Black Caviar by Gerard Whateley

Author:Gerard Whateley [Whateley, Gerard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

Karuta Queen leads but Black Caviar’s got her immediately

She’s out to chase the ghost of Phar Lap for this magical win number fourteen

Black Caviar has assumed the front and burst away

Karuta Queen, Stirling Grove and Kulgrinda

But it’s all Black Caviar

The Queen is in session for the spring

She bolts in by four lengths

The crowd of 32,126, a third more than usual for Guineas Day, did what they came to do. Applaud a champion. The ovation was not raucous; the win had happened so quickly and met with no resistance. Instead, it was marked by appreciation. Again, the overwhelming reaction was awe at the ease of the destruction.

Karuta Queen defied the rest of the field just as Berry sensed she would. Despite the 5.5-kilogram advantage she held, the margin of defeat was four-and-a-quarter lengths. Connections sought out photographers for an image of their filly in the honourable wake of a champion. It was a moment they never intended to forget. Equally, it was a moment they never intended to repeat.

In a sign to perfectly encapsulate the times, a banner was unfurled as Black Caviar returned to the mounting yard. It read: BC OMG.

New Zealand trainer Steve McKee had seen amazing feats in his time as the co-trainer of the mighty mare Sunline. But he had never seen anything quite so brutal as this: ‘She’s unbelievable. The power she gets from behind is great, staggering. It might be a funny thing to say but it’s probably not until she gets beaten — and she probably never will — that we will know how good she is because she’s simply too good for anything in these parts.’

Moody stood satisfied. As was usual for him, he would have settled for victory by a fingernail, but knew it would never have come to that. His observation was to share that Black Caviar loved what she did.

In the tunnel connecting the Jockeys’ Room to the mounting yard, Nolen artfully skirted around arrogance where his mount had just exemplified it. He confirmed what was widely suspected. It was a mere track gallop. She was, perhaps, eighty-five per cent fit. Such an assessment belied the clock: 56.73 seconds, just three-quarters of a second outside the track record. As a study of how Black Caviar won the race, the sectional times plotting her speed were instructive. Out of the barriers for the 1000–800 split she ran 13.18 seconds; 800–600 10.42; 600–400 10.77; 400–200 10.81; and 200–finish 11.55 seconds as she was being eased down. The numbers revealed the pattern. She had broken her opponents by the halfway mark.

With Phar Lap foremost in every mind, it was not surprising that Black Caviar should be compared to another cherished Australian icon: Don Bradman. Pondering his Monday column for The Australian, Patrick Smith conceived that a straight recount of Black Caviar’s deeds could never be enough. It was just a charcoal outline. ‘Just as Bradman’s average of 99.94 denotes the freakish, it does not in any way describe it. Like Bradman, Black Caviar’s story is told in the seeing and not the jotting.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.