Somedays the seemingly impossible can become the merely improbable and what better day for that to happen than on Melbourne Cup day – particularly if you are the owner, trainer or rider of one of the most unlikely winners in history, Knights Choice.
The 100-1 chance Prince of Penzance, who carried Michelle Payne into the record books when he landed Australia’s greatest race in 2015, might have gone off at longer odds than Knight’s Choice but somehow his triumph did not seem quite the surprise that the latter’s did.
While purists claim that now Everest Day in Sydney has surpassed anything in the Victorian spring carnival as Australia’s highest quality race day, nothing has replaced the Cup for drama, history and the compelling nature of the race’s narrative.
Hardly surprising, really, given that the race has been going since the 1860s and has been the prime creator of racing myth and legend – a storyline that Knights Choice’s exploits on a warm and sunny spring day ensure he will now be woven into.
Where to start. Well, at $91 dollars he was fractionally shorter in the market than Prince of Penzance, but those two aside no horse had won at a similar price since Old Rowley’s war time triumph in 1940.
Trainer Sheila Laxon was enjoying her second win in the event, having scored in 2001 with Ethereal (who had also landed the Caulfield Cup) while her and her partner, John Symons (with whom she trains) prepared the five year old at Macedon Lodge, a stable synonymous in recent years with Cup victories – albeit with horses in Lloyd Williams colours.
And the biggest fairytale of all belongs to the rider, Robbie Dolan, who landed the prize on his first ever Cup ride.
The Irishman, from Kildare Town, the heartland of Irish racing, came to Australia eight years ago to try to forge a career as a jockey.
These days he has enjoyed more public attention as the singing jockey for his appearances on The Voice, and in the post race ebullience he admitted that there had been times when his riding career had been stalling that he had briefly considered abandoning it in favour of a musical switch.
But, he said, that desire had quickly faded because, quite simply, he loved horses too much.
On form Knight’s Choice hardly inspired confidence given he had had four runs this spring without troubling the judge, unplaced efforts at group 1 level in the Underwood Stakes, Turnbull Stakes and Caulfield Cup followed by a fifth placed finish in the group 3 Bendigo Cup.
But Symons made clear in the post race press conference that those results had not dimmed the confidence behind the horse even though his connections had turned down an offer of $2.3 million for the galloper earlier in his career and could be forgiven for rueing that decision.
Those uninspiring duck eggs in the form guide could be put down to one factor, Symons said – the soft tracks throughout the Victorian spring: his horse, he had always thought, would be far better suited once he got on to a firmer track – as he showed on a faster surface at Flemington when he finished fast and late to just beat the equally fast finishing Japanese raider Warp Speed, with Jamie Kah’s mount Okita Sushi third, Zarzodi fourth and Absurde, in fifth position, the first home of Willie Mullins two runners.
Kinght’s Choice’s success is also one that will have breeding buffs scratching their heads as he is by that fast sprinter Extreme Choice out of a More Than Ready mare – hardly a pedigree that screams out for 3200 metres.
In fact, Symons confessed that for much of his career he believed Knight’s Choice would be a sprinter miler: it was only after he had been tried over a trip in Queensland during the winter, when he finished second to Fawkner Park in the Q22, that Symons felt he might have a Melbourne Cup horse.
”We went down that path (1600 metres) ….but we got it wrong. We realised after two runs in Sydney (last spring) that we had a stayer on our hands. And the only bad races he has run are on wet tracks. On wet tracks he is a dead set duffer.”
Laxon said that she too was confident despite the lack of recent success as she knew her galloper would stay but he had an asset few distance horses possess – the ability to sprint quickly at the end of a marathon trip.
And of course, she admitted, success was written into her fate given that her daughter had given her that day a pendant with hair from the mane of her superstar mare Ethereal.
As for Dolan – well, he certainly has no regrets about moving down under.
”I needed a change, I was young and immature, I needed to go somewhere to expand my experience and I planned on coming for a year. I’ve been here eight years now and I have won a Melbourne Cup. It’s such a great country to live in….and if you are willing to work hard you will be rewarded.”