40 starts, 17 wins (six at Group One), 10 seconds, 2 thirds. NZ$3,411,682, A$625,000

Horlicks, by Three Legs out of Malt, won 17 of her 40 starts, chalking up six Group One victories in three countries. She won both the million-dollar DB Draught Classic and the New Zealand Stakes twice.

In the spring of 1989 she won the weight-for-age Mackinnon Stakes at Flemington and followed it up three weeks later with a win in the $3 million Japan Cup (2400m) in world record time for trainers Dave and Paul O'Sullivan.

She was retired from racing the following year, with career earnings of $A3.2 million.

A super  mare on the track, Horlicks later became a very successful broodmare. At stud she left 13 foals with Brew, the winner of the Melbourne Cup in 2000, the most notable. One of her daughters, Latte, produced the 2007 AJC Australian Derby winner Fiumicino

Horlicks died peacefully at Cambridge stud in August 2011 and is buried at her owner breeder Graham de Gruchy’s Hawke’s Bay property.

The last generation who saw him race, even as youngsters, are pretty much gone now. Yet the big chestnut gelding’s name still has power. The son of Night Raid and Entreaty, who lifted hearts and spirits during the depths of the Depression years, remained a measuring stick long after his deeds had passed into history. Phar Lap won 37 of his 51 starts, ran three seconds and two thirds. Most of his misses were at the outset of his career, before trainer Harry Telford got “the hang of him” and his capacity for work. Phar Lap developed from a wonderful three-year-old into a virtually unbeatable older horse. Consider his four-year-old spring in 1930. In four days at the Melbourne Cup carnival, he successively won the Melbourne (now MacKinnon) Stakes, Melbourne Cup, Linlithgow Stakes (then at a mile, or 1600m) and the C.B.Fisher Plate, at a mile and a half (2400m). Before that he’d won five races in Sydney, plus the Cox Plate. Nightmarch, who’d beaten a hard-pulling, three-year-old Phar Lap in the previous year’s Melbourne Cup, trailed him home four times in the chestnut’s four-year-old spring campaign in Sydney before his connections gave up and brought Nightmarch home. Nightmarch, who’d been unable to keep Phar Lap warm in Sydney, won the New Zealand Cup under 9st 6lb (about 60kg). Four days earlier Phar Lap had cruised to a three-length victory in the Melbourne Cup under 9st 12lb (nearly 63kg). Though he never raced in New Zealand, Phar Lap drew discerning eyes to the land of his birth and undoubtedly contributed to the progress of the then fledgling National Yearling Sale at Trentham, from whence he’d been purchased for 160 guineas. The first horse to earn the indisputable “champion” tag in Australian racing, Carbine, was bred in New Zealand. So, 40 years later, was the next, Phar Lap. And so, nearly 30 years on, was the next: Tulloch.

Race Record:
51 starts, 37 wins, 3 seconds, 2 thirds

It is very fitting that Phar Lap should be sponsored by our sister organisation - The Australian Racing Hall of Fame. The Australian Racing Museum - Champions has honoured Phar Lap is in a very special way at their site in Melbourne.

Controversy was to haunt Rising Fast for much of his career, yet this son of Alonzo and Faster was undoubtedly one of the best stayers and middle-distance gallopers that ever graced the Australasian turf. Bought at a Trentham sale by a Whakatane accountant, Leicester Spring, Rising Fast was put with Cambridge trainer Jack Winder and, after a quiet three-year-old season which yielded four wins and a couple of placings from eight starts, he was set as a four-year-old for the Royal Auckland Cup of 1953. Then trainer, jockey and indeed the horse were put out after he was allegedly not ridden on his merits in the Te Awamutu Cup. And, though the horse was reinstated on appeal, he never raced in New Zealand again. Trained now by Ivan Tucker, Rising Fast was set for the 1954 Melbourne Cup. He won three of five lead-up races in Melbourne, then successively won the Caulfield Cup, Cox Plate, MacKinnon Stakes and, under 9st 5lb (59.5kg), the Melbourne Cup. For good measure, on the final day at Flemington, he added the C.B.Fisher Plate to his tally.

The hoodoo struck again when Rising Fast returned home and Ivan Tucker was suspended after one of his team returned a positive test. Rising Fast was sent to Melbourne trainer Fred Hoysted. His lead-up form in the spring of 1955 wasn’t as good as the previous year – until he charged to victory under 9st 10lb (61.5kg) in the Caulfield Cup. Rising Fast was an odds-on favourite to complete the never-achieved “double-double” – two Caulfield Cups and two Melbourne Cups. He struck all the interference going in a rough-house Melbourne Cup and still went under by only three-quarters of a length to Toporoa, carrying 34lb less.

Toporoa’s rider, Neville Sellwood, was afterwards suspended for two months for failing to prevent Toporoa boring out on the champion. Rising Fast tried the Melbourne Cup one more time, the following year, and ran a valiant fifth under 10st 2lb (64.5kg).

A colourful character named Dan O’Brien bought the Musket colt he first named Mauser and then renamed Carbine at a Sylvia Park, Auckland, auction for 625 guineas. He was unbeaten in five New Zealand starts at two, and O’Brien took him to Melbourne as a spring three-year-old to race in the VRC Derby. Narrowly beaten – he was reputedly beaten by the jockey’s over-confidence – in the Derby, he won two races in Melbourne for O’Brien before being bought for 3000 pounds by Australian sportsman Donald Wallace. For Wallace he became the first true champion of Australian racing, transcending Victorian/New South Wales rivalries. He started 43 times for 33 wins, six seconds and three thirds, his stake earnings of 29,626 pounds a record for more than 20 years. The apogee of his racing career was the 1890 Melbourne Cup, which he won over a record field (38), with a record weight (10st 5lb, or 66kg) in record time. No horse had previously won with as much weight; no horse has since, in more than a hundred years. In the closing stages Carbine outfinished a lightweight named Highborn, to whom he was conceding 3st 11lb, or 24kg. Highborn later won the Sydney Cup with 9st 3lb! Carbine went to stud for four years in Australia, and sired the winners of more than 200 races. Then he was sold privately to the Duke of Portland, and, despite standing in England alongside the great St Simon, founded the triple Derby-winning dynasty of Spearmint, Spion Kop and Felstead. His blood flows through the veins of Nearco, Hyperion and all their great descendants.

Race Record:
43 starts, 33 wins, 6 seconds, 3 thirds.
Prizemoney:
29,626 pounds (a record for over 20 years)

Carbine was kindly sponsored by the Chianti Stallion Partnership. Chianti is an Irish bred 1998 bay stallion by Danehill from Sabbah. He stands at Te Runga Stud, Pukekohe. For further details contact Wayne Larsen (Studmaster) at 027-497-5115 or refer to websites www.terungastud.co.nz or www.chianti.co.nz.

Going into a racing stable behind older brothers Bill and Frank, Bob Skelton won his first premiership in 1955-56, three years behind Bill’s first, and wound up his career with nine titles to his credit, the last in 1975-76. He also topped the 2000 mark for career wins. Taller than his stocky oldest brother, Bob had a different riding style; high in the saddle and, often, with a loop on the rein. Horses “went” for him and he was a great judge of pace, notching more two-mile (3200m) wins than any other rider in Australasian history that we’ve been able to discover. He was derided for his awkward-looking style on early visits to Australia, but got the last laugh when he won the 1976 Melbourne Cup on Van Der Hum.

Bob Skelton is sponsored by Northern Ceilings NZ Ltd - a company associated with racing enthusiast Nick Rodokal of Auckland. Northern Ceilings is one of the largest specialty ceiling companies and can be contacted at 09-416-9227.

At the forefront of the thoroughbred industry as proprietor of Cambridge Stud for the past three decades, Patrick Hogan was recognised for his services to racing with a knighthood shortly before that title was removed from the New Zealand honours list. Born in Auckland in 1939, the young Patrick Hogan became involved in the breeding industry in the 1960s with his father Tom and brother John at the relatively low-key Fencourt Stud near Cambridge, where Blueskin II was a successful sire.
Wanting to operate on a bigger and more commercial scale, Patrick set up Cambridge Stud on his own in 1972. His entrepreneurial and marketing/promotional skills quickly brought him prominence. With the National Yearling Sales his focus, his “Melbourne Cup,” he moved staff and yearlings to Trentham (then the home of the sales) on a previously unknown scale, was a pioneer in the hospitality tents which became a sales feature, and became a renowned presenter of yearlings. Leading his own yearlings into the ring in those days, as brisk and well presented as the young thoroughbreds, he knew where the buyers were positioned (the Australian market was his target from the outset) and made sure the main players got a good look at the youngsters he led.
Sir Tristram, the stallion who was to build Cambridge Stud into a showplace and an unquestioned market leader, arrived in 1975 and, though greeted with lukewarm enthusiasm at first by the market and by some of Hogan’s established clients, made sensational progress from the time his oldest progeny turned three and included the likes of multiple Group One winner Sovereign Red. When he died, 22 years after coming to Cambridge Stud, Sir Tristram had been Australian champion sire six times (only once at home, where relatively few of his best-bred progeny raced) and had won five Dewar Awards (for combined Australian-New Zealand progeny earnings). He was second in the world for individual Group One winners (45). Sir Tristram founded a sire son dynasty (Grosvenor, Kaapstad, Marauding and Military Plume notable among them) but it was not until late in the great stallion’s life that Sir Patrick acquired a Sir Tristram son, the well-performed and well-bred Zabeel, to stand alongside his ageing father and take up the mantle. Zabeel was to outshine the other sons of Sir Tristram and rival his father (as at October 2005, two Australian championships and always in the top two or three; three New Zealand championships; a remarkable nine Dewar Awards; 33 individual Group One winners) and keep Cambridge Stud in a pre-eminent position. With his wife Justine Lady Hogan, Sir Patrick has been four times Mercedes Breeder of the Year and in 1991 received the Mercedes Award for Outstanding Contribution to Racing. A past president of the New Zealand Thoroughbred Breeders Association and a major racing sponsor (especially at Te Rapa), he has been a large-scale racing owner in recent years. Going into the 2005-06 season, he had an interest in 46 racehorses, including a dozen two-year-olds.

Sir Patrick Hogan is sponsored by the internationally acclaimed hospitality lodge - Huka Lodge of Taupo. Huka Lodge is a NZ business icon and we are delighted to have this association. For further information on Huka Lodge and its facilities please call 07-378-5791.