Remembering Mahogany

Cover image courtesy of Sportpix

The news that old warrior Mahogany had passed away last week brought its share of memories for many people in horse racing. Across social media, print and radio, the horse’s career was revisited with all the song and story deserving of an eight-time Group 1 winner.

Lee Freedman, Mahogany’s trainer, said he was “a horse before his time”, while Lloyd Williams, co-owner alongside the late Kerry Packer, said he was “very fortunate to have ever had a horse like Mahogany”.

At the Packer family’s plush property ‘Ellerston’, deep in the Upper Hunter Valley with its polo fields and golf course and 30,000 hectares, Mahogany had whiled away 23 long years in retirement. He died last Saturday at the age of 31, a very respectable innings.

Extraordinary range

Mahogany’s career has been well documented in the wake of his death.

The horse began racing in November 1992 and, through 43 starts, he won 19 races, was placed in a further 12 and won close to $3.7 million in prizemoney. He wasn’t the most decorated or consistent of Australian champions, with Williams reflecting this week that there have been greater horses, but Mahogany was brilliant in his versatility, and that was what set him aside from his peers.

As a 3-year-old, he won the G1 VRC Derby and G1 AJC Derby double. When he achieved it in 1993/94, it hadn’t been done since Classic Mission (NZ) in 1971.

Alongside his Derby wins, the horse won the 1993 G1 Caulfield Guineas, and that made him the first horse since Tulloch (NZ) in 1957 to achieve that rare treble of wins.

Mahogany’s 3-year-old season, which earned him Australian Horse of the Year honours in 1994, would have suggested that he was a staying prospect, but this proved largely untrue. From 1994 until his retirement in March 1998, he was one of the nation’s crack sprinters.

He was twice a winner of the G1 Lightning S. over 1000 metres (in 1995 and 1997), and he won the G2 Linlithgow S. over 1200 metres in 1996. In fact, Mahogany’s spread of stakes wins by his retirement was 1000 metres to 2500 metres.

Gallery: Some of "The Greats" of Mahogany's era

Sandwiched in the middle was the 1995 G1 Cox Plate when, lumping 59kg, the horse was downed a half-head by no less than Octagonal (NZ). By many accounts, it was one of Mahogany’s finest efforts because he gave the winner, an outstanding racehorse, a 10.5kg pull in the weights.

Mahogany raced in an era punctuated by such brilliant horses as Octagonal, with some of the other names he ran into being Melbourne Cup winners Jeune (GB) and Saintly (Sky Chase {NZ}), Hall of Famer Schillaci, G1 Newmarket H. winner Ruffles (Zeditave) and Derby-winner Nothin’ Leica Dane.

Juvenile brilliance

With all these accomplishments written into the annals, it’s been partly overlooked that Mahogany was a brilliant 2-year-old.

He began his career in Group company, running fourth at Sandown in November 1992 in the G3 Merson Cooper S. He was ridden that day by Damien Oliver before jockey Greg Hall became his regular pilot, Hall riding the horse through 16 of his 19 career wins, and 34 of his 43 overall career starts.

Mahogany had four consistent starts in Victoria as a 2-year-old before Lee Freedman opted to send him north for Queensland’s winter carnival. At the time, Freedman’s brother Michael did most of the travelling with the horses.

“Back in those days, us four brothers were still knocking around together,” Michael Freedman said. “I was the one doing pretty much all the travel around the country with the horses, and Mahogany was one of a team of about eight or 10 horses that we took to Brisbane for the winter carnival. We did that a lot with our young, progressive horses and, at the time, Mahogany was one of them.”

The horse won his first start during that 1993 carnival, and he was then second at Eagle Farm before a pair of Group 1 wins in the QTC Sires’ Produce S. and Castlemaine S. (now the G1 JJ Atkins S.). Michael Freedman had taken a promising juvenile north and made him a star.

“From memory, he was gelded after the Merson Cooper S.,” Freedman said. “He was just too colty, and he had shown us good ability so gelding him and returning him to the track, then travelling him up there, it was the making of him.”

Freedman said the penny dropped with Mahogany during that Queensland carnival, which led to the horse clattering through his Guineas-Derby double 3-year-old season.

However, the son of Last Tycoon (Ire) wasn’t always the easiest of horses and, owing to later inconsistencies and some high-profile defeats, he was labelled ‘sour’ and ‘unreliable’ in the papers.

“He could be a bit of a cranky customer,” Freedman said. “I had the good fortune to look after him from the time he came to us as a yearling, and he was probably a horse that had his bad moods. If he was in one of those, he could be quite an aggressive type. He just had that attitude that he knew he was pretty good.”

The Freedman operation figured out Mahogany very well to sustain the horse’s six seasons on the track. They knew he ran best when he was fresh, that his early staying feats were executed on class alone, and that there were few horses that could go with his turn of foot when all the ducks were in a row.

“I don’t think we’ll ever see his like again, in terms of winning two Derbies and two Lightnings,” Freedman said. “He was just one of those that had so much on his opposition as a 3-year-old, that even though he wasn’t a genuine stayer, he was just too good for them.”

Among the very best

Michael Freedman remembers Mahogany as a neat, average-sized gelding. The horse was distinctive for his long, off-set snip down his nose.

“He’s wasn’t an overly big horse in stature,” the trainer said. “He was a neat horse, average sized. When he was trained fresh for those shorter courses, he had a really wicked turn of foot and, as a racehorse, that was one of his great attributes, that he could really quicken like only proper, good horses can.”

The Freedman family has had its share of remarkable racehorses and, over the years, Michael Freedman has been asked many times about his favourites.

“Mahogany was always my favourite, and that was mainly because I had him to look after from almost the day that he came in as a yearling, and I looked after him for most of his career,” he said. “He was always right up there because of that versatility and I don’t think when you look at any of the great racehorses, whether they were in our care or anyone else’s, that there were many being able to do what he did.”

History will largely back that up with a few rare exceptions.

In 1884, Malua posted a jaw-dropping calendar year when he won the Oakleigh Plate, Newmarket H., Melbourne S. (now the Mackinnon S.), AJC Spring S. and the Melbourne Cup. That’s a spread of elite wins from 1100 metres to 3200 metres, all in the one year. He would later win a Grand National Hurdle.

In 1901, Wakeful (Trenton {NZ}) won the Oakleigh Plate and Newmarket H., and then subsequently won the Sydney Cup the following year before a spectacular loss by a whisker to Lord Cardigan in the 1903 Melbourne Cup (carrying 60kg).

Tulloch also won from 1100 metres up to two miles, but those short-course wins were early in his career. Even Peter Pan sandwiched his pair of Melbourne Cups with a dazzling, track-record 1400-metre win at Victoria Park.

However, very few horses in Australian history have begun their careers at the elite end with Derby victories only to rein themselves in to win successive Group 1 sprints as Mahogany did.

“He ranks among the very best we’ve ever had in the stable,” Freedman said. “It will never be replicated what he did, and he was a foundation horse for me and my brothers, in terms of getting us established. While it was a good innings for him to get to 31, it was still sad to read the news that he was gone.”

The first of the Tycoons

Mahogany was from the first Australian crop of the Irish sire Last Tycoon (Ire).

Last Tycoon was bred in 1983 at Kilfrush Stud in County Limerick which, among many others, also bred the lavish filly Immortal Verse (Ire) (Pivotal {GB}).

During a pointed racing career, the stallion won the 1986 G1 Breeders’ Cup Mile for his trainer Robert Collet and, during his time as a stallion from 1987 to 2003, he shuttled to many places, including Australia from 1989 to 2002. He was at Segenhoe Stud (when it was housed on the grounds of the now Vinery Stud), plus Arrowfield and Coolmore Australia.

Last Tycoon was best known locally for his siring Mahogany, but among his additional progeny were Champion Sire O’Reilly (NZ), plus Iglesia, who sired Written Tycoon, Knowledge, who won the G1 Blue Diamond, and New Zealand Champion Filly Tycoon Lil.

Last Tycoon became the first shuttle stallion in Australian history to win the Champion Sire title, which he won in 1993/94 just before Danehill (USA) set off on his nine-title bender.

In 1990, when Mahogany was born, the Irish stallion was still an unknown.

At Segenhoe, he visited the American mare Alshandegha (USA), who was by the Calumet Farm sire Alydar (USA). The mare had been imported to Australia in October 1989, and Mahogany was her first foal in this part of the world.

The horse was born on October 1, 1990, and Magic Millions auctioneer David Chester recalls visiting Segenhoe in the lead-up to the 1992 Magic Millions Yearling Sale. At that time, Chester was conducting all the inspections for the company through the Hunter Valley, and he said he was lucky to pick up Mahogany for that year’s Sale.

On January 12, 1992, a Sunday afternoon, Mahogany was bought for $65,000 as Lot 162. Chester wrote the figure down in his catalogue as Henry Plumptre secured the colt on behalf of Lloyd Williams.

Plumptre was the bloodstock advisor for Williams at the time, and Mahogany was the first horse he bought for Williams, and the only horse they picked up from that 1992 Sale.

The life-changer

“It was the first year that I’d been commissioned to buy yearlings for Lloyd Williams, and that was the first sale,” Plumptre said. “Lloyd was particularly keen to buy some of the progeny of Last Tycoon, and funnily enough Mahogany was the only horse we bought at the Sale.”

Plumptre can’t recall if the other yearlings were too expensive or if they were just content with what they had. Either way, it was a phenomenal strike to land Mahogany in the first purchase.

“He was a life-changing horse for a lot of people, but he was certainly a life-changing horse for me,” Plumptre said. “He was in the first group of yearlings that I bought as an agent, and I bought him for my biggest and best client, and over the next four years he won eight Group 1s.”

Plumptre said the versatility that Mahogany showed them was unprecedented.

“He had an extraordinary range for a racehorse,” he said. “But he also had a very good training team and a very good jockey. The Freedmans were easily the best trainers in the 1990s in Australia, and they had incredible attention to detail. Lee was a great leader, but all the brothers played a part.

“They were very clever in how they placed the horse, and to keep the horse sound over so many seasons was no mean feat.”

Plumptre has worked in racing for most of his life. He has been with Godolphin and now Cambridge Stud, and he’s seen incredible champions. Still, he remembers the yearling Mahogany because it’s often the way of bloodstock agents to remember the genesis of particular racehorses.

“Anyone who is asked about yearlings, they’ll always tell you the horse was a good walker,” Plumptre said. “There are 100 different opinions on what is a good walker, but this horse was just a very attractive colt with a lot of quality. Last Tycoon was a very good-looking horse and had that same sort of quality, and Mahogany’s critics might have said he was a little bit light as a yearling, but I quite liked him.”

Plumptre wrote ‘racy’ on Mahogany’s catalogue page, which proved to be correct, and down the years he stayed in touch with the horse’s long life. He visited the gelding at Ellerston four years ago, spending an hour in the paddock with the then 27-year-old champion.

“I sent Mr Williams a text on Sunday, just saying that the morning’s news brought back some very happy memories,” Plumptre said. “And that’s all I said, because nothing about that horse was sad.

“Everything that he did brought a lot of joy to a lot of people, particularly his inner circle, and he was a great servant on the racecourse. He was a life-changing horse for me back in 1992. Absolutely life-changing.”

In Mahogany’s honour, Magic Millions has a yearling barn named after him. In Victoria, the annual Mahogany Challenge is a seven-race series for emerging 3-year-old stayers, while the high-roller room of Melbourne's Crown Casino, which Williams previously ran, is also named after him.

Mahogany is yet to be inducted into the Australian Hall of Fame but, by most accounts, it’s probably not far away.