How Makybe Diva’s first start at Benalla would go on to change Australian racing history

As the Melbourne Cup Carnival rolls around, Makybe Diva’s owner Tony Santic tells all – including the moment he knew the Diva would be destined for her third Melbourne Cup win.

Makybe Diva first past the post in 2003.

Before there was Winx, before Black Caviar, the undisputed queen of the Australian turf was Makybe Diva.

Twenty years ago the Diva won the first of her unprecedented three consecutive wins in the Melbourne Cup.

She did not rewrite racing history, she wrote her own unique chapter in the annals of Australian sport and was an equine rock star.

People dressed in her racing colours at the track, wore Makybe ‘superhero’ masks and hats, made banners and carried flags celebrating her.

As the big mare became a star during those heady years of 2003, 2004 and 2005, so too did her owner, Tony Santic.

Famous for his flowing mullet, Santic made his fortune catching and exporting tuna from his base in Port Lincoln in South Australia.

As his business grew he decided to indulge in his love of horses.

An early purchase in England was a mare in foal; that foal would go on to become Makybe Diva.

Two decades on from her 2003 Melbourne Cup win I caught up with Santic and Makybe Diva at Santic’s Makybe Stud near Geelong, where the Diva is enjoying a well earned retirement, to look back on the ride of a lifetime.

Glen Boss and Tony Santic at Flemington. Picture: Kelly Barnes

FB: Tony, how did you go from tuna to thoroughbreds?

TS: As a kid when I was tuna fishing we had Kevin Williams (marine biologist) on board and he used to work for CSIRO. He was into the horses. I liked them, but couldn’t afford to have any at that stage. Me and a few mates had a few dogs (greyhounds) and we used to play with them a bit at Twinkletoes Park in Port Lincoln, that is what we called it. We had a few wins there and some fun. A few years after that (in 1997) I thought I’ll buy one racehorse. So I went to Queensland to buy one and came back with three.

FB: You bought Makybe Diva’s mum Tugela in London in 1998 for when she was in foal with the filly that would become Makybe.

TS: I bought her mum in foal and a few other mares in foal. I think we sold some, but we never got anything for them. When Makybe went as a weanling to be sold at Tattersalls (Newmarket sale in England in 1999) we had a reserve on her, I think it was 30,000 pounds. The story goes someone bid 18,000 pounds and another story goes there was not a bid, so I don’t know, but she did not meet the reserve so I said to John Foote (his UK bloodstock agent), we will bring her home. So we got all the mares we had then and brought them all back here to Australia.

FB: Makybe is famously named after some of your former employees.

TS: There were five ladies working for me (in Port Lincoln) – they have all gone their separate ways and are working elsewhere now – and I gave them the job of naming the horses. Makybe Diva was the first one they named and they did it fantastically, two letters from each of their first names. They could not have done it better.

FB: How long until you realised you had a pretty smart horse in the making?

TS: She went to a farm in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales when she got to Australia and then later on we gave her to David Hall to train, he had all my horses at that stage, and it was just a matter of time, time and time. She had her first start at Benalla (in 2002) and ran fourth and won her next six in a row culminating with the Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Flemington in November 2002. That meant that she had earned a place in the Melbourne Cup the following year.

The Diva came from the clouds to win her first Cup in 2003.

FB: So your Melbourne Cup dream started well before Makybe won her first Cup in 2003?

TS: Winning the Queen Elizabeth and earning a start in the Cup for 2003, I mean that is when we won our first Cup. No one thinks about winning a Melbourne Cup at all, we were jumping for joy that we were in the Cup the next year. We celebrated like we had won the Melbourne Cup. I have had some friends who have had runners in the Cup and I said enjoy the moment because win, lose or draw there is no better moment, you are in the Melbourne Cup. Everyone would love to have a runner at some stage in the Melbourne Cup.

FB: Her first Melbourne Cup in 2003, what are your memories?

TS: It was really nail biting. We thought she had a chance, but just to be there we were happy. When she won we were ecstatic, but you don’t have enough time to celebrate with your friends, you have cameras in your face and microphones everywhere. We had a ball. You just won the Melbourne Cup, it is a dream come true.

FB: What about her second Cup in 2004?

TS: She went to Lee Freedman (after her original trainer David Hall moved to Hong Kong) and he liked the horse, but in his wildest dreams he did not think he was going to win the second one. It took a while for him to figure out what she was. It was not until she ran second in the Caulfield Cup, to Elvstroem, that Lee said ‘nothing is going to beat her the Melbourne Cup’. We had a bog track on Cup Day. I was getting phone calls all morning from Lincoln saying it is coming, it is raining, and sure enough it came just before the race and she loved it.

FB: Going back to the Caulfield Cup, did you back her that day?

TS: I always thought she was going to win and I backed her accordingly, straight out, I’ll never forget, at the juicy odds of 14-1.

FB: And she was beaten by a nose. How much would have won if she had got past the post first.

TS: A couple of cars, I think, anyway …..

FB: She was world class, but the world never got to see her at her best in her limited international runs.

TS: We took her to Japan (in April/May 2005 she ran in the April Stakes and the Tenno Sho/Emperor’s Cup over 3200m) and she had two runs and she did not do any good. The tracks were really hard. I think Lee would have preferred we went to France for the Arc de Triomphe, but me selling tuna to Japan, if she had won the Tenno Sho it would have been good for business. She was pretty sore after the race. We nearly retired her after the Tenno Sho, but then she came back and won first up over 1400m at Caulfield.

The first of an incredible trifecta.

FB: Makybe Diva won a dramatic Cox Plate in 2005 on her way to the Cup.

TS: She just did not pull up well after the Cox Plate, she was a bit distraught for some reason. With the Melbourne Cup just around the corner, at one stage, we thought we might miss out on giving her a chance at winning the three. A few days later Bossy (Glen Boss, who rode Makybe in the three Melbourne Cup wins) comes down to Lee’s place (Markdel at Fingal) and they trial her and she just went enormous. The guy at the clock tower could not believe what he was seeing, she went past this pretty good horse over 200m and she was headed to the Melbourne Cup.

FB: The interest in whether she would or wouldn’t attempt her ‘three-peat’ in the Cup was crazy.

TS: I have never seen so much media coverage in all my life, it did not matter where you were, they (cameras) were everywhere. They were next door at the golf club, on the golf course, in golf buggies, driving around trying to sneak up and see what they were doing with Makybe. At that crucial stage everyone wanted to know what was happening, no more so than me, Lee and Bossy.

FB: And so Melbourne Cup Day 2005 arrives and history beckons.

TS: I think the last one Cup win would be the best of her three wins because she did it with such ease and straight after the race, well, she had nothing more to prove so that is why we retired her on the spot. She was a ball of health and if I raced her on she might have won a few more races, but what if something had happened to her? I would have felt terrible, so it was the right move. Lee was here (at Makybe Stud) a couple of months later and she was in a 200 acre paddock with about seven or eight mares running around and she’s out in front with a cloud of dust behind her. Lee watched her and turned to me and said ‘I think we have made a mistake’ and I said, ‘No, she is alright, we did the right thing’.

FB: Was there a sense of relief after she won the third Cup?

TS: There was a relief that it was over and that she pulled up okay. The amount of people that came up and congratulated me on her wins in the days, weeks and months later, it was amazing. She changed my life. Winning the Melbourne Cup does change people’s lives.

Tony Santic, Glen Boss and trainer David Hall celebrate their first of three. Picture: Julian Smith

FB: Any moments that stand out?

TS: The last year we went to Lincoln (during Makybe’s racing career), I took Lee out fishing and we set a net out to get some whiting. Lee grabbed hold of the net to pull it up and arse up he went into the water. We got him out and he blew harder than one of those seals.

FB: What about memorable celebrations?

TS: After the last Cup we flew back to Lincoln on Rex airlines and had the whole plane full with trainers, family, friends and had champagne flowing all the way. When we arrived there must have been 1000 people waiting for us at the airport. It is amazing what a horse can do.

I’ve had the ambassador for Croatia ring and when I went back to Croatia the media were all over me. It is amazing how many people took notice of what Makybe did. You’d have to pinch yourself every time you got up, it was an interesting four years, I can tell you.

FB: There is a bit of magic around the Melbourne Cup, people are drawn to the trophy.

TS: In 2005 we came back one night to Melbourne from a function at the farm and someone said ‘we need another drink’, don’t ask me why. We had the three Melbourne Cups and the Cox Plate in the limo. We went to the Cricketers Arms in Port Melbourne and there was hardly anyone there. We rock in with three Cups and the Cox Plate and the next minute I am behind the bar pouring. In one cup there is beer, in another there is Frangelico and the other one is full of champagne and the plate has gone out to the kitchen and comes back with pizza on it. There was hardly anyone in the pub, but within half an hour you could not get in, it was chock-a-block. They were coming from everywhere. Greg Miles got on the phone to the publican and said ‘you better get down here’.

FB: Did you feel like you were sharing your champion with the rest of Australia?

TS: Over the last couple of years of her racing she totally became the people’s horse and when she won the BMW Stakes in Sydney (in 2005) she got a standing ovation and people just went mad. It just went on from there. There were a lot of followers including a young lady who was named after her. She comes around and visits her still. She was at the farm a couple of months ago. There are actually two or three people named Makybe after her. You get letters for her. So many people still want to know about her and love her.

FB: Few horses have a statue made of them.

TS: She has a couple actually. There is one at Port Lincoln, one at Flemington and a statue at the farm. The whole of Port Lincoln supported her and enjoyed her success. We had street parades after the Melbourne Cup wins. She changed a lot of things for Port Lincoln, no different to Dean Lukin when he won gold for Australia in weightlifting at the Olympics. A lot of people come there to have their photo taken with the statue and to sit on her. She gives them a lot of joy and it is lovely to see.

FB: Are you still working on your tuna boats?

TS: Last year was the first year I did not go out fishing. We are scaling down a bit now.

I love it, it is only six weeks or something, and it is something I enjoy.

We catch the wild tuna, tow them in, put them in cages/pods and feed them for five or six months and then freeze them and export them to Japan. I used to skipper the boat, Makybe BJ, the B being for Bianca and the J for Joseph (his children).

That was my life. The tuna enabled me to buy the likes of Makybe and all the other horses I had, good and bad.

FB: Makybe is living a life of leisure now.

TS: We retired her a few years ago from breeding. She was queen of the track and now she is queen of Makybe. She has not had a lot of luck with her foals, but I suppose she can’t be a champion and create champions. Her first foal was by Galileo and sold for $1.5m and the next one went for $1.25m. Most mares who have been champions have not done too well in the breeding barn. She has one (daughter) still in work, Terrific Tonka. I named her after my mum. She is with (trainer) Clarry Conners in Sydney.

FB: I saw Makybe at Flemington on Makybe Diva Stakes Day this year. She still loves a crowd.

TS: When we went to Flemington a couple of years ago during Covid and walked through the mounting yard, she knew where she was, but she was looking up at the stands and there was no one there. She was wondering what the hell was going on. The last time she had been there 100,000 people were cheering for her. She does love a crowd and it was good to take her back to Flemington on Makybe Day (in September). Bossy said to me ‘I think she wants me to ride her’. Her ears were pricked and she was ready to go.

FB: Could you dare to dream of finding another horse even half as good as Makybe?

TS: I have been trying for the last 20 years and it has been pretty damn hard. One of the first times I bought a horse it turned out to be a champion. Maybe I should have retired then, but I retired Makybe. I would have been miles in front (laughs), but I have had plenty of good times. I am pretty proud she is still healthy and happy and hopefully she is like that for many, many years to come.