What happened to the horse who stopped the race that stops a nation?

SHE held the 2000 Melbourne Cup up for 10 minutes, flatly refusing to race. What happened to the horse who stopped the race that stops a nation?

SHE didn’t win a Melbourne Cup, but she’s a frontrunner for the race’s most petulant performer. And she won the accolade without even going to the barriers.

Pravda became the horse that stopped the race that stops a nation back in 2000, when under the gaze of millions, she made it out of the track with the rest of the field, and then refused to walk another step.

Champion former New Zealand jockey Lance O’Sullivan still describes it as his most frustrating day in racing. Certainly it was the shortest race he ever rode.

Pravda was a 50-1 shot in the Cup in 2000 when she hit the brakes and stood stock-still near the winning post, and turned O’Sullivan from Melbourne Cup jockey to mystified passenger.

She stood, ears pricked, ignoring all efforts from him to cajole her into walking on. She wasn’t having a bar of it.

Digging in: Pravda bucks while clerks of the course try to take her to barriers. Picture: Peter Ward

He tried urging her with legs, voice, reins, then gave her a few desperate slaps with his whip. She kicked out once to show her displeasure, then resumed to her statue pose.

O’Sullivan got off to give the clerk of the course and his pony a crack at leading the mare in the right direction. She hit the brakes again. He tried to lead her himself. You suspect if he’d had a carrot and a stick, he’d have tried that too.

Finally, as the minutes ticked by, four minutes past the official Cup start time Pravda was scratched.

Something’s wrong with this picture: Disappointed jockey Lance O'Sullivan walks with brother and trainer Paul as Pravda’s tantrum continues. Picture: Craig Borrow

O’Sullivan unsaddled the mare, and began a long, lonely walk across the Flemington turf before a cheering crowd.

The race was won by Brew. Meanwhile, Pravda’s connections were probably searching for a cold one.

“I have never seen anything in my life like that,’’ trainer Paul O’Sullivan said in the aftermath.

“She just had an attack of nerves. When she got home she was as good as gold.”

Sixteen years on, the mare is still as good as gold.

Pregnant pause: Pravda, now aged 21, grazed at Spring Hill stud where she is due to foal soon. Supplied by Rich Hill Stud

At 21, petulant Pravda is now pregnant Pravda. She’s been a broodmare since she was retired in late 2001 after going amiss at a track gallop.

“Yes, she’s here, and she’s in really good health,” says Rich Hill Stud communications manager Karl Mihaljevich, from Matamata in New Zealand.

She has had several foals since retirement, including Group One winner Pravana. She’s currently in foal to a handsome grey, Reliable Man, and is ready to deliver.

“She’s a lovely mare to work with, lovely temperament … in the paddock. Just maybe not on Flemington racetrack,” Mihaljevich laughed.

Lance O’Sullivan hung up his silks a few years ago as New Zealand’s most successful jockey and these days is a trainer in New Zealand.

Sixteen years on, he can laugh — just — at Pravda’s antics in 2000.

The answer’s still no: Pravda still refusing to move. Picture: News Corp

“It was more frustrating than embarrassing,” he says, “and not just because she wouldn’t budge.

“The hardest thing for a jockey is to waste and I wasted to lose two kilograms to ride her, then flew from New Zealand on Cup morning,” he says ruefully.

“Unbeknown to me she did something similar before the Caulfield Cup. Chris Munce rode her and apparently before the race she just planted herself for five minutes.

“As we were walking out of the jockeys room on Cup Day, Chris said ‘be careful, she wouldn’t move when I got on her on Caulfield Cup day’.”

O’Sullivan had never ridden the mare before. Nor has he since. The eight-minute struggle, which felt like eight hours, was enough.

“I had 15,000 odd race rides, and that’s the only time it ever happened to me,” O’Sullivan says.

“I knew the game was lost when she refused to be led the other way down the track, off the side of a pony.

“She was usually a lovely quiet mare, she wasn’t a problem horse.

“You never bag a horse until it’s been dead for ten years, they say. Because they come back and make a liar of you. When she was retired the next year they found bone chips in her front legs.

“So maybe she wasn’t stubborn. Maybe she was smart.”

Legging it: Lance O'Sullivan returns to the mounting yard — sans Pravda. Picture: News Corp