Hall of Fame
In March 2006, the following horses were inducted into the New Zealand Bloodstock Racing Hall of Fame in its inaugural induction ceremony. For more information and a full list of inductees and event details, please visit the Racing Hall of Fame website.
Carbine
Winning 33 of his 43 career starts with six seconds and three thirds, Carbine's stake earnings of 29,626
pounds was a record for more than 20 years. Unbeaten in New Zealand he went to Australia as a three year old
where he became the first true champion of Australian racing. The pinnacle of his racing career was the 1890
Melbourne Cup, which he won over a record field (38), with a record weight (10st 5lb, or 66kg) in record time.
No horse had previously won with as much weight; no horse has since, in more than a hundred years. Carbine
went to stud for four years in Australia, and sired the winners of more than 200 races.
Gloaming
More than 70 years after he ran his last race, the winning sequence of 19 which Gloaming shared with his great contemporary Desert Gold remains the New Zealand record. By the end of his marvellous career, Gloaming had raced 67 times, won 57 times, run nine seconds - and taken no part in the only race in which he was unplaced. Gloaming (The Welkin-Light) was taken back to Australia, where he was bred, to have his first start - and won the Chelmsford Stakes, as a maiden, by eight lengths! Next up he won the AJC Derby; then he returned home to win the New Zealand and Great Northern Derbys as well, his feat of winning three Derbys unprecedented at that time. His class thoroughly established, Gloaming was to cross and re-cross the Tasman for trainer Dick Mason no fewer than 15 times over the next four seasons.
Phar Lap
Phar Lap won 37 of his 51 starts, ran three seconds and two thirds. Most of his misses were at the outset of his career, before trainer Harry Telford got "the hang of him" and his capacity for work. Phar Lap developed from a wonderful three-year-old into a virtually unbeatable older horse. Consider his four-year-old spring in 1930. In four days at the Melbourne Cup carnival, he successively won the Melbourne (now MacKinnon) Stakes, Melbourne Cup, Linlithgow Stakes (then at a mile, or 1600m) and the C.B.Fisher Plate, at a mile and a half (2400m). Before that he'd won five races in Sydney, plus the Cox Plate. The first horse to earn the indisputable "champion" tag in Australian racing, Carbine, was bred in New Zealand. So, 40 years later, was the next, Phar Lap.
Kindergarten
During a career constantly impeded by unsoundness, Kindergarten (Kincardine-Valadore) raced till he was nine but had just 35 starts. He won 25 of them, including among his wins three of the greatest weight-carrying performances of his or any era. Unarguably the best three-year-old of 1940-41, when he won the last 10 of his 13 starts.
Though Kindergarten never got the chance to prove his class in Australia, the opinion held of him by the Melbourne handicapper can be ascertained. For three successive Melbourne Cups he accorded Kindergarten top weight at 9st 10lb, 9st 13lb and 10st 6lb respectively. Let 30-year handicapper Frank McManemin pass verdict: "The best horse I ever handicapped was Kindergarten. Not only that, he was the best horse I have ever seen."
Sunline
Sunline raced 45 times for 32 wins, eight seconds and two thirds and an Australasian record $11 million in stakes. She raced in four countries and won in three; she twice won the Southern Hemisphere's weight-for-age championship, the Cox Plate (on the second occasion by a stunning seven lengths) and was narrowly beaten by Northerly going for a third. She twice won Sydney's toughest "metric mile," the Doncaster Handicap, and was second on another occasion when conceding 6kg to her conqueror, Over. Her optimum distance was probably 1400m, at which she was unbeaten, yet she was able to stretch her high cruising speed to the 2040m of the Cox Plate, and to hold out the redoubtable Fairy King Prawn in the tough Hong Kong International Mile. At home, where her races were usually in preparation for another overseas campaign, she was unbeaten in seven starts. Sunline was twice elected Australian Racehorse of the Year and three times New Zealand Horse of the Year. In 1999 the authoritative Timeform publication named her the best turf mare in the world.
