This was some cast of equine heroes. Naturalism had top billing with the punters, though. An AJC Derby winner coming off effortless Memsie, Feehan and Turnbull Stakes wins – where, dare I say it, all he had to do was stand up to win. But racing is racing. Anything can happen, especially when you have Better Loosen Up, Let’s Elope, Rough Habit, Muirfield Village, Slight Chances, Sydeston, Mannerism, Slight Chance, Kinjite, Coronation Day, Burst and the reigning Caulfield Guineas winner in Palace Reign. (And I’ve left one out for later). Many of them since elevated to Hall of Famers – regaled today but absolute household names then. Imagine getting them together before a bubbling expectant crowd at The Valley for a championship bout? And that it was, going the full distance too. Well, you’d know that Palace Reign fell around the 600m, brought down Naturalism over the top to the groans of rider Mick Dittman and an astonished crowd, Sydeston lost the rider and Rough Habit was put out of play. But that wasn’t the end of it. Who was left was dusting themselves for a flurry to the wire and that’s what it was. Horses and riders went in all directions, almost a win-at-all-costs, with horses used to winning and willing to win against the odds. Turning in, it could have been let’s Elope or Better Loosen Up. Even a case for points to Prince Salieri. In the end, though, it was Super Impose, old Super, eight, off a Canberra Cup win, hardly the normal formline into a Cox Plate. And with Greg Hall, as he says, “picking up the crumbs” for his first ride on the legend. They saved the race from disaster. While all else was going on inside them, Super did what Super had done best through a long and marvellous career, chased victory and that he did. “I remember I had instructions from Anthony (Freedman) to ‘go at the squash courts.’ Well, I got to the milk bar, saw some tennis courts, couldn’t find the squash courts, so I just took off,” Hall said. “I had an owner ring me the night before telling me that Super didn’t like the whip. I don’t reckon I missed a spot on him in the last 250m. It was my only ride on the old horse. I’d been pestering Lee (Freedman) to give me a chance. I got it and took it,” said Hall, who says he had also been offered Let’s Elope after taking the Super Impose booking. There was more pandemonium, protests everywhere. Better Loosen Up (Simon Marshall) was fourth over the line, and successfully protested against Let’s Elope (Greg Childs) as the crowd and all concerned were trying to digest what they had just witnessed. Many of the players were perhaps in career twilights. Super Impose would only race once more – finishing 15th in a Melbourne Cup. But they knew how to put on a show. And some show it was – all playing their parts and a fitting hero achieving legendary status in the process. Even if Super didn’t need the Cox Plate to underline that, Better Loosen Up, Let’s Elope, Roughie and co, lost nothing by taking part in the best Cox Plate line-up ever assembled and the most vividly recalled of races in history. So whatever the final make-up of the field that takes to The Valley on October 22, they will have earned their spot and place in the elite Cox Plate honour roll of carefully selected stars. But they will have done so in the ghosts of the superstars that were there in 1992 – a race etched in the pantheon of not just Cox Plate history but Australian racing folklore.
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