Spine-tingling racing reminds us that sport is live and well

The favourites won the feature races at Randwick and Caulfield on a bittersweet weekend in turf, but the atmospheres were very different.

A crowd at Royal Randwick watch on as James McDonald rides Nature Strip to victory in The Everest Picture: Getty Images

Olympian Rohan Browning ­delivered The Everest to Royal Randwick. A gold medallist must have been unavailable. Matilda Moran sang the national anthem. Peter V’landys must have been ­unavailable. Nature Strip had a ­bizarrely calm disposition as the minutes ticked down to his thunderous sprint to the top of the mountain.

The atmosphere was electrifying. It wasn’t as though the seven-year-old gelding, built like a brick outhouse, had no cause to be spooked, and yet he serenely stared at the ground like he was an Olympic swimmer in a green room.

He was doing a Caeleb Dressel, keeping himself intentionally tranquil before exploding from the blocks when he had to. You could have sworn the four-legged athlete knew what he was about to do, knew it was The Everest, knew a race was coming up and that it would be on for young (Home ­Affairs) and old (Trekking).

Might he have known it was not the time to burn nervous ­energy? It really was odd. While Royal Randwick was building to a spine-tingling crescendo, Nature Strip just gazed at the ground, head bowed, breaths gentle, as though wearing Bose headphones and listening to Eminem psyche-up songs.

What a race. What a celebration of getting out and about. Janis Joplin reckoned freedom (day) was just another word for nothing left to lose but another rock star, Bruce McAvaney, summed it up even better.

“The beginning of the next phase of our lives,” he said as 10,000 revellers made the most of being unshackled. Party dresses and penguin suits. The clinking of champagne glasses.

What a sight and sound it was when Nature Strip hung on to win by a nostril. A reminder that live sport, and real life, is better than a Zoom with a view.

After The Everest’s grandstand finish for a grandstand that actually had people in it, the Caulfield Cup had a bit to live up to. Down in the ghost town of Melbourne, ­Incentivise pulled it off, albeit in a completely different manner to Nature Strip.

He romped home with the authority of Grant Hackett winning a 1500m freestyle. The silence of the non-existent crowd was deafening but 10,000 patrons will be on hand at Flemington when Incentivise, the Queensland bush battler who’s found his calling in life – I’m a racehorse! – tries to keep the Melbourne Cup for Australia.

He’s something special, and when he lines up against Ireland’s defending champion Twilight Payment on the first Tuesday of next month, he deserves to be supported as heartily as Australia’s cricketers on day one of the Ashes.

What a raw weekend for folks involved in the racing game. The Everest made you feel good to be alive. Incentivise filled you with awe and wonder.

But a sadness hung over Saturday that lingered into Sunday. Sir Dragonet was dead. Just like that. He was having a gallop at Moonee Valley on Saturday morning when a “catastrophic” injury did him in.

It was meant to be nothing more remarkable than a warm-up for the Cox Plate alongside his mates Zaaki and Verry Elleegant but the Moonee Valley Racing Club issued a short, sickening statement: “It is with great sadness to report that Cox Plate champion Sir Dragonet has been euthanised after tragically breaking down in a track gallop this morning.”

It could rip your heart to shreds. It brought to mind Kevin Costner’s words to an ailing horse in the opening scene of Yellowstone: “It’s not fair, this life. I know you deserve better. Best I can offer you is peace.”

But racing rolls on, and so does sport. What’s next?

The Cox Plate comes in to view. The T20 World Cup began in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday. Batters up. The WBBL keeps skipping along. If cricket is a funny old game, the World Cup is the funniest of tournaments. Players who have been in the UAE for the ­Indian Premier League are basically zig-zagging between hotels, switching shirts and going back to the same grounds to play for their countries. It’s the World Cup few Australians will see – most of our matches are in the not-funny timeslot of 1am.

Australia has never won the T20 World Cup. Odd. We’ve had some decent sloggers in our time. Aaron Finch’s side has been nothing if not remarkably consistent in recent campaigns.

The past five T20 series have been a reverse Incentivise for predictability. Versus England? Lost. Versus India? Lost. Versus New Zealand? Lost. Versus West Indies? Lost. Versus Bangladesh? Lost. Ability to win? Lost. I look at the team sheet and try to make sense of it all. Lost.

Minnows play from Monday. Australia does not feature until the Super 12 stage on Saturday. The funny old tournament has two groups of six teams. Group 1 is ­England, Australia, South Africa, West Indies, plus two qualifiers to be settled by the minnow-athon. Group 2 is India, Pakistan, New Zealand, Afghanistan and two minnows. Teams in each group play each other once. The top two teams from each qualify for semi-finals. The final will be at Dubai on November 15 … at 1am (AEDT).

Sport is on a nice little roll. The Everest and the Caulfield Cup lived up to expectations. Results followed the formguides, the favourites getting up. The World Cup seems impossible to predict. Australia’s T20 run has been so awful it seems nearly certain to run hot. Any team parading Pat Cummins, Steve Smith, Dave Warner, Glenn Maxwell, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood can run a decent race. They’ll enjoy being the underdogs, too. Underdog is just another word for nothing left to lose.