‘The last thing we want to do is destroy it’: The magic of Moonee Valley

Glen Boss surfed a wave into a tsunami during one of the greatest-ever finishes to a Cox Plate.

Even for a big-time jockey who had travelled the world, it was a feeling he had never experienced before – being caught up in a surge of horses in a cauldron of noise.

The moment began, he said, when the 2005 Cox Plate field started fanning out off the fence about 1000 metres from home.

Soon, there were nine horses abreast across the tight-turning Moonee Valley circuit as they built up speed and hurtled for home. It was more like the charge of the light brigade than a horse race.

“It was crazy,” Boss told The Age this week of his famous victory on famous horse Makybe Diva.

“I was looking to both sides to see if anyone was going any good. I remember Steven King, who rode Fields Of Omagh, thinking his horse was going alright.

“But he looked across and could see me sitting there like a church mouse, and he just went, ‘Oh, for f----’ sake’.”

King was right to swear. The indefatigable Makybe Diva broke the wave apart.

But for Boss, the tsunami came next – a wall of noise rumbling down from the grandstands and smacking the riders in the face.

“It’s a feeling actually, it’s more than a noise,” Boss explains. “You can actually feel it. It’s a cool experience to have.”

As Moonee Valley prepares to shut its doors on 142 years of history after the last race on Saturday night and completely rebuild its track, Boss was one of several champion jockeys and administrators who said they were proud and fortunate to have been part of such an intimate venue’s storied history.

Boss would go on to win four Cox Plate titles across 15 years, two of them on champions – Makybe Diva and So You Think.

“But I’m really excited for the next chapter of Moonee Valley,” he said. “I think it’s going to be extraordinary. I really do.”

Well before he became chairman of the racing club, Adam Lennen was a student and boarder at Melbourne University’s Newman College.

He lobbed at the Valley in October 1992 to watch a Cox Plate at a time, he said, when he should have been studying. Not that he regretted the decision. He was on track to witness an epic.

The race was turned on its head when favourite Naturalism stumbled over a fallen horse and lost his rider at the 600m mark, leaving veterans Super Impose and Better Loosen Up to fight it out with champion mare Let’s Elope and lesser lights Kinjite and Slight Chance.

In a messy, rough-house finish, Super Impose and Greg Hall swept around the outside to grab Let’s Elope on the line by a nose. But the drama was far from over.

Fifth-placed Better Loosen Up’s jockey Simon Marshall would successfully protest against the second horse.

“What a race to see,” Lennen said this week. “I don’t think you see too many protests of fifth against second that are upheld, particularly in a group 1 race. It was phenomenal. Just an amazing atmosphere.”

So Lennen understands the theatre that Moonee Valley has provided over the past century, and knows that his board has a responsibility of preserving an atmosphere that had stood the test of time.

“We are very focused on it. The last thing we want to do is destroy what it is,” he said of the coming rebuild.

“There’s every chance that it is even more of a cauldron when we are finished.”

Australia’s leading group 1 winner Damien Oliver landed two Cox Plates, the first on outsider Dane Ripper and then a memorable victory on the fighting tiger, Northerly, over arch rival Sunline. But it could easily have been three.

“I was actually meant to be on Super Impose,” he said.

“I was booked to ride him, and then I won the Caulfield Cup on Mannerism the week before, so I was forced to sort of stick with her.

“That 1992 race was dramatic, obviously, with the fall and was probably one of the most memorable Cox Plates. Being involved in that was pretty special, too.”

James McDonald is the new king of the hoops and is shooting for his fourth win in four years in the Cox Plate, following victories on Anamoe, Romantic Warrior and Via Sistina. He will ride Via Sistina again on Saturday.

He grew up in New Zealand, watching champions of the turf such as Sunline winning our iconic race.

“It’s going to be sad to see it change, but it would be nice to win the last running of it for sure,” McDonald said.

“You need a proper horse, and I’ve been lucky to have three of them. Hopefully, we’ve got a fourth.”

The venue has been as special as the race. Two tight turns from the back straight, an accelerating field slingshotting out of the top corner, before sweeping down the famous school side of the track.

Then they swing around the velodrome-like final bend into the main stage of the amphitheatre – a 173m home straight.

“The crowd feels like they’re on top of you,” two-time winner Craig Williams said.

“It’s one of those amazing feelings – the enormity of having the crowd so close to you and erupting if you’re victorious.”

Soon, it will all be gone.

But Williams, who rides outsider Attrition on Saturday, readily admitted he was not one to be mired in the past. He said making things new could also make them better.

“Things adapt. Things evolve. The track itself has been out of date for 18 years. So the track had to get redone anyway. And they just thought that they could change the design of the track, and we’re all looking forward to seeing how it goes,” Williams said.

“We’ve already learned how we ride this track now, and the next stage will be how to ride the new track. So that’s all it is.”

The new course that Williams and his cohorts will have to navigate when the club’s self-funded $220 million renovations are completed in 2027 will be almost 100 metres shorter, three metres wider and have a new 317m home straight that runs from east to west instead of north to south.

The new grandstand and clubhouse, expected to include a 182-room hotel, will shift from the west side of the course to the northern edge, sitting across the road from the Wilson Street primary school.

The racecourse will eventually be shadowed by new apartment buildings that will house up to 5000 people.

But Lennen was quick to point out that the history of the race remained.

“It will still be a great race,” he said. “It still sits in an amazing spot on the calendar.

“But the thing that is lost is that you’ve got to be spending money on these facilities, and the old facilities are very tired. The track is 30 years old and even though it has raced really well this spring, it needs replacing.”

Hugh Bowman returned to Moonee Valley from Hong Kong on Friday in preparation to ride Chris Waller’s Aeliana in the Cox Plate. He, too, embraced the coming change.

“The only thing I would say is, ‘I hope it proves to be a fair racetrack, and every horse gets their chance’,” Bowman said.

“I think Mooney Valley at times can be a little bit luckless for a lot of horses. But I do think it’s a good horse’s track. I think good horses make their own luck here.”

Bowman should know. He won four Cox Plates on Winx, and she was one of the greatest of all-time.