Sheila Laxon is wearing a look on her face like the world has just realised something she knew all along. Twenty three years after guiding Ethereal to a historic success in the Melbourne Cup, Laxon has returned to the summit again, this time with her partner John Symons in tow.
Her story was already one of the greatest in the Cup’s long history, but having masterminded, along with Symons and jockey Robbie Dolan, a second heist at just a second attempt, she belongs among the legends of the race.
The $91 odds about Knight’s Choice might indicate this was a shock result, but the look upon Laxon and Symons’ faces were ones of vindication. They knew all along they had a horse capable of winning the Cup, even if the market consigned their five-year-old to the role of pure outsider.
“This morning, as we're driving back from the stables to go and get changed. I said to Sheila, ‘how do you think we're really going to go today’? She said, ‘we're going to win’,” Symons said.
“And guess what, we just won the Melbourne Cup.”
Laxon’s faith came in both the horse himself and in the methodology. She knew what needed to be done to win the race. The fact he was by a Blue Diamond Stakes-winning sire, whose outstanding success so far has chiefly been confined to sprinting races, never concerned her.
“Everybody tells me he (Extreme Choice) would never produce a stayer, but that's what I say. If you can teach him to relax and he switches off and goes to sleep and saves all the energy, but he can out-sprint those other stayers because they're dour stayers,” she said.
“So if you can do that and Macedon (Lodge) really lends herself to getting horses to do that. And on the farm in New Zealand, same thing, rounding up sheep and cattle and all that sort of thing. It really chills them out a bit.
“And that's what you need. Don't pull, don't expend any energy at all, but have that brilliant sprint to the finish. And there you go.”
It’s not that Laxon disrespects the pedigree, it is just that she believes that the style of Australian staying races means speed is important as well.
“These (imported) horses perform really well overseas, over ground, but I think in Australia, because of the racing, it's pretty tenacious,” she said.
“That probably doesn't suit the Europeans so much.”
“Robbie (Dolan) just sat waiting for the pace until he decided to push the button. And he knew that he had that amazing sprint from the Extreme Choice side.
“So, I think you need to have sprinters and teach them to be stayers. That's my theory anyway.”
It has proven the case in both of Laxon’s Melbourne Cup victories.
“Rhythm, Ethereal's father, was, he won a Breeders' Cup Juvenile in America and he was only a breeder of horses up to a mile,” she said.
“People said, ‘Rhythms won't stay’. Well, that year I trained two Oaks winners by Rhythm.”
Only four Australian-bred horses have won the Melbourne Cup this century, while before this year, an Australian-bred sire hadn’t produced a Cup winner in 25 years.
It is also worth noting that Extreme Choice is not a big sire, which gives his progeny a better chance of developing into stayers. That said, the Newgate-based sire only has had two winners over 2000 metres or further, Knight’s Choice and VRC Oaks winner She’s Extreme.
Extreme Choice, who has his fertility closely managed, now has 12 stakes winners from 60 runners in his first two crops and is the first sire since Sir Tristram to produce winners of the Golden Slipper and Melbourne Cup.
“Everybody tells me he (Extreme Choice) would never produce a stayer ... if you can teach him (Knight's Choice) to relax and he switches off and goes to sleep and saves all the energy, he can out-sprint those other stayers because they're dour stayers” - Melbourne Cup-winning trainer Sheila Laxon.
Knight’s Choice’s dam Midnight Pearl, a daughter of More Than Ready, won up to 2000 metres, while her half-brother Denoninator won nine races for Symons and Laxon, up to 2200 metres, in the same colours.
It was that connection which led to Symons buying Knight’s Choice as a yearling.
“He had everything in the right places even though he was small,” Symons said of the $85,000 purchase at the 2021 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale.
“Mum was small so we knew the family.
“We had a horse who was a half-brother to the mum, when we first went to Queensland. We took him up from here. Cameron (Bain) owned him. I think he was a 2400-metre horse. He was the same. He had a very good sprint.
Bren O’Brien
“Unfortunately, we lost him. We were going to bring him back down to Victoria for some of the country cups. It didn't quite turn out the right way for us.”
Symons admits that knowledge ensured he had a head start in securing the Extreme Choice yearling.
Knight’s Choice also reminded the trainer of a horse called Zupacool, a son of Redoute’s Choice, Extreme Choice’s grandsire, who he purchased in 2007.
“This horse, if you stood those horses together, they look like twins,” Symons said.
“He was exactly the same as this horse. He came back and we wanted to run him in the Melbourne Cup.”
Symons had to be satisfied with winning a Bendigo Cup with Zupacool, but has retained his eye for selecting the right yearlings.
“You always focus on what you do. Look at the horses, what you've done, what can I do with this horse? How does it move? Does it fit all my criteria? Boom, boom, boom. Don't talk to anyone so they distract what your thoughts are,” he said.
Laxon jokes that she worries about leaving Symons alone in a sales ring, but she isn’t arguing with the results.
The man himself is happy to stand on his successes.
“We're probably lucky to spend half a million dollars at the yearling sales. But I've been very lucky over the years that I've had the ability, even when I was at Macedon Lodge, I went and bought Macedon Lady and Bel Esprit,” he said.
“I bought them half an hour apart and I paid $22,000 for them. That was the first year I was at Macedon Lodge. I'm lucky that I've got the ability to be able to do that.”
Returning to Macedon Lodge, temporarily at least, while leaving a stable of 25 back home on the Sunshine Coast, has proven key as well.
“We love training them away from the racecourse, you know, a lot of people think they've got to be doing this all the time. We work on the European thing and just, just get the horse fit,” he said.
“So that's why Macedon Lodge suits us so much and I can't thank Bruce Dixon and Mark Player enough for letting us be there.
“To have these horses in Melbourne and not have to worry about Sunshine Coast for the time being, it's given Sheila and I six weeks where we work 24/7 on these horses to have them right for today.”
