There’s a piece of Movietone News footage from 1930 in which jockey Jim Pike tells an interviewer that the only way the great Phar Lap will be beaten is “if they breed ’em with wings and get Kingsford-Smith to ride ’em”.
Kingsford-Smith is long gone and there are still no winged horses.
So what hope have they got against Black Caviar.
The world’s greatest sprinting thoroughbred did it again at Flemington on Saturday, winning her 16th race from as many starts in much the same way as the previous 15.
She jogged up.
The 2-3/4-length margin she held over runner-up Buffering was modest. She could have won by 10.
Similarly, the time for the 1200m of the Group One Patinack Farm Classic wasn’t so special.
But it easily could have been.
Her jockey Luke Nolen earned $60,000 for the 68.32 seconds it took he and Black Caviar to come down the Flemington straight.
Perhaps it was guilt that made him flap his right elbow twice in the final 150m and make it appear he had something to do with the victory.
A man without Pike’s turn of phrase, Nolen stuck to a safe script.
“She’s done a good job,” he said.
Equally overwhelmed, her trainer Peter Moody couldn’t avoid the obvious.
“She toyed with them,” he said.
“She’s a helluva horse.”
In many ways win number 16 was much the same as the others – with one exception.
The massive crowd that came almost exclusively to see her, made barely a sound.
As the big mare eased her way past the opposition an eerie, reverent silence came over them.
As she returned to the paddock, they simply stared until Nolen, keen to do something, led the applause from the saddle.
Moody is still planning to take Black Caviar to Perth for one more run this year and then to return to racing in the autumn when her targets will be the CF Orr Stakes and the Futurity Stakes, both at Caulfield and both over 1400m.
“If she tells us she’s all right, we’ll think about going to England after that,’ Moody said.
“But it’s up to her.”
As it should be.
AAP TURF
