Show Gate Belongs With The Best

As a great many men have found out, and an equal number of women agree, the only damn thing you’re any good at at my age is reminiscing.

The year 2012 is going to be notable, not for the London Olympics but for being the centenary of the birth in New Zealand of Desert Gold, perhaps the best 3YO filly ever to race south of the line (Wakeful never raced as a three-year-old).

Her name came up in conversation with Paul Carrazzo whose passion for pedigree even overshadows his lust for the tax commissioner’s blood. Her 36 wins, 30 of them regarded as stakes races, 19 straight, is a breathtaking record. There’s barely anyone alive who can remember her – not even me. Because time erodes everything we should treasure the deeds of her modern day equivalents, mares like Sunline, Makybe Diva, Surround and Wenona Girl while they are fresh in our memories. Fart around with semantics as much as you like but these horses were c-h-a-m-p-i-o-n-s.

New Zealanders often mention another mare of their ilk, not at all well known in Australia. Show Gate. She had 30 wins – 15 of them stakes races – and 9 placings from 51 starts. Most of us believe that had she lived in the North Island of New Zealand instead of the deep south and perhaps had a top professional trainer she would have won 30 stakes races. She was a freak.

Her owner-trainer Gordon Thomson was a chicken sexer. He was a good man with a horse; no fool ever trained a horse to win 30 races and Show Gate wasn’t the only smart one he trained. He also stood a stallion or two including her semi-fertile sire Gate Keeper (by Alcide).

His set-up at Mosgiel, outside Dunedin, wasn’t Crown Lodge. Unlike the Ingham empire, there wasn’t much difference between Gordon’s chicken coops and his horse boxes.

Show Gate raced in the halcyon days of New Zealand racing. She won the 1974 G1 Telegraph Hcp 1200m at Trentham with 56 kgs, Melbourne Cup winning jockey Bruce Marsh swinging on her.

She won the Stewards Handicap 1200m-Canterbury Gold Cup 2000m-Churchill Stakes 1600m treble Saturday-to-Saturday. She almost did this three times. On her third attempt in the Stewards, as a 7YO, she was beaten a half-head by Grey Way. She carried 63 kgs. Grey Way won 50 races. Ask Bob Skelton about Grey Way.

Show Gate did not race as a six-year-old as she broke down.

She had one race in Australia, in the Theo Marks Quality at Rosehill as a spring seven-year-old. Ease The Squeeze won it, she flopped; both she and her trainer were fretting so badly for the chickens they went straight home.

I saw her three months later in the North Island, after she'd travelled 1,000 miles by road and ferry during the week from Mosgiel, absolutely donkey-lick a WFA field over 1600m with Bob Skelton on board, a field stronger than this year's Cox Plate ... Jan's Beau, Tudor Light, Battle Eve and a cavalcade of stars all in their prime. Battle Eve was bred and raced by Ancroft Stud’s Brown family and it was at Ancroft where Show Gate rested up after her marathon journey to prepare for the race – eating grass for two days. The same Brown family bred this year’s Cox Plate winner El Segundo.

Show Gate’s next start was the 2200m G1 Avondale Cup, in those days New Zealand’s Caulfield Cup equivalent. I watched her; she stood in the tie up stalls unattended for at least two hours, had the saddle put on and without so much as a warm up went out there and was a good thing beaten by Paul de Brett, a smart son of Pretendre trained by D J O'Sullivan which had no weight.

She travelled another 1,000 miles back to Dunedin and after winning the Gold Cup there with 60.5 kgs did the float-and-ferry thing back to Trentham. On the track where she had won the G1 Telegraph 1200m, she was beaten under a length, second, in the G1 Wellington Cup 3200m with 57 kgs (on a lower minimum than Makybe Diva had to worry about). Her jockey had conveniently dropped his whip at the 1400m. The horse who beat her carrying kilos less was Good Lord who came to Sydney and thrashed a Sydney Cup field (as My Good Man) with 60kgs on his back! He went on to win G1 in the United States.

Show Gate backed up the next week and smashed the Trentham course record for 2400m, breaking down midway through the race and having to be walked back to the enclosure. Win number 30, and she never raced again. Ask Bob Skelton about her.

Her bloodline hangs by a thread. G1 winner Showella is a grand-daughter. There won't be the likes of her at the Canterbury races tonight.