October
MayWe hardly knew you
As has been noted ad nauseam, this year’s crop of three-year-olds may be the best we have seen since the year of Octagonal, Saintly, Filante and Nothin’ Leica Dane.
What a shame that we’re to be robbed of future clashes involving this year’s biggest stars.
Gai Waterhouse’s claim that Pierro is the best horse in 50 years was preposterous enough before his premature retirement.
Now we’ll never know where he might have ranked among the genuine superstars of the modern era, because he’s not to be tested beyond 14 starts.
As for All Too Hard, part-owner Gerry Harvey was reported last weekend bemoaning the fact that he had never raced a geuine champion after decades of heavy investment in horseflesh.
"With all the horses I have had, I haven’t had a super horse and I truly believe this fellow could be it,’’ Harvey told Fairfax Media.
"There are (commercial) reasons why he won’t race on as a four-year-old but it’s a pity we won’t get to see him then because at a mile and beyond I feel he could be that super horse."
Presumably Harvey was outvoted by his partners on All Too Hard racing on at four. Or hasn’t he got enough money?
Of the four top 1995/96 three-year-olds named above, only one (Saintly) was a gelding, and yet all four had a full season of racing at four. Nothin’ Leica Dane had two starts in France as an early five-year-old and Filante raced in Australia in the spring and autumn of his five-year-old season.
Admittedly those three were best known as middle-distance racehorses, and therefore not as "fashionable" to the breeding industry. Also, perhaps times have changed. But let’s not forget that Frankel, the most valuable stallion prospect in the world, had a full season of racing at four — and that was only last year.
Let’s hope the promotional material for Pierro and All Too Hard does not suggest that they were among the great Australian racehorses of modern times.
Maybe they were, but we’ll never know.
Cremorne (Vic)