Racing: Sunline faces might of the dream team

By MIKE DILLON

MELBOURNE - Question: what do Sharon Stone, Cameron Diaz and Miss Piggy have that Sunline doesn't?

Answer: Female characteristics.

No one has ever accused Sunline of being pretty.

Despite the glamour tag, one of the world's great race mares is at heart an old, tough gelding.

And when the adrenalin has run out and the lactic acid build-up makes the pain barrier unbearable in the final 200m of today's $A2 million Cox Plate, that non-sexist, realistic fact is going to become crucial.

Australasia's champion racehorse will attempt to redefine her career in the Southern Hemisphere's toughest and richest weight-for-age race.

Forget all that has come before. Forget that she won the Cox Plate last year. This is unquestionably Sunline's greatest task in a career that has scaled every mountain.

The mare with the grumpy nature and almost pathological hatred of being beaten, is already acknowledged as the world's finest mare on turf.

If she wins today she will become the greatest stake earner in Australian history, superceding champions such as Octagonal, Super Impose, Bonecrusher and Rough Habit.

But none of that will rate alongside the fact that to win this single race, she will have to overcome an almost impossible set of circumstances.

She will have to produce a performance beyond the capabilities of many equine champions.

In what will be a remarkably tactical race, Australia's dream team of Sky Heights, Shogun Lodge and Tie The Knot are going to give it to Sunline as she has never had it served it up to her before.

This will be legal team racing. An Australian team against a Kiwi individual.

In the eyes of many, last year's Cox win was sullied by the easy lead Greg Childs found Sunline.

The greatest certainty is that it will not happen this time.

When Shogun Lodge's trainer Bonny Thomsen says, "There is no way in the world she will get away with a soft lead again," he is not thinking wishfully. He is coming from the knowledge of absolute certainty.

All of us, and that includes the Australian racing public, want Sunline to win, but the truth is, she is no sure thing.

The $1.90 offered by the New Zealand TAB this week is short of realistic. Not because of the class index - put Sunline head-to-head with any of today's opposition and she is a $1.30 chance - but because the way this race is run will determine the result, not simply class.

Jockey Greg Childs went to sleep last night agonising over that.

Sky Heights is a street-fighting stayer who, if Sunline leads, will press forward at an early stage to put pressure on the Kiwi mare. He will appreciate the rain-affected track and can do the job at both ends of a race. Sunline is going to have to match that.

Despite the midweek mind games, Childs will want to lead because Sunline is best when she dictates, rather than being dictated to.

When Fairway dictated to her last start, he beat her.

But Childs knows he cannot afford to lead at any cost and set up the same suicidal pace that brought undone the leaders, including Fairway, in last week's Caulfield Cup.

That scenario would make the race for back-runners Shogun Lodge and Tie The Knot to storm home over the top of the leaders.

They will be coming at the leaders quickly, regardless, but a fast early pace would simply hand the race to the Sydney pair.

Despite the fact Childs is trying to play it down, this will be his toughest ride in a career that has brought him real wealth. He clearly is not looking to give much away publicly, but he swears from his horror No 13 barrier draw that he will not know exactly what he will do on Sunline until he gets to the winning post with a lap to travel.

"They say they'll be watching me. Let me tell you, I'll be watching them even closer."

A fierce wind in Melbourne yesterday was rapidly drying the previously wet Moonee Valley surface, which is good news for the Shogun Lodge camp.

If Sunline pulls it off, the Moonee Valley reception will be the most deafening in decades. Not since Bonecrusher has a Kiwi horse been taken to the hearts of Australians like Sunline.