Turf Heroes – Super Impose
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 one of the series recaps the career of that wonderful Randwick miler (and Cliff’s all-time favourite galloper), Super Impose.
A couple of quick primers for the series before we get started:
(1) This series is a subjective assessment of the ten middle-distance and staying horses that have resonated the most with me over the past two-and-a-bit decades, from the period where I first took an interest in racing at the age of about nine. They are not necessarily the ten best horses of that era – indeed, the series could easily have expanded to 15 or 20 horses without having to dredge anywhere near the bottom of the barrel. Your favourite ten horses list is almost certainly different in some ways to mine.
(2) With the Spring Carnival focused more around the Cups and the Cox Plate, I have deliberately left sprinters out of this list – thus (a) making it slightly easier to pare this group back to ten and (b) sneakily leaving the door open to write about the best sprinters in the autumn, thus saving me from having to come up with new ideas for that period of the year. Two birds, meet one stone.
Okay, with that out of the way, let’s start with my old pal Super Impose…
Introduction
When I was a kid in the late 1980s and early 1990s, playing sport tended to occur in one of three spots on the weekly calendar – after school, Saturday morning and Sunday morning. This scheduling was right up my alley, leaving Saturday and Sunday afternoons free for watching footy, cricket, golf, touring cars and of course, the incomparable Wide World of Sports.
I was a little young to remember much of the Mike Gibson/ Ian Chappell era, but Ken Sutcliffe and Max Walker were a familiar part of my Saturday afternoons for a number of years – as were John Tapp and the ‘Wizard of Odds’, Kenny Callander. Being a sports statistics nut from an early age, the concept of odds and betting enthralled me quickly and a future punter was born there and then.
From 1989 onwards, my parents also caved and let my younger brother and I each have a dollar each-way on a horse in the Melbourne Cup. My brother popped his Melbourne Cup cherry by picking the 30/1 winner Tawriffic. However my tip, the AJC Oaks/ Derby heroine Research, failed to threaten and thus the house-of-horrors Melbourne Cup run began for yours truly. But that’s a story for another day – today’s story revolves around the runner-up in that Cup, Super Impose, and how he made me fall in love with racing.
The career
Away from my completely untrained child’s eye, Super’s career begun inauspiciously. A winner on debut in a Seymour maiden, he arrived at the Listed Eclipse Stakes at Sandown in late November 1988 with the career record of 16 starts for two wins, seven seconds and three thirds. While the writing had been put on the wall with two narrow losses at Listed level (including the Ballarat Cup at the start previous), punters could have been forgiven for thinking he was a bookies’ pal. Nonetheless, he repaid the faithful by winning the Eclipse Stakes before heading to Sydney and winning twice, including the Group 3 Summer Cup. A promising staying career was in the offing.
He stepped up to WFA grade for much of the 1989 autumn, chasing home Vo Rogue in the Orr Stakes, St George Stakes and Group 1 Australian Cup and winning the Group 2 Carlyon Cup before a brief and unsuccessful Brisbane winter campaign, as the inclement weather that had dogged his Sydney autumn preparation continued up north.
In the spring of 1989, he was unplaced in four runs at WFA level and finished only midfield in the Caulfield Cup won by Cole Diesel, but won the Group 2 Turnbull Stakes and ran second to Tawriffic in the aforementioned Melbourne Cup. Everything was still suggesting a quality stayer who couldn’t quite mix it with the elite milers and WFA horses – hold that thought for a moment or two.
The autumn of 1990 went to the same script for the first five races, with five placings in all, four of them coming as a result of chasing home either Vo Rogue or Better Loosen Up at Group 1 and 2 WFA level. Super’s career to this point: 39 starts for seven wins (three at Group level), 14 seconds and seven thirds – a solid if unspectacular record. Then the wet weather in Sydney altered the path of Super Impose’s career irrevocably.
Much like Better Loosen Up and Let’s Elope during the same era, Super was nothing like as effective on wet tracks as he was on the dry, and thus trainer Lee Freedman bypassed the BMW and entered him for the Doncaster Handicap. With 57 kilos and the ‘car park’ draw in barrier 20, he roared home late down the outside to secure the first of his four Group 1 Randwick miles.
The spring of 1990 brought Super’s first win at WFA level in the Group 2 Apollo Stakes at Warwick Farm. This was followed by second placings in the Chelmsford and George Main Stakes at WFA level (behind Stargazer and Shaftesbury Avenue respectively) before he lined up for that other famous handicap race over the Randwick mile, the Group 1 Epsom Handicap. With 58.5 kilos and barrier 14 to contend with, Darren Gauci let Super loose again with a late burst down the outside to complete the Doncaster-Epsom double.
His spring campaign would not last much longer though –he suffered a bleeding attack when an unlucky runner-up to Sydeston in the Group 1 Yalumba Stakes which saw him head to the spelling paddock for three months rather than to the Cox Plate and Melbourne Cup as intended.
After a slow start to his autumn 1991 campaign, Super threw off the effects of his spring setback to claim the Chipping Norton Stakes and Ranvet Stakes, both at Group 1 WFA level. He was sent out a very warm favourite for the Group 1 WFA BMW (since named the Mercedes Classic for a period, but now called the BMW again) but incredibly ran last, beaten 15 lengths by Dr Grace. Uncertainty reigned over the next few days as to whether he would be permitted to run in the Doncaster the following weekend. He was finally given the all clear and with Darren Beadman aboard, lumped 59.5 kilos to a second win in the event before running second to Shaftesbury Avenue in the All-Aged Stakes a week later to close out his autumn preparation.
Now a 7 year-old, Super won the Warwick and Hill Stakes at Group 2 WFA level in the Sydney spring prior to lining up in the Epsom Handicap and attempting to do the Doncaster-Epsom double for the second straight year. With a massive 61 kilos on his back all seemed lost when turning for home he was unable to find a clear passage to the outside. Instead, Darren Beadman switched course back to the inside and weaved through traffic over the final 400 metres to nail Livistona Lane just before the post and write himself into thoroughbred history.
His campaign then headed south to Melbourne, where he was three consecutive times a runner-up at Group 1 WFA level in the Yalumba Stakes, Cox Plate and Mackinnon Stakes before a second tilt at the Melbourne Cup. By the time, I was 11 years old and very firmly in Super’s corner when the time came to pick a horse for my annual dollar each-way bet, 60 kilo impost be damned. He finished a brave fourth (still shaking my fist angrily at Magnolia Hall, who edged Super out of the placings) but was no match for Let’s Elope, who was flying at that point in her career.
The autumn and spring of 1992 were less fruitful for Super in the lead up to the Cox Plate – another Group 1 WFA win in the Chipping Norton Stakes, unplaced runs carrying 62.5 kilos in the Doncaster and 61.5 kilos in the Epsom and an ‘easy kill’ in the Canberra Cup before heading to Moonee Valley to take on one of the best fields assembled in the history of the race, a race that would provide high drama in running.
Palace Reign fell as the field passed the school, bringing down Naturalism and Sydeston, while Rough Habit was badly hampered and lost maybe 15 lengths – his winning chances ended there. From the 300 to the 100, Let's Elope shifted in badly (and was later relegated from second to fifth on protest) and Kinjite shifted out – Better Loosen Up was motoring at the time but just failed to get the split before it closed and was chopped out, rendering himself as the unlucky runner in the race.
Meanwhile, Greg Hall steered a wise course aboard Super Impose towards the outside of the compressed field and managed to avoid much of the trouble, running down Let's Elope inside the final 100 metres and capturing the Cox Plate as an eight year-old.
As the great turf journalist Les Carlyon wrote in the aftermath, this race "needed a frontrunner to break up the field so that there was no need for cat-and-mouse stuff, for crowding and finessing" and that "without such a horse, the race turned up a cavalcade of blunders and misjudgements". Not that I cared – my boy Super had won, causing great happiness but also some frustration, as I’d campaigned my parents fiercely to extend my one dollar each way wagers beyond the Melbourne Cup to the Cox Plate that year. A 20-odd dollar return for two dollars invested would have been a lot to a 12 year-old, a point I may or may not have made to the folks after the race.
His final race was in the 1992 Melbourne Cup – a race that was well beyond him hours before the jump, as the heavens opened and his non-preferred wet track conditions became the order of the day. I had once again placed my dollar each-way of faith in him and knew by the lunch break in my day of Year 7 studies that those two bucks would not be returning to me that evening. It was as an anticlimactic end to a career laced with thrilling late finishing runs.
As touched on earlier in the piece, Super Impose was a star a long time in the making, rather than one who presented himself in the limelight from day one. Moreover, he raced at WFA level 37 times for just the seven wins, along with 15 seconds and four thirds. It’s not exactly a record that will stack up well against many others presented as part of this series.
However for those who present his overall record as ammunition for suggesting that he wasn’t a superstar, I call your attention to his record from the 1990 Doncaster through to 1991 Melbourne Cup as my rebuttal: 22 starts for ten wins (six at Group 1 level and three at Group 2 level) and seven seconds (six at Group 1 WFA level and one at Group 2 WFA level). For a bit over 18 months, Super Impose could (and did) mix it with the absolute best of them. So there.
The memories
Here is the part where Super reigned supreme. His CV may not read as well as others of his era. But to fully appreciate him you had to feel the anticipation as he swung out into clear galloping room in the home straight, to hear the roar that went end up any time he started to motor home late in a race, to cheer as one on the occasions where he was first to salute the judge. He could cover 400 metres in 22 seconds when fully wound up – if such a run could be unleashed from the right place (especially if the early speed was on and the leaders were tiring), he won.
Don’t underestimate the romanticism of winning handicaps in big fields carrying big weights either. The elite horses can often make winning at WFA level look easy, but unless they heroically defeat another champion or simply blitz a quality field, these performances result more in admiration than they do in adulation. Not to mention that the TAB and bookmaker odds are often no spoil either.
Compare this to being a top weight in a handicap, repeatedly overcoming the handicapper and the would-be challengers, powering through a capacity field to win at odds mug punters are happy to take – it’s easy to see how one scenario inspires the utmost respect but the other one inspires love.
I loved Super. Sure, he was far from perfect and in the irony of ironies, had I been old enough to punt myself in those days I may have sacked him for his poor winning record at WFA level and his ‘get back’ racing style that required luck in the home straight. But at the end of the day, his powerful late finishing bursts and the notion that even behind a wall of horses with 400 metres to go that anything (read: an improbable victory) was still possible helped me fall in love with racing.
He also gets something of a boost via the way his career and my introduction to racing intersected. Isn’t it often the way that you remember your first of something – your first car, your first kiss, your first pay cheque, and so the list goes – more fondly? Suffice to say, the rose-coloured glasses have been doing their thing throughout this particular column.
Objectively, he may be the luckiest of the ten inclusions in this series. Subjectively, I would never have embarked on writing this series without him. Thank you Super Impose.
The stats
Overall record: 74 starts, 20 wins (8 x Group 1s, 5 x Group 2s, 1 x Group 3), 24 seconds, eight thirds, $5,659,358 prize money
3YO spring/ summer (1987-88): Six starts, one win, three seconds, one third
3YO autumn/ winter (1988): Four starts, one win, one second
4YO spring/ summer (1988-89): Nine starts, three wins (1 x G3), three seconds, two thirds
4YO autumn/ winter (1989): Six starts, one win (1 x G2), three seconds
5YO spring/ summer (1989-90): Nine starts, one win (1 x G2), two seconds, one third
5YO autumn/ winter (1990): Six starts, one win (1 x G1), two seconds, three thirds
6YO spring/ summer (1990-91): Five starts, two wins (1 x G1, 1 x G2), three seconds
6YO autumn/ winter (1991): Eight starts, four wins (3 x G1), one second
7YO spring/ summer (1991-92): Eight starts, three wins (1 x G1, 2 x G2), three seconds
7YO autumn/ winter (1992): Six starts, one win (1 x G1), one second
8YO spring/ summer (1992-93): Seven starts, two wins (1 x G1), two seconds, one third
