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She swoops to conquer!

A tribute to Makybe Diva, the only winner of three Melbourne Cups

By The Optimist

 

What can one say? More correctly, what more can one say? They came up with every possible superlative after she won the Melbourne Cup for the second time in 2004. Even then she was being compared with the little band of horses which had won the Melbourne cup twice. She was pretty good.

But they weren't prepared to really go out on a limb. For one thing, the great mare Sunline had just retired, and although Sunline would have had Buckley's Chance of living with Makybe Diva over further than 2000 metres, she was still big in the public eye. Going back in time a little, Makybe Diva had already won the 2003 Melbourne Cup.

She had been backed from 50/1 in early markets down to a final starting price of 7/1. Then in 2004, she won again, at the very skinny odds of 5/2. Ironically, in all three years she was available at 20/1 relatively close to the running of the big race.

In 2003 and 2004, I, for one, took advantage of the early odds. I had no trouble getting the 50/1 for 2003, and in 2004 I was able to take 20/1 before the Caulfield Cup. After her run in that, which she probably should have won, those of us who took the twenties were on very good terms with each other. In 2005, needless to say she didn't start at anywhere near those odds, but TAB Ltd, the NSW TAB, offered 20/1 briefly as a special promotion. I didn't have the nous to get on. Frankly, I didn't even know if she would run.

THE COX PLATE AND THE CUP!!!

Later on, I think I was in the majority by scoffing at the kind of odds being offered for her to win (a) both the Cox Plate and the Melbourne Cup, and (b) either race. At one stage, the odds were around 6/1 (best) to win both.

To win either, you had to take 7/4. I don't remember whether I wrote it, but I thought it was absolute highway robbery.

Now, it looks like the bet of the century, doesn't it? The gift of hindsight is indeed a wonderful sense!

I do recall writing a month or two back, in an article I shared with Brian Blackwell, that Makybe Diva was a little bit like Two Shillelagh O'Sullivan in the song. When somebody said, "No man could do that", the response was "It's O'Sullivan I'm talking about!"

Then the first speaker would respond with "Oh, well he could!" Indeed, she could. It was all too easy. It just played out like an inevitable stage drama, or maybe a romantic movie. It was as though you had written the script and you knew the answer.

In fact it was downright weird. When she came around the corner in the Cox Plate, it was all over. I had substantially supported Lad Of The Manor. I maintain I had every right to feel aggrieved, and the Mackinnon Stakes bore me out; but I don't think any horse in the land could have lived with Makybe Diva on that afternoon. It was a win of absolutely staggering proportions. It's difficult to imagine how much more she had in the petrol tank, because she was coasting by the hundred-metre mark.

And then we came to the 2005 Melbourne Cup. Again, with half a furlong to go, she was coasting. There was no danger. My final selection had blown out to $70, but she - my pick, I mean - hit the front on the turn and kicked clear.

Everything was going according to plan, and while you don't get time in that split second to start figuring out what you're going to win, I reckoned I was in with a pretty fair chance. That was until I realised that the horse challenging, coming out of the pack, and simply toying with the others, was carrying the familiar red, white and blue mix. With those stars.

She must have given my mare a cold as she went past. As she approached the finishing line, the Flemington crowd made the call almost impossible to hear, even with the assistance of the huge speakers.

HAS THERE EVER BEEN A GREATER SCENE IN RACING?

I've never witnessed a scene like it. I don't know if I ever will see anything to match it in my lifetime.

Let's consider for a moment the win of Phar Lap. The name means "lightning", whereas Makybe Diva's moniker is just a combination of five young ladies' names. Phar Lap was the hero of the Depression years. He won the cup once. He also lost the cup.

Look, I'm not into the business of bashing legends, and when you see him in the Melbourne Museum, you just get goosebumps all over you. But for all that, I am not quite sure that he was any better than, say, Peter Pan as a stayer.

There are those who suggest that Rising Fast and Tulloch might have shaken him up too. No, I'm not getting into that kind of deep water, and if you saw Phar Lap win the Melbourne Cup, and you can remember it, you have got to be at least 85. I'm not, and I suspect most of my readers are not, and the original film we have is highly emotional and it is very limited in what you can get out of it.

So let's make a few comments that really can be made about Makybe Diva. She is surely without challenge the greatest Australian staying mare of all time. I don't think I'll get any letters on that.

WHAT IS INDISPUTABLE? TRY THESE:

Makybe Diva is the only Australian mare to win the great race twice, let alone three times. She is the only animal, mare or anything else, apart from Carbine, to win both the Melbourne and the Sydney Cups in the same year. When she did that, it tended to be glossed over by some sections of the racing world. It was as though she still had something to do. We'll come back to that.

Carrying on with those comments that can be made, she joined Saintly as a Cox Plate/Melbourne Cup same year winner. Like Saintly, the horse from heaven, who did it in reverse, she also won the Australian Cup. But she did that in the same year. And she won the BMW.

Another comment that can be made is that she carried more weight than a mare had ever carried to win the Melbourne Cup. But I think there's something else we can say that puts her in a class of her own.

When I say it, I'm pretty sure that you, my reader, are going to say "Well, of course, every fool on the planet knows that!" But you know, I have the feeling a lot of people still really haven't taken it on board.

This is the only horse in history to win three Melbourne Cups.

She did it in successive years, carrying more weight each year, winning great races in between, showing versatility that in 2003 none of us had imagined she possessed.

And in 2005, when Lee Freedman announced that he was setting her for the Cox Plate, I think it's fair to say that the keenest form students had to have quite serious doubts about the possibility of his pulling that off.

That she could do it, and to do it in such scintillating fashion, says an enormous amount about Mr Freedman, but it also says that much more again about the mare herself. We have to remember that the Freedman establishment took over the training of Makybe Diva after her first Melbourne Cup win.

Sometimes you get very, very lucky, and when David Hall decided to leave for foreign climes, Lee got about as lucky as anybody gets in one lifetime.

The other bloke who got lucky was that genius jockey, Glen Boss. Obviously Makybe Diva works with Glen as a team. She has a reputation of being a little bit difficult, something of a prima donna. One would argue that she has every right to do whatever she wishes to do!

However, the Boss/Diva combination has proved invincible. There have been cases in the past where a lucky jockey has got a very good horse, but in this case it was a situation where two unmatchables found each other.

Glen Boss was riding Group winners all over the place. He'd still be very comfortably off, thank you, without the wonderful mare, and yet as soon as you saw him slip into the saddle, there was something quite magical, a blending of greats. They looked good, didn't they?

FACTS NOBODY CAN DENY

So we have a whole lot of facts that we can't get away from, even if we wanted to (I can't figure any reason to try, but there is always somebody who is looking for a way of knocking tall poppies off their pedestals). There simply has not been a stayer in the history of our horse racing which has performed anything like the feats that Makybe Diva has performed.

You have to wonder, had she won the 2004 Caulfield Cup, if she could have gone on and done it all. We have to remember that she only lost it by an eyelash. OK, half a head. Stretch your right arm out. It's less than that. And she lost it to the VRC Derby winner, giving him 1.5kg. If she'd won, you have to assume she'd have got another maybe 1.5kg for that year's Melbourne Cup. Yes, but something I've noticed and you probably have too, is that it doesn't seem to matter if you whack another kilo or two on her: she still gives them a bath.

Let's speculate that she was going to stay in training for the 2006 Cup. What kind of weight would you give her? Seriously, you have to get up around the 58.5 or 59kg mark, wouldn't you? But of course, in Australian terms, she'd be eight years old, and eight-year-olds don't win the Melbourne Cup. Bred to northern timing, she would technically still be a seven-year-old. They do win Melbourne Cups.

So there you are. Remember Two Shillelagh O'Sullivan. It isn't going to happen, but it's lovely to speculate about.

When you look at the statistics available to you, it's particularly interesting, I think, to notice that Makybe Diva came out of the woodwork, so to speak, in the winter months of 2003. It was there that some of us noted her potential and grabbed the first of the early markets.

She was more a speculative bet at that time, as anything around 50 to 1 is bound to be. But she was just given those couple of "try out" runs in the winter. I've always been a great fan of following those promising horses through to the spring. Last year, 2004, two of those three ran Melbourne Cup placings. There are plenty of incidences that can be cited, following this kind of concept.

So you can say any number of things without getting into any kind of battle, but can you unequivocally say that she is the greatest stayer Australia has ever seen? Well, I can. I can't find any record of any stayer at any time in this country that comes remotely close to what this great mare has done.

OF COURSE SHE'S NUMBER ONE!

If you want to compare champions, it's true that when they come from different eras, you are up against all kinds of insurmountable difficulties.

The only genuine criteria you can employ, however, to then try to rank the champions, has to be a set that is totally unemotional and is based on cold, hard facts. The cold hard facts are these, ignoring any argument to do with the sex of the animals:

THE COLD, HARD FACTS

Only one horse has won three Melbourne Cups.

A small handful of horses have won the Cox Plate and the Melbourne Cup in the same year.

Two horses in history have won the Sydney Cup and the Melbourne Cup in the same year.

A small handful of horses the BMW or equivalent, and the Melbourne Cup in the same year.

No horse other than Makybe Diva has, to my knowledge, won the BMW, the Sydney Cup, the Cox Plate, the Melbourne Cup (well, three actually!!!), the
Australian Cup, and God knows what else.

Let's face it: what you do have to do to be acclaimed the greatest staying racehorse that this country has ever seen? Possibly the one thing that is missing is a three-year-old classic. She wasn't ready. She made up for it in spades.

To be brutally honest, I never thought in my lifetime of racing and writing, that I would write this kind of article, because I've always restrained my impulses to go "greatest", never quite sure of what is going to turn up around the corner. It seems to me that on just this one occasion, something different is called for. What is called for is a total acclaim of the best staying racehorse this country has ever seen.

By The Optimist

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