Horse Owners Melbourne Cup
As Melbourne Cup favourite Surprise Baby prepares to resume in Saturday’s Feehan Stakes, owner John Fiteni has laid bare why he made the call to sack Jordan Childs in favour of Craig Williams for big Melbourne spring assignments.
Melbourne Cup 2020 has added to the recent run of horse deaths in the race, with Anthony Van Dyck euthanised after breaking his leg in the run. Horses have had a tough time in The Race That Stops. Nov 03, 2020 Since this Talking Horses is going live just a few hours before the race that stops a nation, we had better have a look at the Melbourne Cup. Some very familiar names are at the top of the betting.
“When you have got a football team, you have got the senior players in the team and you have got the junior players,” Fiteni told Racenet.
“I just wanted a senior player.
“It’s nothing against Jordie at all.”
Childs was all class last month when he learned the ownership group of Brisbane couple Fiteni and Kathy Stewart had replaced him with Williams on the highly-rated Paul Preusker-trained stayer.
“I‘m not the first jockey to be taken off a horse and I won’t be the last jockey to get taken off a horse,” Childs said at the time.
“But it probably hurts that little bit more when you know how good the horse he is going and it‘s Australia’s biggest race (the Melbourne Cup).”
Melbourne Racing
As for Fiteni, his horse could be the rags to riches tale of the 2020 Melbourne Cup.
Surprise Baby is now a big name in Australian horse racing but he was a bargain basement buy when Fiteni saw the horse online and he plucked it from a New Zealand breeder for a meagre $5500 in 2017.
His spring assault is now hitting full throttle, with Williams ramping things up and giving Surprise Baby a track gallop in near zero temperatures at Horsham earlier this week.
Surprise Baby, which hasn’t started since finishing an eye-catching fifth in the 2019 Melbourne Cup, is the $9 Melbourne Cup favourite and the $2.80 favourite to make a winning return in Saturday’s Group 2 Feehan Stakes (1600m) at The Valley.
He task was made easier with the Feehan withdrawal of classy WA galloper Regal Power, who is heading home to Perth and is out of the spring with a lung infection.
The Feehan gives the winner a golden ticket into the Cox Plate and connections are keen to target it en route to a Melbourne Cup tilt.
Surprise Baby’s new jockey Craig Williams after riding Vow And Declare to win the 2019 Melbourne Cup.
So will Surprise Baby make a winning return with Williams (above), who won the 2019 Melbourne Cup on Vow And Declare, getting the job done in the saddle?
“We expect him to win first up,” Fiteni insisted.
“After that he will go straight to the Cox Plate and straight to the Melbourne Cup and there is a reason for all that — the handicappers can’t touch us.
“It’s been a plan right from the time he finished the last Melbourne Cup and we haven’t wavered off it.”
A Tab spokesman said Surprise Baby had been rock steady in the last several days in betting on the Feehan, his price rarely wavering from about the $3.10 mark and then he came in further with the scratching of Regal Power.
Some Cox Plate bets of interest on Surprise Baby are $400 at $26 (pre nominations) and $250 each way at $51 (pre nominations).
He is now on the $15 line of betting for the Cox Plate.
MORE RACING
| Shocking | |
|---|---|
| Sire | Street Cry (IRE) |
| Grandsire | Machiavellian (USA) |
| Dam | Maria Di Castiglia (GB) |
| Damsire | Danehill (USA) |
| Sex | Stallion |
| Foaled | 2005 |
| Country | Australia |
| Colour | Bay |
| Breeder | George & Felicity Fraser, Ilala Stud |
| Owner | Laurence Eales |
| Trainer | Mark Kavanagh |
| Record | 27: 7–6–2[1] |
| Earnings | $4,981,275[1][2] |
| Major wins | |
| Melbourne Cup (2009) Lexus Stakes (2009) Makybe Diva Stakes (2010) Australian Cup (2011) | |
| Awards | |
| Australian Champion Stayer (2009/2010)[3] | |
| Last updated on 7 June 2011 | |
Shocking is an Australian bred Thoroughbred racehorse, trained by Mark Kavanagh, who won the 149th Melbourne Cup on 3 November 2009 by three-quarters of a length.[4][5]
Pedigree[edit]
Shocking is by the outstanding sire, Street Cry (Ireland) out of Maria Di Castaglia by Danehill (USA). George Fraser purchased Maria di Castiglia (GB) while she was carrying Shocking in utero at a William Inglis bloodstock sale for $20,000. Fraser later sold the resulting foal, Shocking, at the 2007 Magic Millions Yearling Sale for $45,000 to a local horse broker. After being broken in, he was sold on to Laurence Eales for $64,000 in late 2007.[6] Laurence Eales also owns the 2009 Caulfield Stakes winner Whobegotyou, also by Street Cry.[7]
Racing record[edit]
At the time of winning the Melbourne Cup he was four years old and had qualified after winning the Lexus Stakes over 2,500 metres at Flemington on 31 October 2009. The Melbourne Cup was Shocking's 15th start. He defeated Crime Scene (ridden by Kerrin McEvoy) and Mourilyan (ridden by Glyn Schofield) who placed second and third respectively.[8] It was the first Melbourne Cup win for jockey Corey Brown, who placed second in the 2008 race in a photo finish, second in the 2002 race and dead-heated for third whilst riding Lahar in the 1999 Melbourne Cup.[8]
Shocking's 2010 autumn campaign was curtailed by an injury after two unplaced starts. Returning in the spring of 2010, he won second-up in the Group Two Makybe Diva Stakes over 1,600 metres, putting him into Melbourne Cup favouritism. He followed up with a luckless fourth in the Caulfield Cup and a 6th in the LKS MacKinnon Stakes. He was the second favourite for the Melbourne Cup on 2 November, behind dual Cox Plate and Mackinnon winner So You Think. In the autumn of 2011, Shocking again showed his liking for Flemington when winning the Australian Cup over 2,000 metres.
The Australian Cup win ended up being Shocking's final career start.
Stud career[edit]
Shocking went to stud at Rich Hill Stud in New Zealand for the 2011 season.
His winners include:
- Fanatic - 2016 New Zealand Oaks, 2018 Adelaide Cup
- Dragon Storm (Prize Lady) - 2020 New Zealand Cup
- Soleseifei - 2020 Wellington Cup
- Surprise Baby - 2019 Adelaide Cup
Horse Owners Melbourne Cup 2019
References[edit]
- ^ abShocking's racing record
- ^'Melbourne Cup Winner Shocking Retired to Stud'. Retrieved 10 June 2011.
- ^'Typhoon Tracy named Horse of the Year'. Thoroughbred Village. Retrieved 6 June 2011.
- ^'Shocking claims Melbourne Cup win'. BBC Sport. 3 November 2009. Retrieved 4 November 2009.
- ^2009 Melbourne Cup result
- ^Harvey, Virginia (12 November 2009). 'Alex stoked at Muswellbrook win'. The Land. Rural Press. p. 64.
- ^Cairns tiler's Shocking win in Melbourne Cup, The Cairns Post, 4 November 2009
- ^ abMark Kavanagh's Shocking wins Melbourne Cup, The Australian, 3 November 2009
Further reading[edit]
Horse Owners Melbourne Cup 2020
- Unattributed (1 January 2010). 'Sport quotes of 2009 – Part 2'. The Age. Australia. p. Sport section, p. 4. – Contains an interesting quote from Kevin Thomas, the Queensland horse broker who sold Shocking for $64,000 in late 2007.