What price Caviar in Newmarket?

What price would you take for a prime Black Caviar, with 58kg on her back, in this year’s Newmarket Handicap? 

Rich Irvine posed the question in a poll on the Wolfden twitter/X account, with options of $1.25, $1.50, $1.75, and $2, and he personally envisioned that $1.50 would be the most popular choice.

But by Friday, the vast majority of the 1257 voters agreed she would be sent out even shorter, with 77.3% voting $1.25, and a further 14.6% agreeing on the $1.50 mark.

Perhaps the 4.5% who voted for $2 thought she would be lining up at her current age of 17, in which case the price is probably fair.

Determined to dig deeper, Irvine hit up form and ratings specialist Dan O’Sullivan and asked how he saw the hypothetical betting shaping up.

The result? Even skinnier odds, with O’Sullivan using Black Caviar’s freakish 2011 Newmarket victory as a guide.

“If Black Caviar ran in the Newmarket this year, she would start at $1.05 - $1.12 cents – at most,” he said on Wolfden’s Saturday Set show.

“She started at $1.18 in the 2011 Newmarket with 58kg, against a field that is comparable to this year. That was only her tenth career start, and she was already a freak.

“But in that race, she rated higher than her previous peak and went on to match that a couple more times in her career – on that basis, she would have to start shorter than $1.18.”

Comparing these figures to Imperatriz’, O’Sullivan sees a sizable gap between the two if the scenario were to play out, and even named a couple of other sprinting superstars who could theoretically split the pair.

“In a ratings sense, she was consistently a 113-115 horse on my scale – with 58kg (plus 1.5kg on the WFA scale) that takes her down to 112-114 at the weights,” he said.

“Imperatriz is a 106-108 mare. Her two 108 ratings came at Moonee Valley, and she is 106 up the Flemington straight.

“She would have to get 7.5kg off Black Caviar to theoretically put them somewhere on level terms… with the same weights, she would have no chance.

“Hay List was a solid 110 rated horse at his best, and couldn’t match her… Nature Strip was a 109-111 rated horse on his very best runs – better than Imperatriz.

“She’s seriously good - but not elite in the context of the best sprinters we’ve seen in the last 20 years.”