On Track - Spring 2020 Edition

18 HUMIDOR RISES FROM THE ASHES Horses have a habit of saying “I told you so” in the Cox Plate. Pinker Pinker didn’t have the class, Fields Of Omagh was too old, Super Impose was past his best and Kingston Town couldn’t win; but they all did win, and in the most memorable of circumstances. On the score of vindication then, surely Humidor is the horse with the point to prove in 2020. Humidor, the New Zealand warhorse pensioned off for retirement by the Twitterati, his paper’s stamped – until a single spark lit a most unexpected flame. “There’s always a special story in the Cox Plate, every year there is – and this year it’s us,” said Brae Sokolski part-owner of Humidor. “We didn’t plan for him to be here again, after last year I didn’t think he’d ever get back to this race, but horses have a strange habit of proving us wrong.” The 2019 Cox Plate barrier draw was a tough moment for Sokolski and Humidor’s swag of owners as they were left out of the final field at the discretion of the Committee, the most public of cuts at the peak of the Spring Carnival. “We knew it was line ball, the drums were beating that morning from the Committee that there were three horses fighting for two places – it was a game of musical chairs and one of us was going to miss out,” said Sokolski. “We just had to accept the jury’s verdict and move on, but it didn’t make the race any easier to watch.” The expert view was that Humidor had not returned to his best after a suspensory ligament injury suffered in 2018 and after seven unplaced runs in 2019 the weight- for-age regular was considered to be well past his use by date. The horse’s owners made the decision to try a different path and relocated the horse from Ciaron Maher and Dave Eustace to Lindsey Smith. “It was a lateral option but ultimately it didn’t work out and that is with no disrespect to Lindsey Smith as a great trainer or a person; by his own admission his training method didn’t work for Humidor,” said Sokolski. Humidor was ridden “upside down” at his first run for Smith in the Group 3 Belmont Sprint and that was the point at which the West Australian experiment fell apart as far as the horses’ owners were concerned. “Things can go wrong in a run and that’s fine – and not every horse responds to every trainer, but it was unsuccessful and glaringly so and for whatever reason the horse didn’t fire. We found ourselves at the fork of the road – do we retire him, or do we try once more?” Humidor gave Winx a fright in the 2017 Ladbrokes Cox Plate By Mick Sharkie