Which win wins?
For co-trainer Will Hayes, the third Makybe Diva still stands apart, though he rates Mr Brightside’s runner-up finish in the Memsie after a long layoff close behind: “I thought probably his third Makybe Diva was a very special race for me. But even just when he came second in the Memsie after such a long time off – I even thought that was a pretty special performance, and he certainly lost no admirers.”
His brother and co-trainer Ben Hayes points to Mr Brightside’s first Doncaster win – a race their father never won and Lindsay Park had never won either: “It was a time that he really announced himself and showed he was a top-class horse.”
Both brothers trace the gelding’s rise back to a single day at Ballarat, where he demolished what Will calls the hardest field he’d faced to that point in his preparation – the run that got the stable “dreaming of Cantalas and stuff like that,” working back from Group 1 targets. Will describes him simply as “the epitome of a war horse.”
Back from a break
This year’s build-up looks different. Mr Brightside returned to racing in late August after almost ten months off, having had a small bone chip removed from his left-fore fetlock. He finished second, beaten three lengths, to Beiwacht in the Group 1 Memsie Stakes at Caulfield – enough, the Hayes brothers say, to suggest the veteran hasn’t lost a step. “Internally we never lost faith,” Will says.
“He’s our champion, he’s never let us down."
Ben adds that the horse is hard to read at home – “a very lazy track worker” – which is exactly why he’s lasted so long: “He looks after himself and turns up race day.” Both trainers believe he’s come through the run improved, and in better order than at the same point last year.
The past twelve months tested the stable in other ways too. Mr Brightside had barely returned to Lindsay Park after his surgery when the Euroa bushfires forced an emergency evacuation; he was floated to safety at Nuralum Park as the fire closed in.
