Podcast: Glen Boss reflects on the three stars he has ridden to Cox Plate triumphs
Glen Boss won three Cox Plates with three different horses – but his ride on the brilliant So You Think was the most daring of all, which trainer Bart Cummings wasn’t thrilled about.
Sport
Don't miss out on the headlines from Sport. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Two champions and a tradesman.
That’s how the evergreen Glen Boss describes the three horses that have made him one of the greatest Cox Plate jockeys in the race’s history.
It says plenty for Makybe Diva and So You Think that the “bit of a tradesman” is a horse who matched the feats of a handful of greats in an astonishing season.
His name was Ocean Park and he dominated Australasian racing in 2012.
Boss told anyone who would listen to respect the young Kiwi horse who always found a way to win against boom opponents.
But respect isn’t romance: Ocean Park is well behind Makybe Diva and So You Think in Boss’s affections.
Like So You Think’s trainer, the late Bart Cummings, Boss is too wise to try to separate those two wonderful animals.
“Don’t compare champions,” Bart once said. “Enjoy them.”
It was after one of So You Think’s Cox Plate wins that the great trainer parried a question about his “best” horse by retorting that his many big winners were “all good friends of mine”.
Boss admires the aristocrat Makybe Diva and the film star So You Think equally, as if they are his children.
In his Cox Plate podcast he reminds us that when he led all the way (against Bart’s instructions) on So You Think to win the 2009 Cox Plate, the colt was not quite three years old.
It was only his fifth start. What a horse, what a training feat — and what an audacious ride.
When Boss dismounted that day, Cummings grunted, “Good thing you won.”
He meant it. When So You Think won the race the following year, Steve Arnold was steering.
But Boss didn’t hold Bart’s gruff attitude against the horse.
He has no doubt that So You Think’s two Cox Plates could easily have been followed by a third had he not been sold to race in Europe.
Even the connections of lucky 2011 winner Pinker Pinker would probably agree it’s unlikely their lovely mare could have beaten So You Think.
Such hypotheticals are pointless, but that has never stopped sports fans from arguing them.
If the greatest colt of his generation could have won three Cox Plates as a lightly raced five-year-old, there’s no reason why he could not have won again at six — beating Winx to a tally that will surely never be bested.
We’ll never know what So You Think might have done if he had stayed with the trainer who trained him perfectly.
In England and Ireland he lost his bloom under the spartan Aidan O’Brien regimen and still managed to win Group 1 races.
As he regained some form, he was hailed the greatest middle-distance horse in the world.
Australians and Kiwis already knew that because he had proved it in the cauldron of the Valley.
The same place that triple Melbourne Cup winner Makybe Diva franked her brilliance and stamina in 2005 with Boss, the trapeze artist of big-race jockeys.
Originally published as Podcast: Glen Boss reflects on the three stars he has ridden to Cox Plate triumphs