Day of double G1 Maher-Vel
Aussie trainer wins The Everest with Bella Nipotina, Caulfield Cup with Duke De Sessa
Champion trainer Ciaron Maher was hailed as the two-state hero in Australia on Oct 19 after he clinched the two major races in Sydney and Melbourne, The Everest (1,200m) and the Caulfield Cup (2,400m) – only one hour apart.
He chose to be on hand at Sydney’s A$20 million (S$17.6 million) showpiece, run as a Group 1 for the first time at its eighth edition.
A first shot at the world’s richest turf race with three leading chances in Bella Nipotina, Growing Empire and I Am Me, must have swung him towards that northbound trip.
He was spot-on. Stable star Bella Nipotina ($40) came off a wide trip to beat 11 of Australia’s best sprinters to the top of The Everest.
But staying at home would have worked, too. The bottles of Moet were still popping at the Royal Randwick winner’s circle when the TV simulcast screens showed his quartet of runners in the A$5 million Group 1 Caulfield Cup, a race he won once with Jameka in 2016.
Unlike his well-hyped The Everest raid, Duke De Sessa, Circle Of Fire, Sayedaty Sadaty and Berkshire Breeze – who was only promoted after Muramasa came out – had flown under the radar.
The market had been all about Underwood Stakes winner Buckaroo – with the Joao Moreira factor adding further impetus.
But Maher’s rub of the Randwick green spread 700km southward to Caulfield when $54 outsider Duke De Sessa pinched the race at the top of the straight with a commanding break that was to prove unassailable, even if Buckaroo valiantly cut it back to 1¼ lengths.
Both triumphs will hold pride of place on Maher’s trophy cabinet, but cracking The Everest probably just had a little more fizz to it.
“It means everything. It’s one of the biggest races on the carnival now, the crowd here is phenomenal,” said Maher, whose Sydney Group 1 wins include Pride Of Jenni in the Queen Elizabeth Stakes and Circle Of Fire in the Sydney Cup.
“To win this iconic race is a massive feather in our cap.”
Iconic – and ironic, too, for Bella Nipotina’s jockey Craig Williams, who was at his second The Everest win after beating into second spot the horse he won the race with in 2022, Giga Kick, from whom he was sacked after a third place in the Group 2 McEwen Stakes (1,000m) in September 2023.
There was also an underdog feelgood story with Duke De Sessa handing country jockey Harry Coffey his first Caulfield Cup silverware on his 28th birthday.
More poignantly, Coffey is one of Victoria’s most likeable characters – well known for battling cystic fibrosis since he was six weeks old, but which has not stopped him from becoming a jockey, and now a Caulfield Cup-winning rider.
“How am I feeling? It’s spectacular, phenomenal,” he said.
“Thanks to Ciaron, the horse’s owners, the staff, and the horse, I’ve been involved in a day I’ll never forget, and on my birthday.”
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