Turf Heroes – Let’s Elope

As part of our excitement about the Sydney and especially Melbourne Spring Racing Carnivals and all that they entail, Making The Nut is pleased to bring you a ten-part ‘Turf Heroes’ series, where Cliff Bingham will look back fondly upon the great memories these champions thoroughbreds embedded in his mind. Part three of the series recaps the career of one of the best mares to ever pass through the Bart Cummings yard, Caulfield and Melbourne Cup heroine Let’s Elope.

Previous “Turf Heroes” Instalments

Part 1: Super Impose

Part 2: Better Loosen Up

 

The career

Let’s Elope began her career in New Zealand under the care of Dave O’Sullivan. Unraced as a two-year old, she won a 1900-metre maiden at Rotorua on debut, placed at Group 1 level (against the other three year-old fillies) at just her fourth start and won a Group 3 (again taking on the other three year-old fillies) at her fifth start.

Despite showing above-average ability as a stayer during her first ever preparation, her original owners accepted a NZ$150,000 offer for her on the advice of O’Sullivan. Her new owners, Dennis Marks and Kevin White, transferred her to the Australian stables of the ‘Cups King’ Bart Cummings. If ever a trainer was able to extract the best out of a promising staying filly, Bart was the man.

After striking rain affected ground at her first three starts in Australia (resulting in a third, a fourth and a tenth placing), she finally found her preferred dry racing surface in the Group 2 Turnbull Stakes, where her light (in retrospect, though completely fair at the time) impost of just 50 kilos was no barrier to her first win on this side of the ditch.

The Turnbull victory saw her shorten in Caulfield Cup markets to around the 7-1 quote (or $8 these days). Despite an awkward draw in barrier 18, Steven King was able to keep her rolling and with just 48.5 kilos on her back, she stormed home down the outside and claimed her first Group 1 victory.

If ever there was a track readymade for a hulking chestnut mare like Let’s Elope though, it was Flemington with its wider expanses and longer finishing straight. And so it proved – she treated a strong field and WFA conditions with contempt in the Group 1 Mackinnon Stakes and then backed up three days later to claim the Melbourne Cup racing away, albeit that she had to survive a protest from stable mate Shiva’s Revenge. Whilst the margin of victory was far too great on this occasion for the protest to be upheld, her ‘green’ and erratic path of running would prove costly later in her career.

In the autumn of 1992 she returned, winning the Group 2 (these days a Group 1) Orr Stakes and Group 2 St George Stakes before returning to Flemington for another Group 1 race over the 2000-metre journey, this time the Australian Cup. As was the case in the Mackinnon just over four months previous, she streaked away from the field over the final 200 metres, on this occasion breaking the track record. Her first trip to Sydney to take on the riches of their autumn carnival was beckoning before a fetlock injury ended her preparation.

She returned in the spring of 1992 as a five-year old and was thwarted by wet tracks for much of her campaign, not resuming until early October when she finished down the track over an unsuitably short 1200 metres in the Group 3 Bobby Lewis Handicap. She then won a match race with Better Loosen Up at Caulfield and was second past the post (through relegated from second to fifth on protest for shifting ground badly and cutting off the unlucky Better Loosen Up) behind Super Impose in a classic Cox Plate. Another wet track saw her scratched from the Melbourne Cup on race day, unable to defend her title from the previous.

She and the Lee Freedman-trained Naturalism (the 1992 Cox Plate favourite who had been tangled up in the fall of Prince Salieri midrace) then represented Australia in the Japan Cup, two years after Better Loosen Up had won the event. However she suffered a bleeding attack and finished down the track that day. The bleeding attack also proved the catalyst for Let's Elope to continue her career in the United States in 1993.

Her trainer for her American race career was the U.S. Racing Hall of Fame inductee Ron McAnally. She won a minor race on her American debut, and was first past the post in the Grade I Beverly D. Stakes before being relegated to third on protest, a relegation that may not have occurred under Australian racing rules. Under American rules, she was relegated for simply causing interference, not because without such interference third horse would have likely beaten her home. The recurrence of a bleeding attack and a fractured cannon bone forced her retirement at the close of 1993.

 

The memories

In 1991 Let's Elope became the first mare in more than 50 years to complete the famous Caulfield Cup – Melbourne Cup double. The last mare to complete the double had been Rivette in 1939.

Let’s Elope was a long, tall and leggy mare. She would swing her hindquarters around in such a way that her hind hoof would land in front of the print from her front hoof. She also had huge nostrils – reputedly large enough that you could plunge a fist into them. In short, she was an ideal build for a rampaging middle-distance and staying horse.

She didn't so much glide across the turf as crash into it, a destructive force in mare form. Perhaps as a consequence of this running style, she was yet another star who was a duffer on wet tracks. It is also fair to suggest that avalanches rarely stick to ‘their lane’, so to speak, which may explain her propensity to shift ground and become the subject of post-race protests. 

Perhaps the best description of her talents came in the aftermath of the 1992 Australian Cup, when jockey Darren Beadman was asked about how she’d run, having just ridden for the first time en route to such an emphatic victory.

"When we came into the straight, I just said 'click click' to her – and she just sort of went by herself. I didn't think she'd sprint so well. I now know why I haven't beaten her before: she's got too good an engine".

Click click – at her peak, winning a Group 1 WFA race was as simple as that for Let’s Elope.

Granted, I have already bemoaned the fact that when Better Loosen Up and Let’s Elope finally went toe-to-toe in the spring of 1992 that their best was behind them and that wet tracks foiled much of the battle, but some things bear repeating.

From September 1990 to March 1991, Better Loosen Up won seven straight races (four Group 1s and three Group 2s), culminating in an emphatic Australian Cup victory before he bowed a tendon. While he was largely off the scene, from October 1991 to March 1992 Let’s Elope won seven straight races (also four Group 1s and three Group 2s), culminating in her own emphatic Australian Cup victory before she damaged a fetlock.

What a crying shame they never met during that 1991-92 season at their peak of their respective powers. If you could somehow go back in time, remove Better Loosen Up’s tendon injury and put these two up against each other in the 1991 Mackinnon and perhaps more importantly the 1992 Australian Cup, I’d be nervously pacing the room five minutes before the jump.

I have to confess that as a diehard Super Impose fan, Let’s Elope was never one of my favourites during her racing career – much in the same way that Queensland rugby league fans could never warm to Andrew Johns, New South Wales fans couldn’t warm to Wally Lewis, Carlton fans couldn’t warm to Collingwood champion Nathan Buckley and so forth. You pick your favourites and those who threaten their success are not looked upon favourably.

Nonetheless, looking back on that glittering spring of 1991 and early autumn of 1992, she wasn’t merely worthy of the utmost respect – she was a force of nature. Whilst her time at the absolute top of the racing tree was limited by comparison with others in this series, her impact during that period cannot be denied. The story of Let’s Elope is one of quality over quantity.

The stats

Overall record: 26 starts, 11 wins (4 x Group 1s, 3 x Group 2s, 1 Group 3s), zero seconds, five thirds, $3, 018,072 prize money

3YO autumn* (Dec 1990 – 1991): Six starts, two wins (1 x G3), one third

4YO spring/ summer (1991-92): Seven starts, four wins (3 x G1, 1 x G2), one third

4YO autumn/ winter (1992): Three starts, three wins (1 x G1, 2 x G2)

5YO spring/ summer (1992-93): Four starts, one win

United States racing career (1993): Six starts, one win, three thirds