Champion staying mare Makybe Diva may be gone but, as Shane McNally reports, her place in Australian racing history is guaranteed.
She may have been bred in England, but Makybe Diva quickly became Australia’s much-loved champion stayer and when she died at Gnarwarre in rural Victoria last month at the age of 26, an outpouring of grief rarely afforded former racehorses of such an age washed across the racing landscape.
Makybe Diva did things on Australian racetracks that no horse had done before, a sentiment confirmed by owner Tony Santic on the day of her death.
“She gave us memories Australia will never forget,” he said simply.
Horses just don’t win three successive Melbourne Cups.
According to her trainer Lee Freedman in a post-race interview, the youngest child at Flemington in November 2005 would be “the only person here who will have a chance of seeing this happen again in their lifetime”.
Makybe Diva also won an Australian Cup over 2000m in the slashing time of 1.58.73, which her supporters are quick to remind everyone is 25 lengths faster than Winx ever ran.
Of course a breakneck tempo and a lightning-fast track contributed to the time, but the grand staying mare still ran it.
The great mare also won a Cox Plate en route to her third Melbourne Cup, a Sydney Cup and BMW Stakes, as well as two more races that have since been elevated to Group 1 status.
But Makybe Diva’s road to Australian racing immortality was far from direct.
She was foaled in Somerset, England in 1999, the daughter of Irish sire Desert King and US mare Tugela.
The dam was purchased in foal by Santic, a South Australian tuna fisherman and, when the resultant filly didn’t meet her reserve at sale, he sent her to Australia.
When Santic struggled to come up with a name for the “unwanted” filly, his accountant Maureen Dellar suggested using the first two letters of the names of five of his female staff members.
Maureen, Kylie, Belinda, Diane and Vanessa could hardly have known that their names would become part of racing history.
Makybe Diva started her racing career under the care of Adelaide trainer David Hall, who took her from an unplaced run in a Benalla bush maiden to six straight wins culminating in a Group 2 Queen Elizabeth Stakes in the spring of 2022.
The win guaranteed her a Melbourne Cup start the following year and meant Hall didn’t have to rush his lightly-raced four-year-old.
After six starts without a win in 2003, Makybe Diva was primed for the Flemington feature with an effective fourth in the Caulfield Cup.
Everything went to plan, with a copybook ride from Glen Boss, and the mare sprinted to the lead in the Melbourne Cup to put the result beyond doubt about 200m out.
Despite preparing a stayer with the world at her feet, Hall accepted an invitation to train in Hong Kong in 2004 and Makybe Diva was transferred to Lee Freedman, already a winner of three Melbourne Cups.
Under Freedman’s care, the champion stayer targeted middle-distance events as well as longer races, and in the Australian autumn of 2005 she won the Australian Cup over 2000m and the BMW over 2400m.
She made an unsuccessful visit to Japan for the Tenno Show (Spring) but returned home unscathed to win the coveted Cox Plate over 2040m in the lead-in to her third Melbourne Cup.
The finishes of all three Melbourne Cups had a similar look about them, with the champion mare taking over a couple of hundred metres out and never appearing in doubt in the run to the line.
While her 2005 win remains the most famous for bringing up the three-peat, her effort to easily account for world-class Irish stayer Vinnie Roe the previous year is arguably the pinnacle of her Flemington victories.
Her wins were aided by jockey Glen Boss, who turned in three of the best Cup rides ever to win the treble.
Maykbe Diva was retired from racing immediately after the 2005 Melbourne Cup and produced nine foals between 2007 and 2019, before living out her days on Santic’s aptly-named Maykbe property in Victoria.
In the last 18 months of her racing career, Makybe Diva attracted an ever-growing fan base who wouldn’t hear of her being beaten once the races got longer.
They were almost always right.
Twenty years on, social media indicates her legend may have actually grown as many thousands went online to mourn her death.
The Melbourne Cup holds a revered place with Australian racegoers, so winning three of them has led many of Makybe Diva’s legion of supporters to align her with the immortal Phar Lap as the greatest ever.
She’s certainly among the greatest stayers ever to race in Australia and her Cup record is likely to remain as safe as Freedman suggests.
She was inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame in 2010, honoured with a statue at Flemington, named Australian Horse of the Year twice and its Champion Stayer three times.
Caller Greg Miles’s claim that “a champion becomes a legend” as she crossed the line in that third Melbourne Cup has become part of Australian racing folklore.
So has Makybe Diva herself.
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