Gosh, I've only just recovered from the shock of Black Caviar's race. I'm so pleased that I went down to Ascot that day as it's a race I won't ever forget. Nor will anyone who saw it forget it. And I'd be kicking myself if I hadn't been there. We knew that it would be special, but I don't think that anyone knew how extraordinary it would be. The tension was oppressive beforehand. She simply had to win; and one didn't need to have too great an understanding of horses to realise that she's a mare for whom things could go wrong at any time. The grim expressions on those around her, as well as her feisty look, said it all: it was like watching a team preparing their gladiator for battle.
And battle, of course, it was. At her best she'd clearly just stroll alongside them for four furlongs and then saunter clear. But every day horses who should be able to win, don't. And that's when they are playing in their own country, in their own hemisphere, in their own climate, in their normal conditions and when they don't already have a hell of a lot of wear and tear on their bodies. As Frankel is proving and as she has proved, it's easy enough for a horse who is a lot better than the others to keep showing up only when in peak condition and only when everything is in his/her favour, and keep winning easily. That's grand, and champions should be much better than their opponents.
But true champions can battle too. Ask them to race when everything is against them and they'll still win. They'll win on class, sure, but they'll also win on pure courage. I've never seen a sprinter so tired after the race as she was: she'd put her heart and soul into it to fall in by a head. Granted, it should have been more than a head had not Luke Nolen's brain frozen in the last furlong, but even so she wouldn't have won by much even if he hadn't got things so badly wrong. At first I thought that he'd mistaken the winning post, but on reflection I just think that he hadn't seen the two horses finishing fast on his left side. He'd been drawn the widest runner and he probably wasn't expecting anything to come from even farther out than he was. And he had the ones on his inside well covered.
Thank God she got him out of trouble because it really would have been very close to a tragedy (and I am aware that we should not use that word lightly) if he had got her beat. It would have been a tragedy in the Greek sense, because poor Luke would have been a broken man. Roy Higgins still hasn't been able to put the 1975 Moonee Valley Cup, when he dropped his hands on Hyperno and got beat, behind him. I see that he's written that this will haunt Luke, but it only will to a certain degree thanks to the fact that he held on: nobody would be going on about Roy's blunder now had Hyperno won, which by the grace of God is what the lovely, the best and the bravest Black Caviar did. And I'm so glad that I was there to see the victory.
In all of the excitement, it was almost possible to forget that the Melbourne Cup quinella were re-opposing yet again. And once again they passed the post almost as one. What two wonderfully consistent horses Dunaden (pictured in this paragraph) and Red Cadeaux are. Dunaden is in my XII to Follow, so let's hope that he can get his head in front soon. He ought to be able to do so as he's a cracking horse who is in great form and who has, I venture to suggest, still got improvement in him. Even if Black Caviar hadn't been there, Saturday would still have been a great trip to the races simply because of having seen him.
We had the perfect post script to the afternoon at the races when we welcomed a few guests to our picnic in the car park afterwards. Guest of honour was Peter Moody, who joined us with his friends after his car had, hard though this is to believe, broken down as they were about to leave. A new car too. It was good to see him unwind, the tension at last dissipating, the ordeal over, disaster avoided. He's a tremendous man as well as a terrific trainer and it was lovely to share the evening with him. Another Aussie trainer, albeit one who trains in the UK, Jeremy Gask, showed up, with a visiting South Australian trainer whom I used to know years ago, David Jolly, and there was further representation from the Aussie trainers with Peter's friend Brett Cavanough, who trains at Albury and who broke Black Caviar in. And the Aussie hoops were represented by Kathy O'Hara, so it was a proper league of nations. Which was great.
So now we have three more days at the races. Yarmouth tomorrow with Silken Thoughts. Newmarket Friday with Ethics Girl. And probably Doncaster Saturday with Batgirl. Hopefully they will all run well. I suppose that Silken Thoughts will be the shortest price of the trio and probably Ethics Girl the longest. But that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Let's just hope for three good runs. If the days are as enjoyable as Ascot was on Saturday, that'll be very good - and that's far from impossible because, of course, however good a day is when you don't have a runner, any day on which you have a runner has the potential to be even better. Or even worse, depending on how things go.
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