Aurie’s Star looks set to be compelling contest
That element to the race, and it’s accompanying aura, has faded, but it’s still the first Group race of the season and, at least, this year the appearance of the two Irish bred runners adds a level of intrigue.
They are Home Of The Brave who debuts in Australia and Poetic Dream who, when he appeared for the first time here last March, was arguably the most spruiked horse of the season.
Home Of The Brave was purchased by Justin Bahen and Troy Corstens at the Arqana 2013 yearling sale in Deauville for €80,000 and they syndicated him to a group of Australians including David Moodie, Michael Ramsden, Peter Raftopoulos and Ashley Hardwick.
He was later purchased by Godolphin in the hope that he’d bolster the ranks of their ‘milers’ but, in this part of the world, I fancy he’ll prove to be a quality 1200 to 1400 metres performer.
He’s a free running horse who generally resents being restrained and if given his head today it wouldn’t shock me if he leads from barrier one and blows them away. If so, he would be the likely favourite for the Group 1 Rupert Clarke Stakes or possibly snapped up for The Everest.
He’s been gelded, wears a cross-over noseband and lugging bit to aid settling, he’s proven fresh and down the straight in the UK and his two recent barrier trials have been outstanding. Rain, and a significant amount is forecast, would be the one concern.
The horse has reportedly settled in very well with trainer James Cummings happy with his progress. “He has continued to acclimatise well as we get closer to his first-up assignment,” Cummings said.
Last year’s German 2,000 Guineas winner Poetic Dream will race in blinkers for the first time. He’s also impressed in his jump-outs but did so similarly before being beaten when well backed in March. “He’s got the potential to be a top horse but you want to see them do it,” co-trainer Tom Dabernig said on the eve of his return.
Perhaps my fascination with this race and Aurie’s Star stems from my father telling me he once accompanied trainer Arthur Smerdon, at Smerdon’s insistence, to Strathalbyn in South Australia to back a stable newcomer. It was declared unbeatable and ran almost accordingly but – as the story went – bumped into one named Aurie’s Star who, indeed, began his racing career in South Australia.
Aurie’s Star was not a big horse but frequently defied huge weights to win a plethora of significant sprint races and many of them in exceptionally quick times.
The 1932 son of Stardrift (by Sunstar) graduated from the relative anonymity of South Australia to win the 1937 Oakleigh Plate by five lengths in Australian record time. Soon after he became just the fourth horse to win the Oakleigh Plate and Newmarket Handicap double in the same season.
Two years later, in 1939, Aurie’s Star became the first horse to win the Oakleigh Plate twice and he won the second with 62.5 kilograms; ten kilograms more than he carried in the first success.
The following year he returned home to win the Goodwood Handicap with 10 stone (63.5kg) and, in September 1940, he set the Flemington ‘straight six’ record carrying 64 kilograms (albeit wind assisted according to newspaper reports of the time). That record stood until 1991 when bettered by Final Card.
The race named after him began as a mid-weeker, run on a Wednesday, which probably in effect gave it a little more prominence than being lost on a Saturday card and was regularly used as a starting point for spring hopefuls by major trainers, most notably Bart Cummings. And it was three times the launchpad of Cox Plate winner El Segundo’s spring campaigns.