When Peter Moody did the deal with Mark Chittick for I Wish I Win to race in Australia, the idea was to try and win a country cup or two.
But the son of Savabeel exceeded those heights and retires a multiple Group 1 winner with just shy of $13 million in the bank.
Peter Moody and Katherine Coleman along with Chittick, announced I Wish I Win’s retirement on Wednesday after the gelding pulled up ‘jarry’ after trackwork on Tuesday.
“Tuesday week back he worked the house down and yesterday, he worked well but didn’t toe up through the line like he does,” Moody said.
“Katherine rides him in all his work and has a great feel of him.
“We trotted him up at 3am this morning, and Katherine and I basically knew what we were going to see, he was a bit ‘jarry’, and didn’t trot out as well as he can.
“We could have kept squeezing the lemon, but I didn’t want him going and running like he did in the T J Smith and hurting him.
“We x-rayed him, he’s got a bit of change on his knees, not significant, but it could become significant if we pushed the barrow.
“He was too good for us to do that.”
Moody said I Wish I Win would head home to his birthplace in New Zealand at Waikato Stud to live out his days.
I Wish I Win was born with a leg deformity and won two of his first nine starts in New Zealand before joining the Moody and Coleman team.
Moody told Chittick when the deal was done to form an ownership partnership that there would be plenty of country cups to be won.
“Races like the Cranbourne Cup, worth $500,000, a Sale Cup, a Kilmore Cup were worth $200,000 and $300,000 and he ended up just shy of $13 million,” Moody said.
“I always loved winning the T J Smith, being a T J Smith kid.
“I fortunately won it twice with Black Caviar, once with Chain Of Lightning and once with him.”
I Wish I Win ran his last race finishing third to Mr Brightside and Tom Kitten in the Group 1 C F Orr Stakes (1400m) at Caulfield last month.
Moody said it was disappointing not to send I Wish I Win out on a winning note.
“I prided myself on the good ones going out a winner – Black Caviar, Typhoon Tracy, Dissident – they went out winning Group 1 weight-for-age races and I would have loved him to do the same,” Moody said.
“He and Incentivise, they were two of the best horses I trained in my second coming, Incentivise ran second in a Melbourne Cup and he ran third in an Orr.
“I’m not going to complain, but I would have loved to have seen him go out right on top.”
