ISSUE 9 > SPRING 2012
The gates open at the start of the 2011 Cox Plate at Moonee Valley Racecourse
MOONEE VALLEY’S COX PLATE – THE RACE OF CHAMPIONS AS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE COSTA ROLFE Though the Melbourne Cup is undoubtedly Australia’s most famous race, it is equally accepted that the Cox Plate, held at Moonee Valley Racecourse since 1922, is the country’s best race. The Cup appeals to the Australian psyche due to its handicap status – the best horses are tasked with carrying the most weight, thus allowing lesser, ‘battler’ type horses to sneak in with no weight on their backs and mix it with the big boys. The Cox Plate has no time for such
sentiment – it pits the best in the land against each other, under the inviolability of weight-forage conditions (horses are weighted according to age alone, not ability) and over a distance where the best horses tend to excel (2040m). Add in the intricacies of the tight Moonee Valley track – complete with uniquely cambered turns – and the result is an annual spectacle that has provided the Australian turf some of its most unforgettable moments in an already storied history. Not every Cox Plate winner is a champion, but this is a race won by champions, perhaps more than any other. In the last twenty years
alone, the Cox Plate has been claimed by several winning Australian Champion Racehorse of the Year - Makybe Diva, Sunline (twice), Northerly (twice), Might and Power, Saintly and Octagonal. 2009 and 2010 winner So You Think – who took his Group 1 tally to ten whilst racing against the world’s best horses in Europe – would surely have been another ‘Horse of the Year’ winner if not for the presence of a handy mare called Black Caviar. Surround, Taj Rossi, Gunsynd, Tobin Bronze, Tulloch, Rising Fast, Flight, Ajax and Phar Lap are just some of the other greats to have validated their equine immortality with Cox Plate victory.
It’s not just the winners, however, but also the frequently exhilarating nature of these wins, that have made the Cox Plate the race that it is today. Bonecrusher and Our Waverly Star’s head to head duel for the final 800m of the 1986 Cox Plate – when the two cleared out from the rest of the field and fought a bloody two horse war all the way to the post – is still cited today as the race to end all races. The power and beauty of Dulcify’s sevenlength demolition job in the 1979 Cox Plate, too, remains one of the most moving sights in horse racing history, particularly given the fact