Twenty years on, remembering Ethereal on the eve of Incentivise’s Cups attempt

Cover image courtesy of Sportpix

The first Tuesday in November rolls around each year like Christmas, the greatest of occasions for the city of Melbourne. Since 1861, the great two-mile handicap that is the Melbourne Cup has planted itself on everyday Australians, a race for everyone and anyone that tunes in at 3pm AEDT.

This year, the field has proved more local than most. In the absence of an overseas invasion (excepting the return of defending hero Twilight Payment (Teofilo {Ire}), the race is largely colonial, dotted with popular locals.

There’s Verry Elleegant (NZ) (Zed {NZ}) shooting for the ultimate target, and Derby winner Johnny Get Angry (NZ) (Tavistock {NZ}) for football legend Denis Pagan.

At the head of affairs, Incentivise (Shamus Award) is one of the shortest-priced Cup favourites in recent memory.

Trained by Peter Moody, the 5-year-old gelding has a picket-fence of nine straight wins since May this year, the last three being the G1 Makybe Diva S., G1 Turnbull S. and G1 Caulfield Cup in that order.

He’s an extraordinary Australian, a knock-kneed little foal bred on the Darling Downs by Steve Tregea’s Windemere Stud, and he’s chasing rare air on Tuesday.

Should Incentivise win the G1 Melbourne Cup, he will be the first horse since the mighty Ethereal (NZ) (Rhythm {USA}) in 2001 to achieve the Caulfield Cup-Melbourne Cup double in the same year.

The Cups double

Ethereal’s story is still going, exactly 20 years since her famous Cups victory in 2001.

At Pencarrow Stud in the Waikato, where she was bred, born and retired, she is 24 years old today, the centre of a breeding empire that has had so much success under the Vela family.

“She’s the epitome of why Pencarrow is breeding,” said Leon Casey, long-time stud manager of Pencarrow. “Horses like her are what you do it all for, aren’t they?”

Through 2001, Ethereal executed one of the greatest seasons in the recent history of Australian racing.

She won the G1 Queensland Oaks in May, then was third to Northerly (Serheed {USA}) in the G1 Yalumba (Caulfield) S. early in the spring. She won the G1 Caulfield Cup by a nose to Sky Heights (NZ) (Zabeel {NZ}), and then the G1 Melbourne Cup, putting away a field that included Marienbard (Ire) (Caerleon {USA}), who won the Arc the following year.

Before Ethereal, the last horse to win the Cups double was Might And Power (NZ) (Zabeel {NZ}), and before that horses like Doriemus (NZ) (Norman Pentaquad {USA}), Let’s Elope (NZ) (Nassipour {USA}) and Gurner’s Lane (NZ) (Sir Tristram {Ire}).

In fact, in 143 years since the genesis of the Caulfield Cup, only 11 horses have managed the Cups double, and only three of those have been mares.

“For Pencarrow, it lifted everybody when she won that double,” Casey said. “When you’ve got horses of her calibre racing for you, everybody’s work is a little bit lighter, and you can see the results of your investments and endeavours.

"And, as a breeding operation, you’ve got other members of the family around you to look forward to, be it sons and daughters coming through. It was just wonderful to have a mare of her quality representing us back then.”

The family factor

Ethereal retired to Pencarrow in the spring of 2002, a last-race winner of the G1 BMW at Rosehill. Tie The Knot (Nassipour {USA}) was in that field, and it brought to a close a career that boasted four Group 1 wins and nearly $5 million in prizemoney.

Ethereal had been bred and raced by the Vela family and, as a broodmare, she was simply returning home.

“At the time she was a yearling, we retained the vast majority of our fillies here at Pencarrow,” Casey said. “We were a newer stud, so we sold the colts and retained the fillies to race as broodmare replacements later on.

"As we’ve gone on and become more established, that’s changed a bit and we do sell some fillies now, but when Ethereal was coming through, that was the wisdom behind keeping her.”

Casey has been at Pencarrow long enough to remember most things about Ethereal. He foaled the champion mare on November 16, 1997, and he foaled her mother too, million-dollar earner Romanee Conti (NZ) (Sir Tristram {Ire}).

This is an old family for Pencarrow Stud, with the Vela family investing into it at Ethereal’s second dam Richebourg (NZ) (Vice Regal {NZ}). That mare was a winner of the 1984 G3 Tranquil Star S., and she got two stakes winners, namely G1 South Australian Oaks winner Grand Echezeaux (NZ) (Zabeel {NZ}) and Romanee Conti.

The latter won six stakes races for the Vela family, including the G2 Queen of the Turf S. in Sydney and the G2 Hong Kong International Cup in 1993. Despite her Sir Tristram (Ire) sireline, Ethereal’s dam was placed in the G1 Telegraph H. over 1200 metres, so there was dash in the pedigree.

Some of it also came from Ethereal’s sire, the American Champion 2-year-old, G1 Travers S. and G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner Rhythm (USA), a son of Mr Prospector (USA) standing at Cambridge Stud.

“There were a number of American horses coming in at that time, even if they were in the minority,” Casey said. “Rhythm was a well-regarded stallion and had a great pedigree and great performance, so even though American horses had a different style of racing, I think Ethereal inherited a lot more stamina than you might have expected of that stallion.”

Life after racing

Ethereal bred at Pencarrow until her last foal in 2014, 11 seasons in New Zealand reaffirming her valuable family.

Her first foal was the Giant’s Causeway (USA) filly Uberalles (NZ), who was fantastic early in her career with a win and three placings through her first four starts, including a third in the G2 Great Northern Guineas at Ellerslie.

All up, Ethereal foaled a single stakes winner in Seraphim (NZ) (Rip Van Winkle {Ire}), who won at Listed level in 2018, but this fact alone doesn’t define her career as a broodmare.

At Pencarrow, she has four of her daughters on the farm, and her sale ring record is just as interesting.

Only two of Ethereal’s foals made it to auction, among them Aetherius (NZ) (Stravinsky {USA}), who sold to David Ellis for NZ$1.3 million at Karaka in 2007. The only other was Imperium (NZ) (Encosta De Lago), also picked up by Ellis for NZ$425,000 at the same Sale in 2013.

“One of the interesting things about Ethereal was that she was a very competitive racehorse and very impatient,” Casey said. “As soon as she retired she chilled right out, and she was always a very good mother and very easy to deal with once she was away from the racetrack.”

Gallery: Ethereal (NZ) in 2019 at Pencarrow Stud | Images courtesy of Pencarrow Stud

Heaven sent

Queensland trainer Sheila Laxon remembers this side of Ethereal only too well. Laxon, at the time a resident of New Zealand, broke in the mare at Pencarrow Stud and trained the horse throughout her glorious career.

“I remember the elite little creature that she was,” Laxon said. “She was terribly important to herself, and she did what she wanted to do. You just tagged along in an attempt to get what you wanted out of her. She was a huge personality.”

Laxon said Ethereal was a real individual and, 20 years later, she has high praise for the mare still.

“She thought she was the best, and so it proved to be,” the trainer said. “And it was important to me to nurture that attitude, because they know when they win and they get even more superior. She was just a super-intelligent horse.”

During the Ethereal years, Laxon had about 20 horses in her yard. She was a globetrotting, hands-on trainer in every sense, and she knew her star mare inside out.

Laxon’s formative training years were in her native England, where the training styles are very different to Australia, so she brought a unique touch to Ethereal’s campaigns from 2000 to 2002. Riding her in work and handling her on the ground, Laxon realised just how smart the mare was.

“She had the most incredible of brains,” she said. “She knew what she was there for, and we got on so well, more than any other horse I’ve broken in. I think our rapport happened right from the beginning and it just carried along, and I was there for the ride.”

Laxon was at Pencarrow when Ethereal got her name, and confesses she suggested it, even if she couldn’t pronounce it properly.

“At the time, it was a pretty dark point in my life and she became a blessing to me,” the trainer said. “It was as her name suggested, that she was sent from the heavens.”

History made

Ethereal’s Melbourne Cup win made Sheila Laxon the first female to ever train a Cup winner and, since then, there’s been only Gai Waterhouse with Fiorente (Ire) in 2013.

The victory was nearly 10 years to the day after Laxon had a crippling race fall that left her unconscious for eight days, and when she woke up, she was in a mixed psychiatric ward, unable to speak or write and therefore unable to communicate.

“Ethereal changed my life entirely,” Laxon said. “It was extraordinary that after such a dark time in my life, when we thought I’d never recover, she came along and I became Australia's first female trainer to win a Melbourne Cup. That, in itself, was a huge story for people in bad situations.”

Laxon remembers all the fine details about Ethereal like it were yesterday.

She said the mare was only half-fit for her Caulfield Cup, weighing in at 452kg. At Macedon Lodge in the weeks following, the trainer was able to give her plenty of hill work, after which Ethereal was 474kg for her Melbourne Cup.

“She wasn’t a very big horse at all, but I was able to get the miles out of her,” Laxon said. “I’d learned about riding racehorses in England, so I trained the English way and it stood me in great stead with her because I had her up the hills.

"It really was only in her last few starts that I galloped her, because the rest of the time it was just rounding up sheep and cattle and those sorts of conditioning exercises.”

Laxon won’t mark Tuesday’s big race in any particular way. She has a number of horses running at Eagle Farm, but at some point in the day she’ll lend a thought to the wonderful mare that put her on the map 20 years ago.

“It’s always great leading up to the Cup, because I do lots of talks and functions to tell the story,” she said. “Ethereal changed my life in so many ways, and it’s great that she’s still alive. I’ve been back to see her a few times, and she’s still the same. She comes up to the fence briefly and then moseys off on her own terms, just like I remember her.”