Millwood Nike retires unbeaten, heading to stud after tendon injury flares up

Millwood Nike in action. Photo / Supplied

It is hard to think of Millwood Nike without thinking of what might have been.

The champion pacing filly was retired yesterday after the tendon tear that sidelined her last December flared up again, just days before she was set to return to the public arena at the Pukekohe workouts.

Co-trainer Mark Purdon had a conference call with her owners and they decided to retire her unbeaten and send her to stud rather than going through a rehab process that still might see her return a shadow of herself.

“I think they have made the right decision, I’d hate to see her come back and be running fourth or fifth in races she should have won,” says Purdon.

Such mediocrity would have been an injustice for Millwood Nike, whose 17 starts produced some of the great pacing performances in New Zealand history.

This country has been blessed with some remarkable fillies in the last 20 years but none could have shone brighter than Millwood Nike did on New Zealand Cup day last year.

Starting from the second line she sat three wide for almost the entire 1980m yet won the Group 1 by six lengths rating a dazzling 1:54.

It was as destructive and definitive a victory as we have seen any filly of either equine code produce in this country in the new millennium. It takes something jarring to outshine the New Zealand Cup winner on Cup Day but Millwood Nike produced it.

Purdon also trained one of the great modern day mares in Adore Me, a sweetheart of pacing who sits comfortably alongside the golden era girls Armalight, Bonnies Chance and Delightful Lady.

Adore Me paced a 1:47.7 mile and won a New Zealand Cup, just missing winning an Auckland Cup when she suffered a career-ending injury at the 400m mark yet still finished second. Purdon says Millwood Nike was as talented.

“She is right up there with Adore Me,” he told the Herald.

“I am sure if she had raced on for a few more seasons she would have been able to do what Adore Me did.

“But she retires unbeaten and that is what she deserves now.”

For those keeping score, Millwood Nike heads to the broodmare paddock the winner of 17 races with $690,932 next to her name and five national records.

Those 17 wins include six Group 1s and Purdon is adamant she was already at least as good as male stablemate Don’t Stop Dreaming, who pushed the great Leap To Fame close in this year’s Hunter Cup.

Could Millwood Nike have eventually done something similar, even better?

We will never know what might have been and she will never know racetrack defeat.

Millwood Nike’s retirement comes just days after Copy That’s career ended

The magnificent Pukekohe pacer was a longshot to recover from knee issues that required surgery and it only took three days of jogging for trainer Ray Green to realise Copy That’s career was over.

The winner of two New Zealand Cups and a Race by Grins, Copy That proved almost unbeatable when he got his own way and his connections will now try to find him a suitable stud for the next phase of his life.

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.