Dazed In The Life

Sea The Stars: The Greatest October 5, 2009

Mick Kinane and Sea The Stars are welcomed into the winner's enclosure.

What a day. What a horse.

Sometimes there aren’t enough words to explain the impossible. Sometimes there aren’t enough rounds of applause, enough cheers, enough smiles to express the brilliant. Sometimes there isn’t a way of comparing sporting achievements fairly and accurately.

Well, to hell with it. Who needs comparisons when you have witnessed the incomparable?

The multiple variations on the word “stars” and its accompanying clichés and adages have been practically exhausted by every sports page, every tabloid headline writer, every racing commentator, over the last six months. Six months which changed the history of horse-racing; six months which saw flat racing transformed from the sober, aging brother of the two strands of the sport into a brimming cauldron of passion, desire, belief; six months which forged a legend.

It was my unique pleasure today to be present at Longchamp race-track on the edge of Paris, where I witnessed Sea The Stars seal the the crowning moment in a career of crowning moments. His victory in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe was what almost every Irish and British supporter of horseracing wanted to see, what many of those French racegoers at the track today NEEDED to see.

Sea The Stars does need to be seen to be believed. The parade ring at Longchamp is quite small as it is, but it was packed with owners and onlookers, while the amphitheatre around it was seething with craning bodies. Everyone, even his rivals, wanted to see Sea The Stars, to take a photo, to see this Irish wonder-horse who has laid waste to a landscape of Group Ones. The pointing, the whispering: “That’s him. – He’s the greatest horse ever. – And there’s Mick Kinane. – 50, you know. – 50?! – What a fine animal”.

When he crossed the line after the most nerve-wracking of contests, my heart almost burst out of my chest and my brother, father and I dissolved into a teary celebratory clamber of a hug. The French couple beside me went from bemused to understanding, reaching over to shake my hand and congratulate us: This was history being written with a full stop. This was something we will never see again.

For anyone who doesn’t know, let me try explain what this horse has achieved. Described by his trainer as “a machine”, he is unbeaten in 7 starts dating back into last year. He began the year by winning the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket. He has won the Epsom Derby, a career in itself for many horses – that double hadn’t been accomplished since Nashwan two decades ago. He has defeated many horses who are recognised as world-class, who would, in any other year, be lauded as heroes themselves in sealing the Eclipse, the Juddmonte and the Champion Stakes. He has won a Group One race in EVERY month this year since May. Today’s win made it 6 Group Ones in 6 months.

Many horses win Group Ones. A few have won a comparable amount to Sea The Stars. Rock Of Gibraltar won 7, in fact, over the course of two seasons. But no horse has ever won the Guineas-Derby-Arc trio. No horse has won so many great races over so many distances (from a mile to a mile and a half – Rock Of Gibraltar was a pure miler). And no horse has EVER, nor will they again, win SIX IN SIX STARTS IN SIX MONTHS. That is like winning all four of tennis or golf’s majors and two more. That is winning 6 FA Cup Finals. That is 6 Olympic Gold medals. That is 6 All-Ireland championships. 6 Oscars. 6 Nobel Prizes. 6 terms in the White House. Sea The Stars has ripped common sense and wisdom to shreds. If there is to be an end to history, a moment after which such moments may never be again, that was today for flat-racing.

That’s not all though. For my family, it is particularly emotional to see the success and the deserved praise for John Oxx, the trainer of Sea The Stars. John is as quiet and unassuming a man as you could ever meet. He is regularly described as professorial by proud adjective-wielders in The Racing Post. He will come home from a successful days racing and will be dozing on the sofa with a half-finished glass of wine beside him while his many friends will be reliving the day’s events around him.

Irish fans travelled in large numbers to witness the moment a legend was sealed.

Irish and indeed, European racing as a whole, has been dominated in recent years by the powerhouse that is Ballydoyle and Aiden O’Brien. It was in danger of stagnating if no one came to challenge that dominance – like the Tiger effect on the US PGA tour. Then, two years ago, John Oxx was trusted by a young man named Christopher Tsui to train this horse, a gift from his mother. John honed the animal and placed it in the capable hands of Mick Kinane, at 50 years of age, a veteran jockey with a magical ability and understanding of horses.

Bingo. With that, racing had its own holy trinity, a tripartite alliance which has had everything thrown at it by Ballydoyle, by Godolphin, by anyone who is anyone. But it has survived, and indeed, rebutted every challenge. John, his wife Caitríona and children, Aoife, Deirdre and Kevin, have been wonderful friends to us. Tsui’s advisor in all these matters, John Clarke, is my brother’s godfather and his son, Jonathan is Killian’s best friend. The three families, Oxx, Clarke and McStay, with their three Johns, have been inseparable since I’ve been on this earth. Today was a small celebration of that, as much as a massive celebration of the magical Sea The Stars.

He didn’t have it easy today. He took a couple of furlongs to settle and Mick Kinane had to drop him back into the field. As they made the long bend at the far end of the track, it seemed that the wheels were falling off the wagon. Ballydoyle’s pacemakers were streaking ahead, while Sea The Stars was boxed in amongst the pack. Into the straight. Still no gap. Please. Please. It has to come.

It came. Barely. A chink of an escape came on the inside of the field along the running rail, one which might close as quickly as it had opened. But that split second was all it took. Kinane and his mount saw the light and charged straight at it. Within a couple hundred yards, he had seized the lead and, with another furlong and a half to go, it was happening. The field pushed on, but Sea The Stars held them at arm’s length and took the winning post to cheers and rapture unlike any other.

The same French punters who had mocked and whistled at Kinane and Sea The Stars as he left the parade ring – they had their hopes pinned on Christophe Soumillon and his wonder-filly Stacelita – rose and acclaimed the confirmed hero as he returned. The tricolour flapping in the wind about the jockey was green, white and gold, not red, white and blue. The McStays marched straight into the ring past security with the air of winners – feeling like winners too – to share the moment. To be in the midst of a reception like that was special. The tears were as copious as the cheers.

All the while, Sea The Stars breather deeply, drank from his bucket and looked about with those knowing eyes as if to say “What? I told you so. You didn’t think I’d lose, did you?” He is Ali. He is Federer. He is Woods. He is Bolt. He is the greatest ever. Ask anyone. If they weren’t sure before today, they will be now. Best ever? Well, there’s no way of comparing…but who needs comparisons.

Sea The Stars: Nothing compares to you.