There was worse to come for the New Zealand-trained horses when Auckland and New Zealand Cup winner Mahrajaan dropped out to finish a long last, clearly nowhere near his form here for trainers Shaune Ritchie and Colm Murray.
“I think it was a 3200m race too far for him after two of them he won back home this season,” said Ritchie.
“There was a little bit more give in the track that he likes and he didn’t get any cover but they are only minor excuses. I just think he is tired.”
But while the Kiwi trainers were having no luck at Randwick it was a huge successful day for one of New Zealand biggest racing operations Cambridge Stud and owners Brendan and Jo Lindsay and later Trelawney Stud who bred unbelievable Queen Elizabeth II Stakes winner Pride Of Jenni.
The Lindsays own Australian 1000 Guineas winner Joliestar who returned with a brilliant win in the A$1million Arrowfield Sprint.
She beat plenty of high-class male three-year-olds fresh up in the Group 1 and added to her classic win in the spring and being by Zoustar she is one of the most valuable fillies in Australia.
It was another huge result for the Lindsays and Cambridge Stud in the Sydney Cup when their stallion Almanzor sired not only the winner Circle Of Fire, who looks a genuine Melbourne Cup horse, but also second placed Athabascan giving him a Group 1 quinella.
Earlier in the day another son of Almanzor in unbeaten juvenile Nucleozor won the Listed Welcome Stakes at Riccarton giving Almanzor the rarest of black type doubles, winners over 1000m and 3200m on the same afternoon.
But just when it looked they couldn’t be topped for honours on the day Waikato-bred mare Pride Of Jenni stunned the racing world with her performance in the A$5million Queen Elizabeth II Stakes.
Pride Of Jenni took off soon after the start and at one stage was over 100m in front of some of her rivals, unheard of in a Group 1 2000m race.
Her exact margin was hard to gauge at the 600m mark as television cameras struggled to keep her and the rest of the field in the same shot.
While she was understandably getting tired late she still thrashed a world class mare in Via Sistina and multi-million earners Mr Brightside and Cascadian by six-and-a-half lengths.
While Pride Of Jenni didn’t break any records, with her 2:2.02 time nothing extraordinary, her sustained speed between the 1600m and 600m got her rivals, human and equine, out of their comfort zones and when she should have been stopping she kept going.
She was bred by Trelawney Stud and sold for A$100,000 in Sydney and is now the winner of A$8.6million and may have even done enough with that jaw-dropping win to secure herself the Australian Horse of the Year title.
Whether that happens or not, it was a win nobody who saw will ever forget.
Later in the card New Zealand-owned mare Atishu just missed winning the Group 1 Queen of the Turf as she flew late but lost a photo finish to Zougotcha.
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.
