Comment: Why Melbourne Cup champion Knight’s Choice is no certainty to win Queensland Horse of the Year honour

Melbourne Cup champion Knight’s Choice may be named Queensland Horse of the Year but two other contenders have claims, writes Ben Dorries.

Melbourne Cup winner Knight's Choice (left), Doomben Cup winner Antino (top right) and JJ Atkins winner Cool Archie are locked in a three-way battle for Queensland Horse Of The Year honours this season.

Queensland produced its first Melbourne Cup winner but there is a chance that not even the history-making feat of Knight’s Choice will be enough to clinch Horse of the Year honours in his own state.

When $91 bolter Knights’s Choice stunned the world to become the first Queensland-trained Melbourne Cup winner last November, he would have been hot favourite to become the Queensland Horse of the Year.

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The credentials of Knight’s Choice may still be impossible to ignore – it is the Melbourne Cup after all.

But Antino says hello.

Given the Horse of the Year is for the 2024/25 racing season, Antino’s astonishing 6½-length Group 1 Toorak Handicap romp last spring, with an out-of-the-box ride from Blake Shinn, counts towards voting.

So too do Antino’s two Group 1 placings in the Melbourne spring.

And recent in our minds is Antino’s devastating Group 1 Doomben Cup romp which was so authoritative that Tony Gollan’s star is now the $6 second pick for the Cox Plate and behind only Via Sistina in betting markets.

What did we just witness?! 🤯

KNIGHT'S CHOICE holds on to win the 2024 Lexus Melbourne Cup!

🎥 @wwos | #MelbourneCup | #MelbCupCarnivalpic.twitter.com/Ok2GKUTm0I

— Victoria Racing Club (@FlemingtonVRC) November 5, 2024

•Melbourne Cup win a Qld fairytale 163 years in the making

Antino also conjured an incredible Hollindale Stakes triumph on a bog track which didn’t seem to worry him or Shinn.

The other horse to consider in the Queensland Horse of the Year race is the new kid on the block Cool Archie.

It is entirely possible young colt Cool Archie could win Australian 2YO Horse of the Year, yet finish third in the Queensland Horse of the Year title.

Chris Munce was scratching his head to try to think of the last Australian two-year-old to win five races in a row, culminating in a Group 1 triumph.

Cool Archie WINS the G1 J.J. Atkins! 🏆@munceracingpic.twitter.com/X0oBUWkZB0

— SKY Racing (@SkyRacingAU) June 14, 2025

• ‘He could be anything’: Munce hot on Cool Archie’s future

That’s exactly what his JJ Atkins champion did and he has been unbeaten this campaign on wet and dry tracks and a variety of distances from 1000m to stretching to the 1600m of the JJ.

Clearly, he is a freak.

Even if you believe the Melbourne Cup winner should win Queensland Horse of the Year, you must at least concede it’s at least a fascinating topic of conversation.

The voting is done by a panel of about 25 industry stakeholders and they will have a nice problem on their hands when they sit down to vote in the coming months, with the award to be announced later this year.

Antino is an absolute star! The Queenslander dominates the Doomben Cup for @tonygollan 🏆 @blake_shinnpic.twitter.com/3GtDfiSKFB

— SKY Racing (@SkyRacingAU) May 24, 2025

In some previous years, it has been a barren wasteland for Queensland horses in terms of Group 1 wins.

But this season has been an outstanding one for horses from the Sunshine State performing at the elite level.

Sometimes, Horse of the Year honours nationally and in various states can be a one-horse race and largely a bit of a snore-fest.

But not this year in Queensland.

Originally published as Comment: Why Melbourne Cup champion Knight’s Choice is no certainty to win Queensland Horse of the Year honour