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The ailing director’s next act
So You Think, in all his magnificence, is a sight to behold. Handsome, flighty and arrogantly good. His win in Saturday’s Cox Plate was spine-tingling and right up with the best theatre that racing can offer. Moonee Valley is racing’s equivalent of Shakespeare’s Globe.
If So You Think’s prancing entrance on to the track, his exhilarating burst of speed at the 600 metres to put the race beyond doubt and his neck-arched parade in front of his adoring fans post-race didn’t stir the emotions then nothing will. He’s a commanding presence; a swashbuckling Errol Flynn.
Even jockey Steven Arnold, the anti-Boss, left the accolades for the horse. There was no Glen Boss-like standing in the irons, no arms raised in triumph, and definitely no saddle boogieing. For the quiet, unassuming, but much talented Arnold his greatest racing achievement was as much one of relief as it was euphoria. He said enough about his opinion of this horse after the Group 1 Yalumba Stakes win at Caulfield two weeks ago: “I wipe my feet before I get on him.”
It’s a quote for the time that will be remembered and repeated for years to come.
But the emotion, for me, of Saturday’s Cox Plate really hit hard when a frail, gaunt and wavering Bart Cummings, the director of this wonderful show, made his slow walk to the presentation area. The seemingly invincible man, the one human constant in racing that has been with me since I was a boy, is struggling.
Horse and trainer presented such contrasting visions, and personally I struggled to hold my feelings when Cummings appeared in the winner’s circle, brushed by the media and heartily congratulated his staff, foreman Reg Fleming and long-time track rider and sidekick Joe Agresta. Even that moment, not usually so emphatic, seemed poignant.
The illnesses of 2010 – first the pneumonia and more recently the fractured pelvis – have had a devastating effect on the great man. For the first time he looks older than his 82 years.
Even Cummings’ good mate and Melbourne chauffeur, Peter Mason, was moved. He admitted that Cummings, who in the past has blamed his hay fever (and correctly so) for any post-race tears, also found this an emotional moment, as people often do when they have been through a life struggle. “His (Cummings’) bottom lip was quivering. It certainly is emotional,” Mason said of the trainer’s immediate reaction to the win.
Cummings has another act to go in his amazing training career and his 60-year association with the Melbourne Cup.
He will be breaking new ground if he can win his 13th Cup with his new star. None of his previous dozen have won the Cup without running in a race run over 2400 metres or longer in the spring lead up. Cummings has won the Cox Plate-Melbourne Cup double before, with Saintly in 1996, but the big chestnut was placed third in the AJC Metropolitan Handicap, then run over 2600m, at Randwick before coming to Melbourne.
Like So You Think, Saintly also was a four-year-old, and also a brilliant galloper capable of peeling off fast sectionals – he returned from his Cup win in the 1997 autumn to win the C.F. Orr Stakes (wfa, 1400m, Caulfield). Saintly also didn’t have a pedigree to run 3200 metres, even less so than So You Think, so Cummings probably has a bit more to work with in regards to stretching So You Think (a son of the brilliant staying sire High Chaparral from a mare by a son of Nijinsky II) out in distance, although he has only 10 days to do it.
Makybe Diva was able to win a Melbourne Cup off a Cox Plate preparation. She did it in 2005, but, of course, she had won the previous two Cups, so the 3200 metres was a given for her.
Efficient also did in it 2007. He ran ninth behind El Segundo in the Cox Plate – his fourth unplaced run of the campaign – before winning the Cup, but Efficient had won the Victoria Derby (2500m) the previous spring.
Both Cummings and Arnold know that So You Think will need to relax more in his races to win the Cup. Arnold admits he is not convinced the heady, immature colt, can relax enough to run out a strong 3200 metres, which he will have to do against what is shaping is the strongest Cup field we have seen in recent times. Arnold is putting his faith in the masterful direction of Cummings – the body might be ailing, but the mind is sharp, and the great man lives for these moments and, for him, business is unfinished.
Great read.
“I wipe my feet before I get on him.” What a great line
Thanks Col,
Steven’s a man of few words, but when he comes up with gems like that, it’s worth the wait.