Race or retire? It’s a numbers game in this year’s Golden Eagle at Rosehill
When it comes to the financial firepower of a horse, maths rules. A good example is Pierro, who commands a $99,000 service fee and has so far sired more than 700 foals.
In horse racing, numeracy matters more than literacy. Almost 12 months ago the Melbourne Cup was won by a mare named Verry Elleegant. When it comes to the financial firepower of a horse, maths rules. A good example is the star colt Pierro, rated the world’s best three-year-old sprinter in 2013
A year earlier, when still a baby, he was undefeated in six starts, including the juvenile triple crown: the Golden Slipper (1200m), Sires Produce Stakes (1400m) and Champagne Stakes (1600m).
Pierro, trained by Gai Waterhouse, raced 14 times for 11 wins, three placings and $4.5m in earnings. That might sound like a good return on investment, but it’s chicken feed compared with what happened next.
As he was approaching the peak of his powers, able to take on any horse in the world, Pierro was retired at age three and sold to stud for a reported $40m.
He has since sired six Group 1 winners. One of his newest babies is a filly delivered early this month by the champion race mare Winx, her first live foal. Winx and Pierro: that’s a match made in equine heaven.
Pierro’s present service fee is $99,000. To date he has sired more than 700 foals and as he’s only 12 there are lots more to come. You don’t need to be Pythagoras to work out the risk-reward ratio of race prize money versus stud fees.
(In an aside that might make Benny Hill laugh, Pierro’s main racetrack rival, a colt named All Too Hard, has also proven a huge success at stud.)
Yet not every horse is Pierro, and that’s part of the thinking behind the $10m Golden Eagle to be run this afternoon at Sydney’s Rosehill Gardens racecourse.
This race, now in its fourth year, was devised by Racing NSW boss Peter V’landys as part of his megabucks plan to put Sydney and Melbourne nose to nose during the Spring racing carnival.
Its prize purse makes it Australia’s second richest race after V’landys’s first brainchild, The Everest, which is worth $15m. The Melbourne Cup is worth $8m.
The Golden Eagle, run over 1500m, is only open to four-year-old horses. The idea is to keep crowd-pulling gallopers racing beyond their three-year-old season. And, as with the backroom negotiations to sort out which steeds will climb The Everest, the drama happens on and off the turf.
This year Racing NSW made an 11th-hour decision to increase the size of the field from 18 to 20, with four emergencies who will take their place in the event of scratchings.
This unprecedented expansion guaranteed that Frankie Dettori, the most flamboyant jockey in the world, would be a headline-grabbing part of the Golden Eagle. The UK-based Italian hoop has jetted in to ride Chris Waller’s English import Welwal, who was on the fringe of qualification when the field was limited to 18.
It will be Dettori’s Sydney debut. The 51-year-old has had 17 cracks at the Melbourne Cup since 1983 but the closest he has come is second in 1999 and 2015. And, speaking of breeding, his equally animated father, Gianfranco Detorri, did win a race at the track his son will ride at today: a jockeys invitation series at Rosehill in the late 1960s.
Dettori is such a presence that even the trainers of rival horses are excited at the prospect of seeing him. “Frankie is bigger than the whole country,” says Melbourne trainer Ciaron Maher. “I am sure he will put on a show.”
Maher, with his training partner Dave Eustace, has the pre-post favourite for the race, another English raider called Light Infantry. This horse brings his own pre-race drama as in his five starts to date on spacious tracks in England and France he has not had to negotiate a bend, as he will entering the home straight at Rosehill.
“Yes, he’s never been around a turn in his life,’’ says his Irish-born English jockey Jamie Spencer, who is no stranger to Australia. He admits this is a “quandary” but adds he believes the horse’s class will prevail.
The second favourites, at the time of writing, are the boom Kiwi galloper I Wish I Win and the exciting mare Chain of Lightning, each in the hands of Melbourne trainer Peter Moody.
The race winner will receive $5.25m, second $2m and third $1m. Even the horse than runs last picks up $10,000.
"She certainly proved she was a class above her opposition there yesterday."
— Racing.com (@Racing) October 16, 2022
Chain Of Lightning is putting together quite the record after taking out the Lexus Tristarc Stakes 🤩#TheWrappic.twitter.com/6OVFJwoXBs
In an important move, 10 per cent of the total purse – $1m – will be distributed to charities nominated by the owners of each horse. Another $100,000 goes into the Equine Welfare Fund.
The Golden Eagle is also a leg of the yet-to-be-won Golden Slam, which offers a $5m bonus to any horse who can win the Golden Slipper at two, the Golden Rose at three and the Golden Eagle at four.
None of today’s runners is in contention. The next horse who can be is the 2022 Golden Slipper winner, Fireburn, should she run in the 2023 Golden Rose.
For a race designed to keep colts and stallions racing rather than breeding, the Golden Eagle has an irony characteristic of the racing life.
Two of the winners to date – Kolding in 2019 and I’m Thunderstruck in 2021 – are geldings, so stud duties were never on their horizons.
The 2020 winner, Colette, is a mare. While a stallion can sire 100 babies a year, a mare can deliver only one, so there’s less urgency to pack them off to stud. Winx raced until she was seven.
Even so, V’landys’s plan, still in its early days, can be called a winner.
Again, the numbers do the talking. This year, a record 199 horses nominated for the race. A large crowd is expected today.
Kolding and I’m Thunderstruck are still racing and each has won at the highest level. Colette, now retired, went on the win a Group 1 race.
On October 22, I’m Thunderstruck ran second in the nation’s weight-for-age championship, the Cox Plate at Melbourne’s Moonee Valley.
The winner, Anamoe, heir apparent to Winx, is four, and a stallion. His connections have taken a gamble to keep him racing beyond three. An overseas campaign is being talked about. It will be interesting to see how long they wait before sending him to stud, where his value would be north of $100m.
Anamoe was nominated for the Golden Eagle, and what a drawcard he would have been. But his owners decided he would follow a different flight path.