royal ascot
Frankie Dettori winning the Gold Cup on Colour Vision, a four-year-old from the last crop of Rainbow Quest
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She’s done Australia proud and she’s still undefeated. I’m just slightly sorry that the public here couldn’t see how great she really is
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Sussex Stakes at Goodwood before exploring uncharted territory in the Abdullahsponsored Juddmonte International at York. “He’ll tell us where and when he’ll go,” said Cecil, “but he will definitely get the mile and a quarter.” After the meeting opened with Frankel’s take on a royal procession, a repeat, courtesy of Australian sprint phenomenon Black Caviar in the Diamond Jubilee Stakes, had been widely expected as a closing ceremony. And if the full house at Ascot and the thousands braving the bitter Melbourne small hours in Federation Square to watch their heroine on a big screen wanted drama, they got it, though wildly off-script. Yes, the mare landed the odds of 1-6, and her unbeaten record now stands at 22. But she won despite all the circumstances thrown at her, not because of them. In the preliminaries, her strength and athleticism was there for her new audience to see, but her coat was wintry compared with her rival’s summer sleekness and she was duller in her mien, too, than she had been when she held court at a media morning in Newmarket nine days before. It seemed that her long journey from Victoria to Suffolk – 12,000 miles, 36 hours door to door, with all the implicit upset to her body clock and biorhythms – had perhaps finally caught up with her. As her rider Luke Nolen found to his horror in the process of riding her much as he usually did. Black Caviar travelled smoothly just behind the pace for the first half-mile, at which point Nolen asked her for the race. She pulled ahead, but not clear, but was in command nonetheless entering the final furlong. At which point Nolen stopped riding, expecting her to coast home on the bridle, her usual modus operandum. It was so nearly a disastrous mistake. “I thought I’d done enough,” said Nolen, “but I underestimated the stiffness of the track and the gruelling test it throws up and when I relaxed on her that big engine shut down and she came right back underneath me. It’s an error that every apprentice is taught not to do, and I shit myself duly.” Four strides out Nolen galvanised Black Caviar as the French raiders Moonlight Cloud and Restiadargent bore down and her great racing heart got her home, by a head and a neck. Her victory, her 12th at the top level, may have prompted feelings of disappointment that it was not a clear-cut affirmation of her world class and of relief of calamity and anticlimax averted but she, at
least, did little wrong. “She was out on her feet at the finish,” said trainer Peter Moody, “but a quarter of an inch does the job as well as a quarter of a furlong. It was heart-in-the-mouth stuff, but she didn’t let us down. This was always going to be the greatest risk of her career, at the end of a long season and a long trip. But she’s done Australia proud and she’s still undefeated. I’m just slightly sorry that the public here couldn’t see how great she really is.” Any decision on the future career of the daughter of the well-patronised Royal Academy stallion Bel Esprit will not be made until she recovers from her Northern Hemisphere adventure back home, and she
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