Horse racing - I Wish I Win retires: New Zealand sprinter’s remarkable career ends

I Wish I Win winning Golden Eagle (2022). Photo / Supplied

I Wish I Win has come to the end of a road he probably had no right ever to be on.

The brave New Zealand sprinter was retired on Wednesday, ending a remarkable career that very nearly wasn’t.

Born with the worst legs imaginable, I Wish I Win went on to win over $12.8 million in stakes and become the most surprising sprinting star of his generation after transferring from New Zealand to Victorian trainers Peter Moody and Katherine Coleman.

The one-time Group 1-placed miler won the A$10 million Golden Eagle (1500m) before downing the reigning Everest champion Giga Kick in the TJ Smith over 1200m at Randwick.

He almost went one better in the richest race of them all, The Everest itself, when in 2023, representing New Zealand in the Entain/TAB slot, he finished a close second to Think About It.

But now one of racing’s fairytales has ended. Not the way owners Mark Chittick and Moody would have chosen, but without one regret.

“Moods and Katherine were getting him ready [for the] Ryder Stakes in Sydney, and he galloped well enough on Tuesday, but they thought he was a bit off after,” Waikato Stud boss Chittick said.

“They brought him out of his box around 4pm on Tuesday, and he wasn’t right. Moods termed it 3 out of 5 lame, so the decision was made straight away.

“He has been too special, too brave, for us to take any risks with.

“He will come home and have a paddock right outside our house for the rest of his days. He will be looked after like a king, because he is one.”

Everybody who loves racehorses has marvelled at the pictures of I Wish I Win as a foal, the son of Waikato Stud’s other king in Savabeel looking more like a kid’s drawing of a horse than one who would become one of the best sprinters in the world.

Chittick and his staff deal with hundreds of horses a year and the hardened horseman believes, with a slight quiver in his voice, what I Wish I Win was as a foal helped him become I Wish I Win the superstar.

“When a foal is born like that, it is a big effort just to survive, and that is when we knew he had heart.

“I think that is what made him special later. That will to live became will to win.

“Before the race, he would give you that look like he was going to go out there and give it his best.

“You end up loving horses like that. It is not about the money they win, it is because they are brave.”

But the mega-money races are also occasions, and I Wish I Win has taken Chittick and his family on the journey of a lifetime.

“Races like the Golden Eagle and the Everest haven’t been around for that long, so to be part of them, it is a real privilege.

“For the Golden Eagle, we were partnered with the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation of NSW, which was incredibly special.

“Then, when he won the TJ Smith, plenty of my family were there and Savabeel sired the ATC Derby winner [Major Beel] the same day.

“They are the days people like us dream of, and he made them come true.

“To represent your country and the New Zealand industry with him in the Everest, to know so many people here were behind him, that was amazing and hard to put into words.”

Now the career of one of the greats has come to an end, Chittick’s gratitude overflows.

“You don’t have a horse like this, an experience like this without so many people helping,” he says.

“It wouldn’t have happened without our staff here, Jamie and Chanel Beatson who broke him in, Jamie Richards [first trainer], of course Moods and Katherine and all the jockeys who looked after him so well.

“We have loved it, and I wish I could go on, but the horse comes first. So he is coming home.”

I WISH I WIN

Breeding: Savabeel-Make A Wish

Age: 6-year-old gelding.

Breeder: Mark Chittick.

Owners: Mark Chittick, Peter Moody.

Trainers: Jamie Richards (NZ), Peter Moody and Katherine Coleman (Australia).

Career record: 25 starts, 7 wins, 14 placings.

Stake earnings: $12,844,300.

Career highlights: Major wins: Golden Eagle, T J Smith (2023), Kingsford Smith Cup. Placings: 2nd in Everest, Doomben 10,000, Lightning Stakes; 3rd in Newmarket Hcp, Memsie, T J Smith (2024), Manikato Stakes, Futurity Stakes.

Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.