Darwin Cup winner Highly Decorated retired after injury setback
Sadly, the NT racing public has seen the last of 2021 Darwin Cup winner Highly Decorated.
The six-year-old gelding was set to return at the 2023 Darwin Cup Carnival for his first start since suffering a tendon injury when Fannie Bay hosted Adelaide River Cup Day last year.
The son of Epaulette was sent straight back to South Australia for platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy at the Morphettville Equine Clinic in late June.
It was a savage blow for Murray Bridge-based trainer Nicole Irwin after Highly Decorated won seven of eight races from April to August in the Top End the previous year.
A first-up third was followed by seven straight wins, which included the Darwin Cup (2050m), Chief Minister’s Cup (1600m) and ROANT Gold Cup (1300m) at Fannie Bay, as well as the Adelaide River Cup (1600m) at the NT’s only grassed track.
Highly Decorated’s prizemoney skyrocketed, and after three unplaced starts back in South Australia there was genuine excitement when he headed back north.
“A couple of weeks ago, just before we left for Darwin, we gave Highly Decorated his last gallop and unfortunately he re-injured the same leg,” Irwin said from the Top End on Tuesday.
“It was just a track gallop at Murray Bridge and unfortunately when the jockey got off him he was lame as soon as he pulled up.
“The injury was severe when he first did it – even though it had scanned up fine after all his treatment and all his rehab, he obviously has a weakness in that leg.
“Maybe better that it happened there than happen here again in his first race.”
Understandably, the Irwin camp was left devastated, with the trainer confirming that there was a reluctance to take a team to Darwin this year.
“We were about to pull the pin on the whole thing, it just got a little too much there for a while,” she said.
“He’s our little superstar – we spent the last 12 months doing everything we could to get him right.
“He got a full clearance from the vet a couple of months earlier to start work and we were still following the PRP program pretty much to the minute, which was fairly draining, it was a lot of work.
“We were going to give him a race at Murray Bridge just as a bit of a trial on May 27 before we headed up, so it was his last gallop before that that he suffered the injury.
“We had to regroup and have a good look at the team we were going to bring up, and debated whether it was worth coming.
“We’ll battle on, we’ll pick ourselves up and keep going, and just look forward from now.”
Getting Highly Decorated back to full fitness was paramount, and although the welfare of the horse was a priority, there’s no denying Irwin was eyeing a Darwin campaign.
“With PRP they really don’t go out of work that much,” she said.
“They only have a couple of weeks in the box and then start with 10 minutes walking a day.
“That goes from walking to walking and trotting and walking and more walking and trotting and walking, so that went right through until Christmas.
“He then had his six month scan and he got the all clear to start trotting and cantering.
“We continued with that on the treadmill, and then the nine-month scan was in March and he had the all clear to continue with galloping.
“Between March and the end of May we got him ready for a race.
“The plan was to come up here and go ROANT, Chief Minister’s and the (Darwin) Cup – we were only going to give him a few runs and it was all looking spot on until he got injured.
“He’s easily the best horse I’ve had, absolutely.
“The slow ones never seem to hurt themselves, only the good ones do – it’s always the way.
“He’ll hang around back home, and he’ll just have six weeks now in a yard and a box to try and calm down.
“He’s a funny old bugger, he didn’t know he was hurt, he was bouncing around the yard.
“He thought he should have been going on the track.
“He’ll just hang around as a stable pony.”
From 26 career starts – 12 for Irwin – Highly Decorated, who also raced in NSW, SA and the ACT for trainers Kurt Goldman (Goulburn) and Trevor Day (Mount Compass), amassed $314,500 in prizemoney from nine wins and three minor placings.
Irwin has sent teams to the NT regularly over the years, but she needed convincing to come back this time.
“We spoke to the owners, obviously the number one owner Donna Stephenson who owns Highly Decorated, and she said ‘look, you’ve got a couple of other handy ones just go up there’,” Irwin said.
“We only got here Friday and we probably won’t nominate until ROANT Day (July 1) – maybe the week before with a couple of them.
“Eureka’s Victory is going really good – he won three during the Alice Springs carnival and ran a place, so he’s probably my main chance.
“If he likes this track and he continues on and does the same thing he did in Alice, there’s a chance he’ll possibly make a Cup horse.
“We’re giving Masterati one last hurrah as he seems to love it up here in Darwin.
“He keeps showing us he’s not quite ready for retirement, even though he ran a shocker in the Pioneer Sprint in Alice Springs, and he’ll run in the ROANT.
“We have six here and we were going to give them a nice quiet week and just introduce them to the pool, but we’ve started working them because they all travelled so well.
“We’ve bought a new one called Ornamental Lady, she’s a Victorian 68-rated mare, a mad frontrunning horse, so hopefully she’ll either be able to settle behind some pace or just lead.
“Versetto, he’s been a handy horse for us in South Australia, but we actually bought him two years ago to run in the Palmerston Sprint up here before suffering a slight tendon injury – he didn’t do anything as bad as Highly Decorated.
“We spelled him for 12 months, but he has since won in town (Adelaide) where he has also been placed on three occasions, so we’ve brought him up here to see if he can have a crack maybe at the Palmerston.
“I’ve got another horse coming up on the weekend called Club Punter, a three-year-old gelding, who is owned and trainer by Roslyn Day from Murray Bridge.
“He’s coming up to go in our care – he’ll have a Guineas and Derby campaign if he’s good enough.
“I still think we’ll be thereabouts in the feature races during the carnival, but just probably not as hotly contended as we thought we were going to be.”