Another Melbourne Cup to take stock of

Another edition of the great race has been run and won, but 2023 Lexus Melbourne Cup day will be remembered for much more than what happened in the 3 minutes and 18 seconds that Without A Fight took to stamp his name in racing folklore.
Flemington was seen in it all its glory as blue skies and a crowd of 84,000-odd pushed back against threatening storm clouds until the very last race on the card. Thankfully all 23 Cup runners came out of the race with no significant soundness issues and the racing community was able release its collective breath.
Without A Fight had won the Caulfield Cup at his previous start and by adding the Melbourne Cup he became the first horse since the New Zealand-owned and trained Ethereal in 2001 to complete the double.
Melbourne jockey Mark Zahra was in the saddle for both wins on Without A Fight, but there was immense irony in his back-to-back Melbourne Cup wins after combining with Gold Trip 12 months earlier. Back in 2020, Zahra had won the Caulfield Cup on former New Zealand mare Verry Elleegant under an arrangement with trainer Chris Waller where he and Sydney-based James McDonald shared riding duties depending on which side of the NSW/Victorian border she was competing.
But when it came to the 2021 Melbourne Cup, McDonald snared the winning mount on Verry Elleegant while Zahra was marking time on the sideline for his part in the infamous Covid lockdown party at the residence of fellow jockey Jamie Kah.
Zahra’s redemption victory on Gold Trip in last year’s Melbourne Cup was sweet, and even more so this year’s Caulfield-Melbourne Cup double after he’d had to make the agonising decision whether to stay faithful to Gold Trip or his Caulfield Cup winner. Pulling the right rein is notoriously difficult for jockeys, but on this occasion Zahra nailed it while McDonald finished down the track on Gold Trip.
The Freedman family name has been associated with the Melbourne Cup for more than a century, back to when leading Victorian jockey Midge McLachlan rode a treble of winners from 1909 to 1917. In 1989 a training operation comprising McLachlan’s four great-grandsons, Lee, Anthony, Richard and Michael Freedman, prepared their first Melbourne Cup winner, the Shane Dye-ridden NZ-bred Tawriffic.
Subzero and Doriemus followed with wins in 1992 and 1995, and in 2004 and 2005 the Freedman brothers (with the most senior Lee’s name in the racebook) guided Makybe Diva to the second and third wins of her historic hat-trick after original trainer David Hall had relocated TO Hiong Kong.
Training partnerships have since been sanctioned – and in fact have become common-place – in Australian racing and for the past three years Freedman brother Anthony has trained with his son Sam.
The Mornington Peninsula-based stable took over the training of Without A Fight after his Australian debut for Englishman Simon Crisford in last year’s Melbourne Cup. He had won seven times up to Group Three in the United Kingdom, but was an abject failure in the Cup, crossing the line 13th and more than 20 lengths behind Gold Trip.
The gelding’s owner Sheikh Mohammed Obaid al Maktoum, a member of Dubai’s ruling family, decided to leave him in Australia, which is when the Freedmans entered the pictured. After a long spell that counted out autumn racing in Melbourne or Sydney, Without A Fight was sent to Brisbane where he won the Gr. 3 Lord Mayor’s Cup and Gr. 2 The Q22, ridden both times by Zahra.
That sealed plans for another Melbourne Cup preparation, but a daring one at that with just one start a month out from the Caulfield Cup, finishing sixth to Alligator Blood in the 1800m Underwood Stakes. The Caulfield Cup win – ironically in a photo-finish over the Crisford-trained West Wind Blows – proved the perfect platform for what was to be a totally dominant Melbourne Cup victory.
Without A Fight is the 24th Group One winner by Teofilo, one of the most successful shuttle stallions to divide his time between Darley’s Irish and Australian studs. A champion two-year-old son of Galileo, he shuttled to Australia for six season between 2009 and 2017 and in this part of the world sired a wide range of top grade performers that included Group One-winning sprinter-milers Happy Clapper, Kermadec and Palatino. His Northern Hemisphere list includes supreme stayers such as Royal Ascot Gold Cup winner Subjectivist and what is now a trio of Melbourne Cup winners beginning with Cross Counter in 2018 and Twilight Payment in 2020.
The best performed Kiwi-bred in what was again a very light Melbourne Cup representation was sixth placed Daqiansweet Junior (by Sweet Orange), but the NZ flag still flew prominently with three stakes wins on the Flemington undercard.
The Trent Busuttin/Natalie Young-trained Savabeel entire Forgot You made a successful comeback from a long injury layoff with victory in the Listed Furphy Plate, former South Island-trained three-year-old Warmonger scored a big win for Inglewood Stud sire Wear Decree with victory in a Listed age-group 1800m, and the Mark Walker-trained, Opie Bosson-ridden Skew Wiff completed a home-bred double for Savabeel and Waikato Stud in the Gr. 3 Hong Kong Jockey Club Stakes.
That return to form by the Gr. 1 Tarzino Trophy winner after a barrier mishap has set her up for a shot at the Gr. 1 Sir Rupert Clarke Stakes at Caulfield on Saturday week.
Elsewhere in the racing world on Tuesday, there was no shortage of milestones, and in a local context that centred on Pukekohe Park, where Lance Noble-trained horses carrying the gold and black colours of Cambridge Stud owners Brendan and Jo Lindsay won four races.
That quartet included Aquacade and Habana, two of the stars to emerge from Noble’s Karaka-based team last season and on Tuesday the respective winners of the Gr. 3 Balmerino Stakes and Listed Fulton Family Stakes.
Noble now has Group One targets to consider for the pair, with a decision pending whether to return to Pukekohe with last season’s Gr. 2 Avondale Cup winner Aquacade for the Gr. 3 Counties Cup at the end of this month or reserve her for the Gr. 1 Zabeel Classic, also at Pukekohe, on Boxing Day.
Habana, who won four of his seven starts last season and signed off with a second placing on unsuitable heavy ground in the Gr. 3 Manco Easter, has already been earmarked for the Gr. 1 TAB Classic (formerly Captain Cook Stakes) at Trentham in a month’s time.
Former South African jockey Warren Kennedy has been key to the Noble stable’s success and he partnered three of Tuesday’s winner including the feature pair. All up, Kennedy has won 20 races from 78 rides for Noble in the 13 months he has been in the country.
Another notable statistic is his record on the Pukekohe track, which after four wins on Tuesday now stands at 29 wins from 103 rides. The other fact is that Kennedy, who rides the unbeaten Crocetti in Saturday’s Gr. 1 Al Basti Equiworld New Zealand 2000 Guineas, is leading the jockey’s premiership with 43 wins.