie saddle trained.
Knight’s Choice was prepared by the John Symons – Sheila Laxon partnership. Symons is local while Laxon, a UK bred, is more New Zealand with a ONZM to prove it.
Laxon qualified as two-mile trainer winning the Caulfield – Melbourne Cup double with Ethereal, ridden by Scott Seamer, from Queensland, in 2001. Like Seamer, the Knight’s Choice team stuck with an unfashionable, Dolan, who rode at Ipswich on Thursday.
Dolan, a leading apprentice in Sydney, relocated north and produced the essential navigation over 3200 metres prompting the question of just how much better are the top jockeys and those regarded as competent?
For instance, the “magic man”, Joao Moreira, pulled more a dead rodent out of the hat than a rabbit on favourite Buckeroo. At one stage Buckeroo was 20 lengths off the lead and beaten three and a half. Dolan weaved through the field. Moreira came wide.
Unlike the shambles a week earlier in the $10 million Golden Eagle at Rosehill, Melbourne Cup navigators rode to the rules with interference being at a rare minimum.
And the only horse injury reported was “an abrasion to the right fore heel” of St George before 91,168, not bad for a race in decline.
Encouraged by Rhett Kirkwood, who learnt the media under Jack Elliott in the Melbourne Herald, about the Channel Nine cover I had a sample of Thursday for the Oaks. Amongst others Michelle Payne was easy on the eye and ear with the understanding expected of a Melbourne Cup winner. Billy Slater was slick behind the gates. Obviously his stint with Gai Waterhouse has come in handy.
Having been at the Melbourne Cup for 100,000, Tuesday felt more like 70,000. Put that down to crowd management, far more comfortable than 50,000 at Randwick for The Everest plus a different demographic. Flemington was 60 percent, at least, salt of the turf and 40 percent fun loving party goers. Randwick racegoers were there more for the good time and a drink than top racing and were confronted by long dunny queues.
Train travel to Flemington is smooth like a Jamie Kah ride. Kah is absent from the Champions Day but jockey talent abounds. Consider James McDonald and the cerebral Craig Williams with a dash of Damian Lane, so good in the VRC Oaks yesterday on Treasurethe Moment. Mark Zahra makes a difference, too. On Giga Kick he will be out to end the winning streak of Bella Nipotina. I am gambling against the great mare and going for Sunshine In Paris who didn’t get the best of runs behind her in the Balding at Rosehill last Saturday. With JMac today anticipate a better result.
JMac handles Fangirl, so flat at Randwick last start, in the Mile where the tactics of Pride Of Jenni will again play a major role. Pride Of Jenni gets a replacement jockey in Ben Melham with Declan Bates, generally so good at gauging her catch-me-if-you can tendency. I’m going for the three-year-old Broadsiding gambling on improvement, anticipating the opposition may be getting leg weary.
Of course Via Sistina went so well in the Cox Plate it’s difficult to see her being beaten. Since 1994 the only Stakes or Mackinnon winner to have credentials like Via Sistina was the great Lonhro and he didn’t take a Cox Plate. The great uncertainty of racing can always kick in and Anamoe was 2.35 favourite in the Mile (2022) after the Cox Plate triumph and finished fourth.
The Champions are $3 million events, worth every cent, and Rosehill Gardens has the $2 million Five Diamonds, hardly the quality of the Flemington best but with spectacular aspects, including Magic Moreira on Lindermann taking on Territory Express who falls out of the gates like a bag of spuds but in top flight is a sight to behold.
