Flying the flag from Flemington to Fannie Bay
Intro:
Darwin and Melbourne may be at opposite ends of Australia, but when it comes to racing revelry – and at least one equine family – they are inextricably linked.
Story:
Of the 315 active racetracks in Australia, few are more different in setting than Flemington and Fannie Bay. The former hosted the first stakes race of the Australian racing season on Saturday while on Monday, the latter stages the richest and most famous race in the Northern Territory, the Darwin Cup (2050m).
The picturesque green turf of Flemington, set on a 2312-metre circuit, is gilded by roses when it hosts what has historically been Australia’s greatest race, the Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m), each November.
Fannie Bay, in contrast, is a 1780-metre track of oil and sand, built to withstand the tropical climate. Each year in August, a crowd of 20,000 lines the rails to watch the Territory’s own great race. It would take you three days by car to traverse the 3663 kilometres which separates the two tracks.
But what unites them, especially on their Cup days, is revelry. The passion which has defined Australian racing for 150 years runs up the Stuart Highway and on Monday, hits Darwin, where 14 horses will contest for $200,000 in prize-money and a spot in history.
Among the 14 jockeys to be legged up ahead of the Cup will be John Allen, the Irish-born hoop who counts 19 Group 1 victories on his resume, four of them at Flemington. He rides a horse named Grandslam (Myboycharlie), who had six of his first 13 starts at Flemington, and now finds himself chasing Darwin Cup glory for trainer Gary Clarke. Among Clarke’s three previous winners as trainer – he also has one as a jockey – are last year’s victor Playoffs (Tavistock), who like Grandslam, carried the blue and green colours of Colin McKenna.
It speaks to the national aspect of Australian racing, and perhaps as an endorsement of its class structure, that nine of the Darwin Cup field in 2023 have raced at Flemington at some stage of their careers. Two of them have won races at both tracks.
2023 Darwin Cup runners who have run at Flemington
| Runner |
| Grandslam |
| Mohican Heights |
| Write Your Name |
| Lake’s Folly |
| He’s The Ultimate |
| Kaonic |
| Anphina |
| Ironedge |
| Grinzinger Bishop |
Kaonic (Savabeel), the runner-up last year who is having his third shot at a Darwin Cup, won a Listed race on Melbourne Cup day in 2018, while Grinzinger Bishop (Almanzor) landed the mother of all upsets when a $71 winner of a two-year-old race at Flemington in June last year.
Grinzinger Bishop is aiming to become the second Darwin Cup winner in the past five years to have been previously prepared by Flemington-based trainer Danny O’Brien.
Zahspeed (Speed ‘N’ Power) found his way from O’Brien through various stables to Clarke’s Darwin yard, where he captured his Fannie Bay victory in 2018. That horse holds a close link to O’Brien’s Flemington stakes winner from Saturday, It’sourtime (Time For War).
The pair are half-siblings, being out of Zedoble (Zeditave), a mare that was originally purchased by Tulla Stud’s Paddy Hare for $500 to support his own stallion, Speed ‘N’ Power (Zabeel). Zahspeed, bought off the back of Hare’s cattle truck for $3,000 by Steve Pitts, would win over $520,000 in prize-money and be stakes placed in a 45-start career which featured 10 wins.
He was the best of the three foals by Speed ‘N’ Power out of Zedoble, before Pitts acquired the broodmare and sent her to young Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice) stallion Time For War at Kitchwin Hills. It was to prove Time For War’s final crop as he died after a colic attack in December 2016.
The loss of Time For War has been keenly felt with five stakes winners emerging from his two crops, which have featured 64 winners in total from 84 runners.
On Saturday, It’sourtime, the half-brother to a Darwin Cup winner, became the second multiple stakes winner for his sire, winning the Aurie’s Star Handicap (Gr 3, 1200m), a race which has become the traditional stakes kick-off for the Victorian spring since its elevation to black-type status in 2004.
Retained to race by Pitts, It’sourtime has proven a tremendously consistent sprinter. He won three of his first six races, including the final race of the 2021 Melbourne Cup Carnival at Flemington and has run top three in 16 of his 21 starts. He broke through at stakes level at Flemington in May and had been placed twice in black-type winter sprints, before his Group 3 win on Saturday. His Flemington record now stands at three wins and five seconds from 10 starts at the track.
Darwin Cup winners (since 2000), who have also raced at Flemington
| Horse | Year(s) Won |
| Playoffs | 2022 |
| Ihtsahymn | 2019, 2020 |
| Zahspeed | 2018 |
| Lightinthenite | 2015 |
| Hawks Bay | 2011, 2012 |
| Shout Out Loud | 2010 |
| Activation | 2009 |
| Club Liquid | 2008 |
| Mr Tambourineman | 2004 |
| Wild Heart | 2003 |
It was fitting then that a horse with such an affinity for the Flemington straight should win a race named after Aurie’s Star, a champion of the 1930s and ‘40s. Aurie’s Star won seven races at Flemington, including the 1937 Newmarket Handicap (1200m) and he held the six furlong/1200-metre track record for more than 50 years.
It’sourtime is one of just two winners for Time For War at Flemington, the other being the talented but ill-fated Lindhout, but he becomes the latest of a string of feature winners at the track out of mares by Zeditave (The Judge).
Zeditave, who won two races down the Flemington straight in his brilliant career, including the 1989 Lightning Stakes (Gr 1, 1000m), produced two Flemington Group 1 winners as a stallion at Newhaven Park. They were Sports, who like his sire won the Lightning, and Ruffles, the 1997 victrix of the Newmarket.
As a broodmare sire Zeditave has produced four Group 1 winners, and three of them, In Her Time (Time Thief), Reset (Zabeel) and Set Square (Reset), have won elite races at Flemington.
Thirteen years after his death, the winners from Zeditave’s daughters have started to dry up, but he also featured in that role in this year’s Perth Cup (Gr 2, 2400m) winner Buster Bash (Trade Fair).
With Time For War’s youngest crop having just turned six, the winners are drying up for him too, but his legacy is set to rise again thanks to Kingstar Farm’s Time To Reign, his Group 2-winning son whose oldest crop is set to hit the yearling sales in 2024 and the racetrack in just over 12 months’ time.
As for Zedoble, she died in 2019 and left only gelded sons, meaning Itsourtime’s successes are the final ones for a family that Hare started and Pitts continued, and which has tasted success everywhere from Fannie Bay to Flemington.
Time For War – Progeny record
| Runners | Winners | W/R | Wins | SW |
| 87 | 64 | 73.60% | 185 | 5 |