Cover image courtesy of the State Library of NSW
In 1944, when Flight was at the height of her brilliance, it was said that she was ‘a horse without friends’. Many of the best race mares have been like this; at their best, unfriendly, but at their worst, downright obnoxious.
Flight was only a little thing, a tick over 15.2hh with shoes on, but she didn’t behave as such.
She couldn’t be worked with a partner in the mornings, and you couldn’t turn your back on her in the box. She didn’t tolerate treats, strangers or the stable cat. ‘Woman-like, she must have constant attention or she will put her heels through the back of the stall.’
Arthur 'Watty' Watts with stable dog Socks and Flight at home in her Botany Street stables, 1944 | Image courtesy of the State Library of NSW
It was just as well that she could gallop as she did, because Flight proved one of the very best race mares that Australia ever produced, even to this day. She retired in 1946 as the greatest stakes-winning mare in Australian history, and while that means little in today’s big-money measure, in the post-war era, it was something else altogether.
Flight was bred in 1940 by C.H.J. Schmidt in Manildra. She was from the first crop of her colonial sire, Royal Step, and her weediness was probably the reason why she wasn’t retained. She was sent to Sydney to sell at Inglis’ Newmarket sale yard, where she fetched just 60gns (£63) when selling to Brian H. Crowley.
Crowley was from Merrywinebone, not from the very flung Lightning Ridge, and he reasoned that his small, new yearling would make a good station hack if racing wasn’t her thing.
Arthur 'Watty' Watts with Flight in February 1944 | Image courtesy of the State Library of NSW
Flight wasn’t big and she wasn’t pretty, but she threw plenty of rein and she was spirited. Crowley named her after his son, who was fighting with the RAAF in the war.
Throughout her career, Flight was trained from Frank Nowland’s Botany Street stables in Randwick. Nowland was a man of few words, one of those dust-broken old fellows from the Gunnedah district, and he handled Flight perfectly, respecting her space and reliance on routine, and, in turn, she won everything.
She won the Champagne S. as a 2-year-old, the Hobartville S., Adrian Knox S., Colin Stephen S., Craven Plate, Mackinnon S. and CF Orr S., among others. She won the Cox Plate back-to-back in 1945 and 1946, and she carried immense loads in her races from seven to 14 furlongs.
Flight with Jack Thompson aboard winning at Randwick in March 1944 | Image courtesy of the State Library of NSW
In the autumn of 1946, when she met Bernborough in the Chipping Norton S., the pair emptied the betting ring, which rarely occurred, as the entirety of Randwick Racecourse clamoured for a glimpse of the spectacle. Flight lost by a head, but she broke Bernborough’s heart as she went down. The two horses ran the fastest finishing times ever seen in a weight-for-age race to that point, surging away from third-placed Russia, that year’s Melbourne Cup winner, by 10 lengths.
Flight raced until the autumn of 1947. Randwick gave her a good send-off, the scene of 15 of her 24 wins. She retired to E.A. Underwood’s Warlaby Stud in Victoria, taking a paddock with Tranquil Star (Gay Lothario {GB}), Tea Rose (Mr Standfast {GB}) and an imported Felstead (GB) filly.
She died from an internal haemorrhage while foaling in the spring of 1953. She’d had few offspring, but of them, the unimaginatively named Flight’s Daughter (Helios {GB}) became the dam of two Golden Slipper winners in Sky High and Skyline. It was an extraordinary legacy.
Flight was ridden by her strapper, former jockey Arthur 'Watty' Watts, in all her trackwork | Image courtesy of the State Library of NSW
In 1947, at her retirement, the Australian Jockey Club introduced the Flight S., and today it is one of the elite targets for 3-year-old fillies, as it should be. Will it produce a faster filly, they wondered in 1947, and ‘will she own a queer sort of stark, remorseless courage that transcended mere speed as horsemen know it’?
Flight is gone from Randwick, but her legendry has lived on over a mile each spring in Sydney.
