‘Tough and spirited’ – how Verry Elleegant rose to greatness and rewrote Australian racing history

By any statistical measure, Verry Elleegant was a champion of the Australasian turf, but it was her incredible versatility at the elite level which puts her among the genuine greats.

Her untimely passing this week in Ireland, while foaling for the first time, was met with widespread shock and sadness across the thoroughbred world, but also gives a chance to reflect on the extraordinary things she achieved on the track.

She won Group 1 races at ages three, four, five and six from distances of 1400m up to 3200m, 11 in total, under a range of conditions.

Two of those Group 1s were against her own sex, six were under weight-for-age conditions against the boys, one under set weights and penalties conditions and two in Australia’s greatest handicaps, the Caulfield Cup and the Melbourne Cup.

Those 11 elite successes put her equal seventh all-time in Australasian list – bearing in mind Group 1 classifications only came in during the 1970s – behind Winx (25), Black Caviar (16), Kingston Town (14), Melody Belle (14), Sunline (13), Tie the Knot (13) and level with Manikato, Rough Habit and Lonhro.

However, a further level of her versatility was the number of different Group 1 races on her resume. Her 11 Group 1 wins came in 10 different races, with the Chipping Norton Stakes her only repeat. Fittingly, that race, to be run on Saturday week, will be called the Verry Elleegant Stakes.

That total of 10 different Group 1s puts her equal with Black Caviar, Lonhro and Kingston Town and behind only the legendary Winx on 11, in Australasian racing history.

Verry Elleegant and Winx only spent a few months as stablemates at Waller’s stables. The former arrived after Darren Weir’s suspension in the same autumn as Winx was making her racetrack farewell.

Forty minutes before Winx won her 25th and final Group 1, Verry Elleegant claimed her second elite success in the Australian Oaks. It was a moment of the baton being handed over, but such was the phenomenal record of Winx, Verry Elleegant suffered by comparison.

There is an argument that had Verry Elleegant come along five years early or five years later, she would have been much more celebrated, but coming so soon after Winx made it a tough shadow to escape from.

However, she did do something her illustrious stablemate never got the chance to. She got her crowning moment when she won Australia’s most famous and historically important race the Melbourne Cup, in emphatic fashion, in 2021.

She carried 57kg, won by four lengths and ran the fifth quickest Melbourne Cup of all time. She also defeated the Caulfield Cup winner Incentivise, the next best stayer in the land.

The Winner of the Lexus Melbourne Cup is Verry Elleegaant #CupWeekon10 #MelbourneCup pic.twitter.com/8JeMKnp2Yb

— 10 Sport (@10SportAU) November 2, 2021

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Again, underlining her versatility, she became the first horse since Saintly in the 1990s to win a Melbourne Cup as well as a Group 1 race over 1400 metres.

All of these from a mare of obscure pedigree by a sire, Zed, who three years before Verry Elleegant was foaled, was serving Clydesdale mares in the deep south of New Zealand at a stud called Erewhon.

It was only a bit of inspiration from Marc Corcoran from Grangewilliam Stud and the faith of Zed shareholder Don Goodwin that Verry Elleegant came to be in the first place. Goodwin put his mare Opulence to Zed looking for a cross to the legendary Eight Carat.

The first foal from that mating was the subsequent Listed winner Verry Flash. The second Zed foal from Opulence was the dark brown filly, noted as ‘fairly plain’ but ‘tough and spirited’. Tough and spirited would become a hallmark of Verry Elleegant’s career.

Tributes flow after Cup champion Verry Elleegant dies in Ireland

Verry Elleegant, the 2021 Melbourne Cup winner, has died in Ireland due to complications while having her first foal.

The StraightWarwick Barr

As a yearling, she was never commercial enough to warrant inclusion in a sale and she was retained to race by Goodwin and the Jomara Bloodstock crew. Her original trainer Nick Bishara noted in her first two-year-old preparation that she possessed above-average ability.

She debuted as a late two-year-old at Te Rapa, running second, and then broke her maiden at Ruakaka, when she got on the radar of Australian buyers. She won another race at Matamata and then headed to Darren Weir’s Ballarat stables.

What became immediately apparent on her arrival in Australia was that while she had plenty of talent – she ran third in the Edward Manifold and won the Ethereal Stakes – she was also a tricky filly, running unplaced in both the Wakeful Stakes and the VRC Oaks as favourite.

The move to Waller’s stables, although not intended, proved the masterstroke to unearthing her talent. She would win 13 of 31 starts for Waller, 11 at the top level, and be crowned Australian Horse Of The Year in 2020/21. The spirited filly became a superstar mare.

Verry Elleegant pic.twitter.com/OvjmBtgEct

— Chris Waller Racing (@cwallerracing) February 18, 2024

The postscript of her Waller career came with her four unplaced starts in France and England for Francis Henri Graffard. It honestly wasn’t the finish such a stellar career deserved but doesn’t diminish what she achieved in Australia.

Her premature death at age eight at Norelands, a stud in Ireland, announced by Waller, is sad in many ways. Tragically, it has been reported that the Sea The Stars foal also died, which means her legacy won’t continue in a breeding sense.

But history will still record her amazing achievements on the track with great fondness. A champion in an era, who created a Melbourne Cup moment for the ages.