Against All The Odds, A 'special Horse' Proves That Fighters Do Come Back

The Age

Monday October 27, 2008

Andrew Eddy

MARK Kavanagh was coming off a long night and a short sleep, but his mind soon cleared when he was asked yesterday morning if Saturday's Cox Plate win by Maldivian was proper restitution for the tragedy of last year's Caulfield Cup disaster.

"That came last week when he proved he couldn't stay the distance (of the Caulfield Cup)," Kavanagh said. "It took 52 weeks to find out that he probably wouldn't have won the race anyway.

"Yesterday was about a courageous horse who had been to hell and back."

Kavanagh called Maldivian his "special horse" for not only overcoming the physical and mental shock of the head injury that needed 10 stitches after he bashed his head in the barriers when hot favourite for the 2007 Caulfield Cup, but also for recovering from last autumn's career-threatening mishap. "That sight of him being led away from the barriers will be famous for many years, but what many people forget is that he broke a bone in his knee in the autumn and I think it's pretty courageous to come back from that and win a Cox Plate," Kavanagh said.

"You always have a little bit of doubt whether they will come back from something like that as they've got to have the confidence.

"We were lucky it was a hairline fracture and there was no dislodgement or movement. But if we didn't get it on that day, it would have been a real problem."

Kavanagh said he was never concerned that Maldivian was not fit enough to return to his best form, but that he simply needed a little coaxing. "You can't make a horse, or a top football team for that matter, any fitter. You can just mentally tune them up."

His mental tuning with Maldivian came in the form of blinkers and with a short burst over a few hurdles "to wake him up" at Flemington last week. As for the blinkers, Kavanagh knew that the day he put them on Maldivian was the day the big horse would prove hardest to beat.

"I gave him a run on the track with them last year and he really exploded but he was racing a little too keenly at the time to put them on in a race."

Kavanagh yesterday confirmed that Maldivian had run his last race for the year but would return to work before Christmas to be readied for the Australian Cup in March.

And while the Cox Plate hero is leaving the big stage, Kavanagh is not. On Saturday he saddles up Whobegotyou in the $1.5million Victoria Derby and, five days later, Cats Whisker in the $500,000 VRC Oaks.

Kavanagh knows that with Whobegotyou he may have a new star, a horse who could land him a spring feature either next year or in 2010. For that reason he was happy to resist running him in a Cox Plate. "I want to look after him and have him for many more seasons to come."

© 2008 The Age

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