Описание
Sunline (1995–2009)
unline (1995–2009) was a New Zealand bred Thoroughbred racehorse who was the world's highest earning racemare of her time, competing on 48 occasions for 32 wins, 9 seconds and 3 thirds to earn A$11,351,607. She won races in three different countries, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. She won successive W.S. Cox Plates (2,040m), the richest Weight for Age (WFA) race in Australia. She also twice won the toughest mile race in Australia, the Doncaster Handicap, once as a three-year-old and then again as a six-year-old. She was named New Zealand Horse of the Year four times and is also the only horse ever to win the Australian Horse of the Year championship three times. Sunline was unique in winning so many major races in both Australia and New Zealand. The only other horse to do this was racing legend Gloaming who raced around 1915.
She recorded a remarkable 13 wins from her 25 starts in Group One races (a winning strike-rate of 52%), while Makybe Diva, with whom she is often compared, won seven of her 14 (a winning strike-rate of 50%). Greg Childs, the jockey who rode Sunline in 33 of her races, said she deserved to bracketed with the Diva as the best racemares of the modern era. Makybe Diva was an outstanding stayer and Sunline was a champion middle distance horse.[1]
Sunline led in most of her races, and sometimes settled just behind the leader. She was renowned for her tremendous constitution, and for being difficult to pass. Sunline was an inaugural inductee into the New Zealand Racing Hall of Fame, along with the other turf immortals Carbine, Gloaming, Kindergarten and Phar Lap.Contents [hide]
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Early days
Sunline was foaled at Pleasanton Stud near Cambridge, New Zealand on 29 September 1995. Her sire was the handy Group Two winning English sire, Desert Sun, a grandson of leading sire Danzig, and her dam was the former capable mare Songline by Western Symphony (USA). Intriguingly, Sunline was one of the horses to come from the same family as Phar Lap, tracing all the way back to his dam, Entreaty, who was her 8th dam. A big strong plain bay with no white markings, Sunline was leased by her breeders Susan Archer and Michael Martin to Takanini trainer Trevor McKee.
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Racing career
In partnership with Thayne Green and Helen Lusty, McKee raced the filly three times for as many wins as a two-year-old.
After a first-up win at three, in August 1998, McKee took Sunline across the Tasman Sea to Australia for the first of an eventual nine visits. Sunline did not disappoint. Racing in the second, third, and fourth legs of Sydney's Princess Series, for three-year-old fillies, she powered through the wet on her Australian debut in the Furious Stakes, won the Tea Rose Stakes in fast time on a dry track two weeks later, and rounded out her campaign with a resounding win in the Flight Stakes - her first of 13 Group One wins. Sunline was widely considered a superstar in the making, but was spelled, rather than continuing on to the feature races in Melbourne, and never clashed with the reigning Horse of the Year, Might And Power, who was also a powerful front runner.
Sunline resumed in February 1999, and had eight wins from as many starts in New Zealand, but was narrowly beaten by Rose O'War, second-up, in Melbourne's Angus Armanasco Stakes. The race was not run to suit, with a long shot racing away before the home turn, which may have exposed Sunline's lack of fitness on the day, as she was jumping from 1,200 to 1,600 metres. At her next start, Sunline defeated Rose O'War in the Kewney Stakes, and in her first look at the C
