Makybe Diva (GB) gave a world wide audience, and 106,479 oncourse, an experience that many will never see again, such was the enormity of the performance of this incredible mare when she won the $5 million, Group I, Emirates Melbourne Cup (3200m) at Flemington onTuesday.
In return, owner Tony Stantic retired her immediately after the race and a grateful worldwide audience breathed a sign of relief that Makybe Diva can move to a life of comparative leisure after giving her all on the racetrack.
This seven-year-old mare was so dominant that when jockey Glen Boss reached the lead with 300m to run, it all seemed in slow motion and utterly inevitable.
The worry that no mare had ever carrying more than 57.5kg and won the Melbourne Cup seemed to belong to other mortals, other superior horses, but not this one. She was flying on her own, in her own zone, as Boss calls it, and the others were racing in quite another.
The race unfolded with Boss calmly drifting across to the rails from barrier 14 to take up a position just forward of the rear section of the field as the 24 runners went past the post for the first time.
Umbula took the field to the back straight followed by Mr Celebrity, Bazelle, Portland Singa and Strasbourg.
With 1900m to run Mr Celebrity took over with Bazelle, Umbula and Portland Singa following. Boss and Makybe Diva were still biding there time. Leica Falcon was near the rear as well.
As the field approached the turn Mr Celebrity still led but he tired quickly. The field fanned and Boss moved Makybe Diva out five wide. He was not going to be trapped on the inside. Leica Falcon and Kerrin McEvoy were wider still, as was Michael Coleman on Xcellent and On A Jeune and Darren Gauci near last.
At the 400m Makybe Diva was fifth, On A Jeune 20th, Xcellent 19th and Leica Falcon 13th.
There was slight bumping on the turn for Makybe Diva but the mare was not in the slightest bit distracted. A gap opened for Boss at the 300m and he waited momentarily. But the mare was travelling so well after 50m he shook the reins at her.
Immediately that silky motor clicked another gear and she slipped to the lead with 150m to run, the crowd suddenly realised what was about to happen, and in a spine tingling roar they swept in behind the mare and she was off.
Behind her Leica Falcon was making big strides and Xcellent was sprinting after the fellow four-year-old. Behind them On A Jeune was finally coming with just the 51kg.
But they were almost a side show such was Makybe Diva’s triumphant gallop towards the post, they did not deserve to be as they are the young stayers of the future, but this was all about her and Boss, trainer Lee Freedman and Santic.
Maybe Diva crossed the line 1 1/4L in front. On A Jeune (Jeune) came on well for second, Xcellent (Pentire) was third after tiring over the final meters, Leica Falcon (Nothin’ Leica Dane) fourth,Lachlan River (NZ) (Desert King) fifth, Portland Singa (NZ) (Danasinga) sixth.
Of the international horses Vinnie Roe was eighth, Distinction 19th, Greys Inn 17th, Franklins Gardens last, and Eye Popper 12th.
The time was 3.19.17, the final 600m in 35.48.Makybe Diva paid $3.60 on STAB.
Boss rode the mare back to the main straight and then took her down to the 200m mark. They paused to drink in the cheering, and then he saluted the crowds slowly riding back to the entrance to the mounting yard.
The others in the field waited respectfully while Makye Diva and Boss, standing in the irons waving, came down the race with the Clerk Of The Course, and then into the mounting yard, all the time surrounded by applause.
Boss slipped off Makybe Diva and Tony Santic hugged him.
Freeman had watched the race in the owners bar just outside the mounting yard and he was very calm when he returned to the media in the mounting yard.
“Go and find the smallest child on the course today because that is the only person here who live to see this again, we won't” said Freedman.
“I was always comfortable, I had said to Glen don’t go for an inside run, and once she was at the 300m it was like watching a maiden at Bendigo.
“She is a great horse, I thought she could do it all the time.
“I do not want to run Phar Lap down, but he did not win three Melbourne Cups,” he added when asked if Maybe Diva was better than great horse.
Freedman said that he had always firmly believed that Makybe Diva could, and would win the race. He said that the last week had ticked away slowly, but her training had got better and better, her blood count was fine and she had time to herself at his Rye stable complex.
'She was the only horse you would have backed in the mounting yard as the rest had fallen apart,' he said.
'She is the best horse I have ever trained and seen, and it was a great decision to retire her,' he added.
Santic, a private man who has made his fortune farming tuna off South Australia’s Port Lincoln, then made the trip to the presentation where he announced the immediate retirement of the great mare.
Since Makybe Diva’s first Melbourne Cup win Santic has increased his thoroughbred holdings from 111 horses, including mares and foals, to now over 200 mares and foals, with 40 in training.
“No one was going to take that away,” he said of the win.
“In all the runs she has had for us she has never run a bad race.
“After doing the three she deservedly gets to be retired.
“If I never have another winner I will never complain, not that I think that will happen, but I used to dream to just be in the Melbourne Cup, but to win one, then two and now three is a dream come true,” he said.
‘The Mare’ by Desert King out of the Riverman mare Tugela, over the last 11 days has won the premier weight-for-age race of Australasia, the 2040m of the Cox Plate, in a superlative display of galloping, followed by the 3200m of Flemington and her third Melbourne Cup.
In the last 12 months she won her second Melbourne Cup, the Australian Cup, both at Flemington, and weight-for-age and The BMW at Rosehill in another utterly spellbinding exhibition of galloping.
In essence she won every major race on the Australian calendar.
She retires after racing 36 times for 15 wins and seven places. Her stakes are $14,426,685.
Her last two performances have a created eleven days of spring that will rank as the most superb in the modern thoroughbred era, to be remembered as a sporting moment of history by all who were at Flemington, and in every area of the world where they either watched, listened or read about it. (reprint: ThoroughbredNews NZ)
