Black Caviar makes it 19 consecutive wins
- by:Adrian Dunn
- From:Herald Sun
- February 18, 2012 4:52PM
NINETY one years after the mark was last set, Black Caviar today joined Desert Gold and Gloaming as the Australasian record holder for consecutive wins.
Black Caviar stretched her unbeaten winning sequence to 19 when she captured the $750,000 Group 1 Lightning Stakes at Flemington, reported the Herald Sun.
She showed all her world champion qualities as she rallied to defeat Hay List, who gave Black Caviar the fight of her life.
Luke Nolen was forced for the first time in her past six starts to wave the whip, but Black Caviar responded magnificently to the challenge.
In fact, after answering the challenge, Black Caviar drew clear to win comfortably.
Black Caviar, $1.10, scored by one and three-quarter lengths from Hay List, $12, with two lengths to Buffering, $71, third.
Enhancing one of her greatest victories was that Black Caviar clocked 55.53, just 0.003 seconds outside Special’s course record.
The five-year-old returned to a thunderous reception from a crowd estimated at more than 20,000 as her latest success took her prizemoney total past the $5 million mark.
It was her second successive Lightning Stakes over 1000 metres and one week after winning the CF Orr Stakes over 1400 metres.
Desert Gold, which raced both in New Zealand and Australia, took his mark of 19 successive races in 1916 while Gloaming, which also raced both sides of the Tasman, matched that mark in 1921.
Trainer Peter Moody flagged that Black Caviar is unlikely to run in Saturday’s Futurity Stakes at Caulfield.
Significantly, Black Caviar’s success opened up the possibility of a $1 million bonus payout later in the year.
The Lightning Stakes is a leg of the Global Sprint Challenge and if a horse can win three legs of the GSC in three different countries in the same year they are eligible to collect the bonus.
Black Caviar could contest the Golden Shaheen in Dubai on March 31 while the Diamond Jubilee on the final day of the Royal Ascot on June 23 is already locked in.
Both legs of the Global Sprint Challenge.
Black Caviar strikes twice in Lightning
Updated February 18, 2012 16:48:54
World champion Black Caviar has bolted away with her second Lightning Stakes (1,000m) at Flemington, scoring the 19th win of her unconquered career.
The victory was Black Caviar’s ninth at Group One level and equals the Australasian record for consecutive wins set by Gloaming (1919-21) and Desert Gold (1915-17).
All being well, Black Caviar will be at Caulfield next Saturday aiming to make the record her own with victory 20 in the Futurity Stakes (1,400m).
Such was the ease of her win in last Saturday’s Orr Stakes that trainer Peter Moody asked his mare to back up within a week – making an unorthodox drop from 1,400m to Saturday’s straight 1,000m.
It was a challenge that would have brought most horses undone, but not a freak like Black Caviar.
And there was not a bunch of easy-beats behind her – among them Group One winners including Hay List and Lone Rock.
If she runs in the Futurity, Moody has ruled out Black Caviar defending her Newmarket Handicap crown on March 10.
Her connections are giving serious consideration to running in the rich Golden Shaheen (1,200m) in Dubai on World Cup night en route to Royal Ascot in June.
In the family
In the day’s first race, Black Caviar’s younger brother All Too Hard showed talent runs in the family, winning the Listed Talindert Stakes (1,100m) on debut.
All Too Hard, a $1.025 million yearling purchase, showed his ability in a recent jumpout and was well backed before saluting comfortably by 1-1/2 lengths.
“There’s always a fair bit of pressure on the horse and everyone is looking at him,” co-trainer Wayne Hawkes said.
But he said the stable would not be running All Too Hard in next week’s Blue Diamond Stakes.
“He’s not the sort of horse to be backing up week to week,” he said.
“[We're not sure] whether we go back to Sydney now with races like the Sires and the Champagne.”
Warrior princess Black Caviar rises off the mat
- by:Matt Stewart
- From:Sunday Herald Sun
- February 19, 2012 12:00am
Black Caviar answers the challenge to win the Lightning Stakes, her 19th win in a row. Picture: Wayne LudbeySource: Herald Sun
IT was different this time.
Afterwards, Luke Nolen’s voice trembled, as did Gary Wilkie’s.
For a year at least, with everything so easy, with a streak that had become a case of chalking them up, one after another, there had been adulation and relief but no trembles.
This time, after a string of wins as hollow as they had been easy, the girl had gone to war; for everyone, including part-owners such as Wilkie, but mostly for Nolen.
Nolen was in the trenches with Black Caviar. He felt her pain.
At the 400m in the Lightning Stakes, Hay List matched Black Caviar stride for stride. At the 300m, he had her. He looked bold, she looked at a loss.
Damien Oliver watched the race from under the clock-tower. At 300m out, he let out a disbelieving, “Hang on!”.
Others said or thought something similar.
It had been a strange day. Hot-pots had been beaten in the two previous races. Maybe it was one of those days when champions, maybe immortals, were being skittled.
Hay List’s jockey, Glyn Schofield, would say later he had Black Caviar beaten, no risk.
Nolen confided to Schofield the same sentiment; that the bridesmaid had the bride on the canvas.
The margin was a lie, a distortion of what had happened seconds earlier.
Black Caviar won by 1 3/4 lengths.
Yesterday Black Caviar went within three hundreds of a second of bettering Special’s long-standing 1000m record of 55.5secs.
Special smashed the clock on a tarmac, Black Caviar went close on a dead track with give.
The clock reflected the struggle.
Nolen’s emotional post-race words were more a tribute, a salute, than an appraisal.
“She touched me today,” Nolen said.
“The chips were down, she showed a lot of courage. I’ve just got to take my hat off to that mare, she’s just bloody wonderful.”
There were mutterings after the Orr Stakes a week ago, her first test at 1400m, that Black Caviar raced in a bubble, that her streak was so important to racing no one, not even the least sentimental of jockeys, was game enough to enter her revered space.
Well, Hay List, back on the scene, barged into that space yesterday, took her to war and was again defeated.
“She’s probably been a bit of a protected species because of the way she’s been winning her races but it was great to see when the chips were down how much courage she had,” Nolen said.
Peter Moody, perhaps more lathered than usual, had taken Black Caviar into risky territory.
For everyone who’d commended Moody’s releasing of the shackles, there were as many who had feared he had entered a zone he could easily have dodged.
He always thought she’d win but he also knew he’d be blamed, at least by some, if she didn’t.
The truth, of course, is that racing’s fortunes never revolve around one horse but the perception was that if she’d gone under, the sport, at least its resurgence, would have crashed with her.
But the streak, and the sport, are still intact.
Wilkie shook when he delivered his acceptance speech. His apologised for being “a tad emotional”.
If the quivering voices tell another story, it might be that this odyssey is almost over.
Black Caviar will now not run three weeks in a row at Caulfield next week.
Dubai is probably 50-50, Ascot the shimmering goal.
Black Caviar is not sound and has won 19 straight and also a war.
Her remaining battles might be fought on foreign shores.
Black Caviar fights off Hay List down the Flemington straight in the Lightning Stakes. Picture: Alex CoppelSource: Herald Sun
AS the Lightning Stakes field charged inside the final 350m, jockey Glyn Schofield thought Hay List was about to burst the Black Caviar bubble.
Schofield saw Luke Nolen urge along Black Caviar.
Finally, Schofield believed Hay List had the better of his nemesis.
And Nolen confided to him as the horses were pulling up after a Lightning Stakes for the ages that Hay List had “given me the biggest scare of my life”.
He told Schofield his heart was racing as the two sprinting goliaths squared off like prizefighters.
Schofield told his rival he thought he had Black Caviar beaten.
“She was gone, she was gone,” he said. “Her race fitness beat us today; it was the only thing that beat us.
“Luke went for his first and then I went for mine. We went head-for-head for about a furlong (200m) and neither of us was giving an inch.
Schofield said it wasn’t until inside the final 200m that Black Caviar gained the ascendancy and when the mare put a length on him inside the last 100m that he eased up on Hay List.
Trainer Peter Moody joked with Schofield that he must have become excited to see Black Caviar seemingly under pressure.
“You got excited, didn’t you? You thought, ‘I might have her’. He (Nolen) is giving her a shake and I haven’t moved,” Moody said with a laugh.
“Your guy went sensationally. It was the best he’s ever looked; he’s just run into an equine freak.”
Schofield said it was the best Hay List had raced, but for the third time in a Group 1 race he was relegated by Black Caviar to the runner-up stall.
He the time run – 55.53sec, 0.03secs outside the track record set by Special in winning the 1988 Lightning Stakes – indicated the champion qualities of the two horses.
“She came home her last three (600m) in 31.82secs. You can’t go any quicker than that unless you are dropped down a cliff,” Schofield said.
“It was a great race; she just showed how strong she is. I’m happy how my horse raced.
“It was a fantastic effort; it’s a pity that she’s in his backyard.”
