Makybe Diva

Tony Šantić was born on the tiny Croatian island of Lastovo. His father brought the family to Geelong in 1958, where he cut railway sleepers and worked as a grease monkey at the Ford factory. Tony headed to Port Lincoln in South Australia and built a life in tuna fishing — dangerous work that once had him out on a leaky tug boat called the Vigorous off the Tasmanian coast.

In the early 1990s, when tuna quotas were slashed twice, the industry nearly collapsed and the bank almost took the Šantić family home. But Tony survived, pioneered tuna ranching, and by 1996 Tony’s Tuna International was one of Port Lincoln’s biggest operations. In 1997, he decided to try horse racing.

His bloodstock agent John Foote purchased a broodmare called Tugela — already in foal to Irish Derby winner Desert King — for 60,000 guineas at Tattersalls in Newmarket. The resulting filly was born at five minutes past midnight on 21 March 1999 in Somerset, England. Offered for sale as a weanling, she failed to attract a single bid. Šantić shipped her and her mother to Australia, not really knowing what to do with her.

Early descriptions compared Makybe Diva to a daddy long legs spider — lanky, ungainly, and undeveloped. Being British-bred to the Northern Hemisphere calendar created an unusual problem: for Australian racing purposes, she was bracketed with horses foaled six months earlier. She couldn’t contest age-group races like the VRC Oaks.

Trainer David Hall gave her a debut at Benalla in July 2002 — a country maiden over 1200 metres. She finished fourth. But two weeks later, something clicked. She won at Wangaratta and then reeled off six straight victories, culminating in the Werribee Cup and the Queen Elizabeth Stakes during the 2002 Melbourne Cup Carnival.

That Queen Elizabeth win did something crucial: it automatically qualified her for the following year’s Melbourne Cup. Hall now had twelve months to prepare a mare nobody had heard of for the biggest race in the country.

Glen Boss grew up on a cattle property near Beaudesert, south of Brisbane. Left school at 15 for a riding apprenticeship in Gympie and rode 60 winners in under ten months. By 2002, he was an established Group 1 jockey — and then disaster struck.

In June 2002, Boss fell during a race in Macau and broke his neck in two places. The initial medical verdict pointed to life in a wheelchair. But a crack medical team and one of the world’s top neurosurgeons got him back — after six months in a neck brace, he was riding trackwork again.

Boss had history with the Cup. In 2000, he’d narrowly lost aboard Champagne, beaten a neck by Jezabeel. For some jockeys, the Cup is a fleeting opportunity that never comes again. His first ride on Makybe Diva came in the 2003 Caulfield Cup — she finished fourth, but Boss sensed something special.

Cup 1 — 2003: Carrying just 51kg, she started $8 second favourite under David Hall. Boss held her at the back of the field, then picked his way through the straight. Won by 1¼ lengths. Šantić had backed her heavily. The nation took notice.

Cup 2 — 2004: Now with trainer Lee Freedman after Hall departed for Hong Kong. In driving rain at Flemington, Boss showed extraordinary courage taking the inside rails run on a treacherously wet track. She beat a world-class field including four-time Irish St Leger winner Vinnie Roe, carrying a mare’s record 55.5kg. Won by 1¼ lengths. Greg Miles called it: she’d done what no mare had ever done.

Cup 3 — 2005: The big one. 106,000 crowd. Carrying 58kg — the highest weight for a Cup winner since Think Big (58.5kg) in 1975, and above weight-for-age for a mare. Pre-race controversy erupted when Freedman threatened to withdraw unless the VRC watered the track. They did. Rival trainers objected publicly. None of it mattered. She settled mid-field, worked through the field around the home turn, hit the front 300 metres out, and won — by exactly 1¼ lengths.

Greg Miles’ call of the 2005 Cup is burned into Australian sporting memory. As she hit the front with 100 metres to run, Miles found the perfect words: a champion becomes a legend.

Boss was overwhelmed. After pulling her up near the 1400-metre mark, he took Makybe Diva towards the crowd. She pricked her ears as if acknowledging the applause. Boss later said everything went quiet during the race — he could actually hear Greg Miles calling from the broadcast box. As he crossed the line, a hundred images flashed through his brain like a slideshow.

Within the hour, owner Tony Šantić — still the tuna fisherman from Port Lincoln, wearing a black suit and Port Adelaide Football Club tie, the odd man out in fashion-conscious Flemington — announced that Makybe Diva would retire from racing as of today.

Trainer Lee Freedman delivered the line that has echoed for two decades: go and find the smallest child on this racecourse, because they might be the only one who lives long enough to see that again.

Makybe Diva’s 2005 season showed she was far more than a stayer. She won the Australian Cup (setting an unofficial world record for 2,000m on turf), the BMW Stakes with a last-to-first burst, the Memsie Stakes, the Turnbull Stakes (eight horses wide on the turn), and the Cox Plate — all before her final Cup victory. Seven Group 1 wins in total.

She retired with 36 starts for 15 wins, 4 seconds, and 3 thirds, earning $14,526,685 — an Australian record at the time. She was Australian Racehorse of the Year twice, Champion Stayer three years running, and rated the world’s best filly or mare.

Two bronze statues honour her: one at Flemington Racecourse (where she rewrote the record books) and one on the foreshore at Port Lincoln (where a tuna fisherman dared to dream). The Makybe Diva Stakes, a Group 1 race at Flemington, bears her name. She was inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame in 2006 and elevated to Legend status in 2010.