A record number of individual Group 1 winners are set to contest the $1.5 million, All Aged Stakes (1400m) at Royal Randwick on Saturday. Sydney’s final Group 1 race of the season has 19 nominations including 14 individual winners at the elite level.
The likely All Aged field includes $15.4 million earner Giga Kick; the brilliant Fangirl, who has won over $10.7 million; Caulfield and Melbourne Cups hero Half Yours; Godolphin duo Tom Kitten and Pericles, who have both won more than $7 million; and, defending champ Jimmysstar (NZ). In fact, the last three All Aged Stakes winners are set to clash on Saturday with Giga Kick (2023) and Magic Time (2024) among the entries.
The other Group 1 winners likely to contest the All Aged are Briasa, Royal Patronage (Fr), Lazzura, Sepals, Beiwacht, Desert Lightning (NZ) and Kovalica (NZ).
If all 14 accept for the All-Aged Stakes when the final field is declared on Wednesday, this will be the most individual Group 1 winners to clash in the same race, certainly in the modern era. Australian Turf Club’s Head of Racing and Wagering, Nevesh Ramdhani, said the All Aged Stakes will be a fitting end to a memorable Sydney Autumn Carnival.
“The All Aged Stakes is perfectly placed where it lands on the last day of the carnival,” Ramdhani said. “Everyone seems to have kept their powder dry waiting for this race. We have ended up with one of the greatest All Aged fields you will ever get. “It has been a sensational Sydney Autumn Carnival and this race is the cherry on top. The racing in Sydney through March at Rosehill and then for The Championships at Randwick has been fantastic.” The famous 1992 Cox Plate won by Super Impose is often regarded as the greatest field to contest the nation’s weight-for-age championship with 13 of the 14 starters having won at Group 1 level.
When champion Saintly won the 1996 Melbourne Cup, there was also 13 individual Group 1 winners in the 22-horse field.
The Bart Cummings-trained Saintly is also the last Melbourne Cup winner to win first-up next start, scoring in the CF Orr Stakes in 1997.
Saintly was on the verge of greatness at the time. The four-year-old gelding had reeled successive wins in the Cox Plate and Melbourne Cup the previous spring, and was brilliant in his Orr return — only to break down with a tendon injury. He never raced again.
Half Yours, the 13th to complete the coveted Cups double, is a rising six-year-old gelding who has only had 15 starts, winning eight. Trainers Tony and Calvin McEvoy are using the All Aged Stakes to ready the stayer for a Brisbane winter carnival campaign.
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