News

Vale, Sunline - you thrilled in victory and stirred in defeat

3rd May 2009

Sydney Morning Herald - Craig Young - Saturday, 2 May 2009

Even more impressive than this mare's mighty physique was her pluck, writes Craig Young.

The great Sunline is dead. New Zealand's finest thoroughbred mare, with a lineage that traced back to Phar Lap's mother, Entreaty, was buried yesterday at Ellerslie racecourse having been put down at the age of 13 after a battle with illness.

"Ellerslie is the home of racing for us," Kiwi Steve McKee, who along, with his father, Trevor, trained and part-owned the freakish galloper, told the Herald yesterday. "It has been here a long time and is going to be here a lot longer. She was buried behind the big parade ring, a nice lawn there, there was a nice plaque; we thought it was appropriate."

Appropriate because Sunline belongs in the elite league. Anyone there when Sunline carved up her rivals knew they were bearing witness to special moments. Many a hair on the backs of necks stood to attention. Over and over again. A genuine superstar, the type that Aussies claim as their own. That was Sunline.

Simply, she was something out of the ordinary. An inaugural inductee into the New Zealand Hall of Fame along with Phar Lap, Carbine, Gloaming and Kindergarten. Sunline is also in the Australian Hall of Fame. It tells you just what this massive mare was able to achieve on the racetrack.

The daughter of Desert Sun and Songline, born in 1995, was a four-time winner of New Zealand's horse-of-the-year award, an honour bestowed here three times. No other horse has managed to claim champion honours in Australia three times.

"She was the horse you dream of getting," McKee says.

It was the spring of 1998 when Sunline strode into a gloomy Royal Randwick parade ring. You couldn't miss this one. She was built like a bull. The strapping mare had won her first four races in her homeland, and now the McKees were about to unleash her on the Australian racing public. The Furious Stakes at Randwick was won by just short of six lengths. The Tea Rose and Flight stakes followed with a combined margin of seven lengths. Racing had a new feelgood story.

The Flight Stakes victory was the first of 13 group 1 wins. They included back-to-back Cox Plates, considered Australasian racing's heavyweight championship. Sunline won two Doncaster Handicaps at Randwick - a demanding handicap considered the toughest mile on the national racing circuit.

She won two Coolmore Classics, two All Aged Stakes, two Waikato Sprints, a Manikato and a Hong Kong Mile on the second of two trips to the colony. She was simply one right out of that box.

A domineering front runner, Sunline left many a memorable moment. The second Cox Plate was utterly ruthless. She won by seven lengths.

Then there was the Dubai Duty Free at the World Cup meeting in the Emirates in 2001. It might well have been Sunline's bravest performance.

Continually attacked in front, Sunline rallied down the 600 metres Nad Al Sheba straight only to be collared by a couple of swoopers. It was a mighty third. Many present were moved to tears.

There would be two more Cox Plates, with the horse out to match another legend, Kingston Town, which remains the only horse to win it three times.

Sunline couldn't manage the task but went down fighting. When fourth in 2002, the McKees announced it was the end. The racing career was over. Sunline had given it her all on the racetrack. There was nothing left to prove.

She was retired with a record of 48 starts for 32 wins, nine seconds and three thirds. The prizemoney accumulated was a then Australasian record of $11,351,607, and a world record for a mare at the time. Makybe Diva surpassed it when winning the Melbourne Cup for a third time and taking the tally to $14,526,685.

For Sunline, it was time to become a mum. There are four live offspring, three fillies and a colt. The colt, Sun Ruler, won a race in New Zealand last week, while Sunstrike is already a winner and can add to the tally at Te Aroha today. An unnamed two-year-old trialled recently, and there is a weanling.

"I've had better days," McKee says of the week's events. "It is pretty tough."

Sunline fended off the best on the track but not the debilitating hoof disease laminitis.

In recent months, she could no longer roam her paddock freely on the McKees' property near Auckland. No expense was spared as the McKees tried desperately to save her.

"She just started going downhill in the last week," McKee says. "On Monday we had the guru [Ric Redden] out here from America. He was here for a seminar, he had a look, was going to try something on her but once he had a look, he did some X-rays and saw she had no hope. She had gone beyond sore in the end. We put her down this morning."