World #4 Imperatriz has gone from an international unknown to world-renowned sprinter by winning six G1s – more than any other horse – in 2023, including four devastating Melbourne wins. Shane McNally reports
If the Australians just across the Ditch didn’t know how good Imperatriz was just a few months ago, it was perhaps understandable that the multiple G1-winning mare was not given due respect north of the equator.
After all, her wins had come in New Zealand, a land traditionally known for its distance pedigree and list of champion stayers from Carbine to Phar Lap and Rising Fast. Okay, she had won four G1 races before she had her first Australian run, including runaway wins against Australia-proven opposition in two of NZ’s best sprints, but somehow she needed to prove herself all over again.
It didn’t take her long though – four runs to be precise – before most Australians and, by extension, the world knew Imperatriz was something quite exceptional. While Thoroughbred Racing Commentary’s Global Rankings were definitely aware of the superstar and had her highly placed, the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities (IFHA) still somehow had her outside the Top 50 after seven G1 wins.
What is more, you can underline the words ‘most Australians’ because some keyboard warriors and a few form analysts who ought to have known better said she still hadn’t beaten the best Sydney sprinters.
Except that she had. Back in NZ, she had outclassed world-ranked I Wish I Win in their three-year-old season and, in Melbourne, she toyed with Bella Nipotena, who had just taken care of heavyweight Sydney sprinter and Everest winner Think About It.
In winning her fourth Australian G1 contest in the Darley Champions Sprint at the Melbourne Cup Carnival, Imperatriz showed those who hadn’t watched her career unfold in NZ that she was no one-dimensional galloper.
She had won the time-honoured William Reid Stakes in the southern autumn before spelling, then resumed to come from behind and thrash superstar Giga Kick over the Moonee Valley 1,000 metres in September. She backed that up with two more soft G1 wins at the Valley but still had the doubters thinking she was just a one-course specialist.
Flying mare defies all challenges
Then came the Champions Sprint, where the flying mare looked a sitting duck on a furious pace over the testing straight 1,200m at Flemington and just defied all challenges. The other three runners on the pace dropped out.
Imperatriz, current world #4 on TRC Rankings and behind only the now-retired US dirt star Elite Power among sprinters, was the only horse in the world to win six G1 races in 2023.
The question for those ‘many Australians’ and sundry others further abroad was where had this exceptional five-year-old mare been? Well, that will have been New Zealand.
That said, Imperatriz is actually Australian-bred, by I Am Invincible out of Berimabu – but she started her racing career with a win at Otaki in November 2020 for the ultra-powerful Te Akau team and multiple champion trainer Jamie Richards, who has sin
ce decamped to Hong Kong.
Given her subsequent exploits in NZ, it is probable that anyone who bothered to watch racing out of the Shaky Isles would have marked her down as one of that country’s all-time greats even before she ever raced in Australia.
Though to be fair, the level of her improvement has surprised even trainer Mark Walker, who took over the Te Akau string from Richards.
“We knew she was up to it before she won the William Reid last season, but she’s just gone to another level since then,” says Walker, who has had Imperatriz under his wing for the most recent seven of nine career wins at the top level.
‘I didn’t expect what I got’
“She was a champion in New Zealand, but she’s definitely improved again,” he goes on. “I was still training in Singapore in her early days, but I knew her reputation and that I was getting a pretty smart filly when I arrived at Matamata. I didn’t expect what I got though.”
While the exchanges had Imperatriz as nominal favourite for the 2024 Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes at Royal Ascot, she was ruled out as early as December in favour of an Australian campaign.
However, the one given is that she’s probably raced herself out of NZ sprints, where prize-money is well below the world-leading money available in Melbourne and Sydney. Imperatriz is currently spelling at Walker’s new Australian base in Cranbourne, Victo
ria and with more than a dozen set-weight Australian G1 sprints – and the Everest – all worth more than the Royal Ascot contest, the decision to stay down under wasn’t necessarily all that tricky.
“I think 1200m to 1400m is her best distance,” Walker says. “She can run a mile but there’s no need to stretch her out to that trip again. There’s too much prize-money in the sprints in Australia.”
Whether Imperatriz was headed overseas or staying in Australia, nobody was getting legendary Kiwi jockey Opie Bosson out of the saddle. “You don’t ride many with the turn of foot she’s got,” says the rider, who recently celebrated his 2,000th winner at home.
“It takes a very good horse to measure up against the best Australian sprinters, but she went over and just dominated.
“We’ve known how good she is for a while, but she just had to overcome a few niggling problems. A back issue and a few foot problems. But we had her 100% for the Melbourne Spring and she showed what she can do.”
Imperatriz has really performed poorly in only two starts – and there were fair excuses both times. She ran fourth on a ‘Heavy’ 10 track in the 2022 Tarzino Trophy at Hastings then pulled up sore when eighth in the Arrowfield Stud Stakes at Matamata.
Upside down
To put things in perspective for the Hastings defeat, a double-figure heavy track in NZ is as testing as it gets anywhere and Bosson admits he rode the mare ‘upside down’.
Those runs were back in September and October 2022, when she was already a dual G1 winner, but hadn’t furnished into the superstar she became months later. They were the last times she didn’t perform.
Since then, Imperatriz has won all three of her NZ races including the time-honoured Railway and Waikato Sprints. Then she went to Australia and was beaten an inch after looking home in a G1 contest at Randwick before reeling off five straight wins.
“She’s a stronger horse now she’s over her issues,” says Bosson. “She’s a lovely horse to ride. She doesn’t pull, she just switches off in her races and when you want her to go, she’s there straight away.
“That temperament is why she was able to be on the pace in the Champions Sprint and respond so strongly. In the last 50m, when I heard the other horse [Buenos Nachos] coming, I was a bit concerned. But she heard him too and had no trouble holding him.
“It would have been nice to show the world what she can do, but there’s too much to race for in Australia. She’s the best sprinter I’ve ridden, she’s probably still getting better and we’re just so excited about the year ahead.”
Continuing a remarkable tradition
Imperatriz is the latest in a long line of exceptional New Zealand mares over the past decade. Bonneval, Melody Belle and Probabeel were all mares who were dual NZ Horse of the Year winners between 2016 and 2022. All three were G1 winners in Australia as well.
Trained in the same yard as Imperatriz in the Jamie Richards era before the all-conquering handler went to Hong Kong, Melody Belle established herself as one of the country’s all-time greats by winning a record 14 NZ G1 races.
Also trained by Richards, Probabeel won four G1s in Australia before injury ended her career while Bonneval won Oaks in both NZ and Australia.
The tradition of great NZ mares is showing no signs of abating. While Imperatriz was dominating sprint fields in Australia and New Zealand, Prowess and Legarto were also winning G1 races against over longer trips on both sides of the Tasman.
Legarto is a NZ Thousand Guineas winner at Riccarton who showed her class by winning the Australian Guineas at Flemington in the 2023 Australian autumn. She returned to Australia in the spring but had no luck in the A$10m Golden Eagle at Rosehill.
Recently retired with a foot issue, Prowess won G1 races as a short-priced favourite in both countries earlier in 2023. She returned to Melbourne to win the G2 Waterford Crystal Mile at Moonee Valley on Cox Plate Day after a late start to her preparation ruled out a run in the big race itself.
In 2022, La Crique started one of the shortest-priced favourites in the history of the time-honoured NZ Derby before being grabbed late by rank outside Asterix. When she resumed as a four-year-old, she slammed a G1 weight-for-age field in the Arrowfield Stud Stakes at Matamata and, as a rare talent whose progress has been interrupted by wet tracks, remains something of an enigma.
Despite racing in the same era as Imperatriz, outstanding mare Levante has been able to win four G1 sprints in her homeland and was twice unlucky when fourth in successive races at Flemington.
While the now six-year-old mare should have won at least one of them, the horse that took home the prize was also a NZ mare. Roch ’N’ Horse went to Australia as a perennial bridesmaid back home and won Flemington’s G1 Newmarket Handicap in march 2022 at cricket-score odds, then returned later in the year to pick up the Champions Sprint – beating none other than former world #1 Nature Strip.
For all of that success among NZ mares, the real hard-luck story applies to brilliant sprinting mare Babylon Berlin. She looked home in the 2023 Railway Stakes but was beaten a head by the fast-finishing Imperatriz, then finished second again to the champion and Levante in her next two G1 starts.
Mind you, NZ was producing exceptional mares well before Melody Belle was setting records, with the immortal Sunline proving herself world-class at the turn of the century with two Cox Plates and a Hong Kong Mile amongst her greatest victories.
But it is doubtful there’s ever been a time in the nation’s history when so many exceptional mares were racing at the same time.
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