Is there any truth to the ‘Slipper curse'?

Cover image courtesy of The Image Is Everything

Australia’s most sought after juvenile race has certainly garnered a reputation in recent years; the G1 Golden Slipper Stakes’ spectre has loomed over the remainder of several recent winners’ racing careers, although it usually stops being a factor once they retire to stud. From the last 13 editions, only She Will Reign (Manhattan Rain), Fireburn (Rebel Dane), and now Marhoona (Snitzel) have managed to strike again on the track.

The prevailing headline on Saturday was that Emirates Park’s homebred Slipper winner Marhoona had broken the ‘Slipper curse’ with her first-up victory in the Listed Heritage Stakes. But how true is the belief in the Slipper curse? Are we obsessing over the recent past and discarding the race’s history?

Emirates Park’s General Manager, Bryan Carlson, acknowledged its presence on Monday: “You've got it in the back of your mind because (Emirates Park’s previous Slipper winners) Mossfun and Estijaab didn't come back, but I know they had genuine reasons.”

Could that still be the Slipper curse, one way or another? And how do their performances compare over time?

The big picture

Since 1980, the Slipper has been run 46 times, and every winner has had at least one more start. Breaking down winners into decades and using racing data from Racing Australia and Arion, it becomes abundantly clear that, yes, recent winners have by and large not trained on.

Table: Figures of G1 Golden Slipper Stakes winners who have won another race by decade

Emphasis on the 'recent' - this trend has only really developed in the last 15 years. In the first three decades beforehand, Slipper winners were largely very successful in the rest of their racing careers. It was an elite race for a reason; only the best horses could win it, and typically, they remained good horses for the rest of their careers.

The decade of 1980 to 1989 spawned influential sires Rory’s Jester and Marscay, as well as the top tier Bounding Away (Biscay), also the winner of the G1 Blue Diamond Stakes and the only 2-year-old in Australian racing history to be crowned Horse Of The Year. Only one horse in the decade, Marauding (NZ), failed to win again, but he was subsequently third in the G1 Sires' Produce Stakes before a successful career at stud.

The 1990s honour roll featured the likes of Flying Spur, Canny Lad, Danzero, and Catbird amongst the colts, and Merlene (Danehill {USA}) and Burst (Marauding {NZ}) - all exceptional juvenile racehorses, and four who were influential at stud.

Catbird stands out as perhaps the first true victim of the Slipper curse; after his five-win streak culminated in the Golden Slipper, he didn’t win again and only placed once outside of stakes grade. However, he still produced 25 stakes winners and a further 24 stakes-performed horses after retiring to the breeding barn.

It is after Pierro, the 2012 winner, that the post-Slipper winners start to dry up, and Pierro is notable in two other ways; he is the most recent colt winner of the Slipper to win another race, and the most recent colt winner to have five or more starts in the rest of his career.

Table: Breakdown of fillies (F), colts (C), and geldings (G) winners of the G1 Golden Slipper Stakes and their post-Slipper successes

Is this a curse, or has something changed?

Valuing the Slipper winner

When looking at the sex division in Slipper winners, there is no real difference between fillies and colts’ success rates in total. If they win again after a Slipper, they typically can score again at the highest level.

Table: Slipper winners’ success rates by sex

The main difference is in the number of starts; the median number of post-Slipper starts for colts was five, with a maximum of 14 (Stratum), whereas the median for fillies was eight.

Seven fillies in the last 46 years have had 15 or more starts. Fireburn is the most recent filly to have a double digit number of starts after the Slipper, although Lady Of Camelot (Written Tycoon) - who won’t be seen this autumn in favour of a 2026 tilt at Royal Ascot - currently sits at nine starts.

From 2000 to 2009, only two colts won the Slipper, and Sebring was the only winner from that decade to have less than 10 starts in the rest of his race career. He is also the only winner to not run at three, after a cannon bone injury caused him to miss the spring of his 3-year-old year, and its recurrence stopped his autumn preparation.

Some of this is simply logical; a good colt’s greatest value lies at stud, so in a decade dominated by fillies and geldings, seeing Slipper winners consistently at least attempt to race on is not unusual. Conversely, 1990 to 1999 was a good decade for colts, so only three Slipper winners raced in their 4-year-old season, as opposed to seven in the following decade.

Table: Breakdown of Slipper winner career length by decade

Curiously, that decade’s last Slipper winner in 2009, Phelan Ready (More Than Ready {USA}), never won another stakes race, with his only winning efforts post Slipper coming in two metropolitan handicaps in Queensland.

He did manage to place on 11 occasions after his Slipper win, all at stakes level and four times at Group level. He missed out on the G1 Manikato Stakes by three quarters of a length as a 3-year-old, splitting the 6-year-old gelding Danleigh (Mujahid {USA}) and the 4-year-old Nicconi.

Perhaps by dint of having longer careers than the average Slipper winner, the first decade of this century is also the most prolific for winners of Group 1s after the Golden Slipper, with six.

Even though the ratio of post-Slipper winners starts to dwindle after 2010, those that do continue to win certify the race’s status as elite. Sepoy, Pierro, and She Will Reign were the only Slipper winners to strike again in the decade from 2010 to 2019, and all three won again at Group 1 level - multiple times in the cases of the former two.

With the exception of Phelan Ready and Marhoona (who has plenty of time yet to prove herself), every Slipper winner since 2000 to win again has won at Group 1 level.

What is the value of a placing?

It’s hard enough to run in a Group 1 competitively, let alone place - or win. Is there merit to be found in continuing to place at the top level in the absence of a win?

Crystal Lily (Stratum), the 2010 Slipper winner, never won another race, but it’s arguable that she could have. The mare collected five Group placings - twice running second to Black Caviar (Bel Esprit) - in eight starts after the Slipper, and was preparing for a tilt at the G1 Manikato Stakes when tragically dying of a suspected heart attack during a jump-out.

Lady Of Camelot has placed seven times in her nine post-Slipper starts, and four of those placings have been at Group 1 level, plus her fourth-place finish in the G1 The Everest, beaten less than a length and a half. In fact, she is the most prolific post-Slipper placegetter - Stratum is next with six placings, all at Group level, from his 14 post-Slipper starts.

Table: Horses who have run two or more placings post-Slipper win

It also brings to mind Overreach (Snitzel), whose two post-Slipper runs were in the Sires’ Produce and in the G2 Schillaci Stakes, where she finished third on both occasions. Overreach has proven herself among Australia’s elite broodmares as the dam of multiple Group winner and stallion Lofty Strike.

The placegetters are also where we start to see the sex statistics change; of the Slipper winners to run two or more placings afterwards, four out of five are fillies. Of those to place once, four are fillies and three are colts or geldings. Every filly winner of the Slipper has either placed or won again afterwards.

Curse or myth?

The numbers don’t lie - it becomes apparent that there is a curse of a kind hanging over the Slipper, but it’s a recent one. As the horses that win again start to dwindle, a split in performance between fillies and colts starts to emerge that is overwhelmingly in favour of fillies as the better performers going forward.

Some of this can be chalked up to the balance of a horse’s value. A colt has stamped his ticket to stud already - any further win is just a bonus. Trainers and owners are less likely to risk diminishing his value by giving him more starts where he has the potential to not win.

There is also the difficult to measure variable of injury. However it happens, the owners and trainers of winners with breeding careers ahead of them have little reason to try to return the horse to racing, when they already have the jewel in the 2-year-old crown. For gelded winners - of which there hasn’t been one in over 15 years - there is more of a reason to persist.

There will always be a sharp focus on winners of the Slipper because of their profile and the value of a win, over and above any other 2-year-old Group 1; these are the horses and trainers that stay in the media’s eye throughout the rest of their racing career.

Marhoona has shaken the curse off within just one start as a 3-year-old - perhaps this could be a turning point for winners? May the next elite horse to train on be just around the corner.