{"id":3501,"date":"2013-04-22T06:53:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-22T06:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/archive.rockylhc.com\/2015\/elizapark\/?p=3501"},"modified":"2013-04-22T06:53:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-22T06:53:00","slug":"a-true-australian-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.rockylhc.com\/2015\/elizapark\/a-true-australian-story\/","title":{"rendered":"A TRUE AUSTRALIAN STORY"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Black Caviar\u2019s managing owner has spoken for the first time about the sequence of events leading up to last week\u2019s sudden decision to retire the unbeaten mare.<\/div>\n
The mare\u2019s connections pulled the pin last week after an unprecedented 25 wins from 25 starts and just under $8 million in prize money.\n<\/p>\n

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Her final victory also saw her set a new Australian record for Group One victories, eclipsing Kingston Town\u2019s 14.\n<\/p>\n

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Werrett says tears came to the trainer\u2019s eyes when he made the announcement.\n<\/p>\n

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\u201cAt that moment we just hugged each other and there was hardly a word said for about 10 minutes because everyone was coming to grips with it,\u201d Werrett says.\n<\/p>\n

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Werrett says it all started when he received a phone call from Moody on Tuesday suggesting a meeting at the stables the next day.\n<\/p>\n

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Black Caviar had made a very successful comeback from her close finish in front of the Queen at Ascot and the owners had no thoughts of retirement.\n<\/p>\n

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\u201cPeter had a look at the horse and he took her out and paraded her and we were all pretty excited,\u201d Werrett said.\n<\/p>\n

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\u201cThen he went through all the options with the owners and I got a feeling that Peter had changed his attitude a bit, because up until Saturday Peter wanted to race another 12 months.\n<\/p>\n

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At that moment we just hugged each other and there was hardly a word said for about 10 minutes because everyone was coming to grips with it.\n<\/p>\n

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\u201cAnd then (co-owner) Colin Madden said \u2018Well Peter, if it\u2019s your horse what would you do?\u2019\n<\/p>\n

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\u201cTears came into his eyes and he said \u2018I\u2019d retire her\u2019.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

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The owners had always said they would leave the decision to Moody.\n<\/p>\n

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\u201cPeter Moody has led us right through this the whole way, from buying the horse to retirement, and Peter\u2019s attitude was always in the best interest of the horses, as the owners have always been,\u201d Werrett said.\n<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe thing that we\u2019ve always said to Peter [is] we\u2019ve got to make sure the horse is looked after.\n<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe only had two requests the whole way – one is will we retire her when she\u2019s due and two was to go to Ascot.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

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Werrett says connections believe Moody has it right.\n<\/p>\n

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\u201cIn reflection I think all of us today believe it\u2019s the right decision,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n

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\u201cPeter and all the owners and I think it\u2019s good for the horse to go out on top, there would be nothing worse for her \u2013 something to happen to her or for her to get beaten.\n<\/p>\n

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\u201cI don\u2019t think it was getting beaten that was the problem, it was just Peter always said he couldn\u2019t see another horse in the world beating her up to 1200 metres.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

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Fade to Black, an Australian Story special edition, will air on ABC1 at 8pm.\n<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black Caviar\u2019s managing owner has spoken for the first time about the sequence of events leading up to last week\u2019s sudden decision to retire the unbeaten mare. The mare\u2019s connections …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4889,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.rockylhc.com\/2015\/elizapark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.rockylhc.com\/2015\/elizapark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.rockylhc.com\/2015\/elizapark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.rockylhc.com\/2015\/elizapark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.rockylhc.com\/2015\/elizapark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.rockylhc.com\/2015\/elizapark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.rockylhc.com\/2015\/elizapark\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.rockylhc.com\/2015\/elizapark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.rockylhc.com\/2015\/elizapark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.rockylhc.com\/2015\/elizapark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}