When you call a horse Thinkin’ Big there is no doubt what race you are aiming for. And it has always been the Melbourne Cup on the radar for the Victoria Derby favourite.
If Thinkin' Big wins the Derby at Flemington on Saturday he will almost certainly return on Tuesday for the biggest race of the year.
“If it's not this year, it will be the next year or the year after for him,” owner-breeder Peter Dunn says.
Cup dreams: Gai Waterhouse with Thinkin’ Big, which Victoria Derby favourite.Credit:AAP
“We like to breed stayers and if you are breeding stayers then you want to be in the Melbourne Cup. He is named after Think Big, which won the Cup twice, for a reason
“It is the ultimate. We want to keep the Cup in Australia and beat those internationals. Of course we want to win the Derby but I can’t stop thinking about Tuesday.”
When Gai Waterhouse announced after Thinkin’ Big’s return win in September’s Gloaming Stakes that he would win the Victoria Derby and then run in the Melbourne Cup, the first response was surely not.
"Like Nothin' Leica Dane [her only other Victoria Derby winner, which was runner-up in the Cup four days later]," she enthused.
"You know that he is his grandfather."
Few would have believed that Waterhouse and her training partner Adrian Bott could have a three-year-old colt return at 1800m in the spring and be fit enough to lead all-the-way almost unchallenged.
That was the first training feat but the story is still continuing.
The program was set. First-up at 1800m with four runs before Cup day and Dunn and wife June were happy to be along for the ride.
“It is what we were dreaming,” Dunn said. “When they said it to us we just said yes.
“It is like everything as owners and trainers, we can think what we like but it is up to the horse to do it.
“You can say you are going to do this or that, but to be in this position is just mind boggling.
“We have watched this colt come from being a little baby on the farm to being the favourite in the Victoria Derby.”
Thinkin’ Big was beaten in the Spring Champion Stakes, the only defeat in the program, when jockey Tm Clark believes he got it wrong on a very wet track and ran third.
Clark made amends in the Caulfield Classic with another dominating win, which is probably how he will try to win the Derby.
“I rode him for a sprint in the Spring Champion and he is one of those horses that will just keep going rather than being brilliant,” Clark said. “He did that at Caulfield and was never going to get beaten. He just kept going away from them.”
Thinkin' Big won by three lengths there and was immediately moved into Derby favouritism, which he retained on Friday at around the $3.40 mark.
Dunn has never had a group 1 winner and to take the blue ribbon on the first day of the Flemington carnival would be a career highlight, albeit one which could be usurped by running in the Melbourne Cup four days later.
This is why the Dunns only have one broodmare left. Nothin’ Leica Cat, which as the name suggests is a daughter of Nothin' Leica Dane, was Queensland Oaks runner-up after being fourth in an Australian Oaks.
“She was a pretty special mare to us and it is as close as we came to a group 1,” Dunn said.
“I remember buying her from The Oaks draft at Magic Millions and she has been our baby since. Over the years we have about a dozen mares and over time we let them all go and we are left with her.
“We sold Stampede out of her but when this bloke came along he was never being sold. My wife June wouldn't let me.
“From day one he ticked all the boxes. Not only on the farm. He went through whole process there with no knocks on him at all, but once he got in the stable, everybody has just loved this horse.
“He is just something special. We have never had a horse like him. I have never heard stablehands and track riders talking so positively about a horse.
“Every time he comes out you are waiting for him not to do it. He just keeps doing it. I remember his first run it was a heavy-8 at Canterbury over 1100m and he won.
“We are talking a dyed in the wool stayer winning over 1100m at Canterbury, one of the tightest tracks in the country.”
He followed up with a third at Randwick but then was a winner again at 1500m at the end of July, which sealed the Cup campaign. Waterhouse and Bott worked out a training program which would play to his staying strengths.
“We knew we didn’t have a lot of time for him to have a break and come back,” Bott said. “We structured a program for him to start him in the Gloaming knowing where we wanted to get.”
Now they are just about there.
"The unusual part about him is that he is not unusual. He is just fabulous," Dunn said.
"He has just impressed every time. He just gets better and better. Each run he steps up it is how you would dream it will happen.
"But we know the reality of racing, that he is out of the blue. It is a fabulous experience. But it could get bigger."
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