The best of his time and the likes of which we will never see again are just two of the many accolades being showered on Octagonal in the week announcing the champion galloper’s induction to the New Zealand Racing Hall of Fame.
Octagonal raced during an era of great horses, living up to his blue-blooded pedigree and magnificent conformation with 10 Group One wins from two to four years. A member of the first crop of Zabeel from iconic broodmare Eight Carat, he was the champion Australian two-year-old of 1994-95 and rose to even greater heights in his second season.
In the spring he was a rare three-year-old winner of the W S Cox Plate and in the autumn he completed the Canterbury Guineas, Rosehill Guineas and Australian Derby treble, as well as beating the older horses for a second time at weight-for-age in the Mercedes (Tancred) Classic. He again took Australian age-group honours as well as the supreme Australian Horse of the Year title.
Octagonal’s sole win in the first half of his four-year-old season was the Underwood Stakes, but he returned in the autumn with wins in the Chipping Norton Stakes, Australian Cup and another Mercedes Classic. In his final raceday appearance he had to settle for second in the Queen Elizabeth Stakes.
A race record of 14 wins and seven seconds from 28 starts for stakes of A$5.8 million provides some measure of Octagonal’s ability, however reflecting on his career with those most closely associated with him brings to bear the champion qualities that set apart the horse known affectionately by racing fans as Occy or The Big O.
“In a way he was destined to be a great horse,” says John Hawkes, the Australian Hall of Fame trainer who prepared Octagonal for Bob and Jack Ingham, Australia’s pre-eminent owners at the time.
“He was a cracking yearling when we saw him in the Cambridge Stud draft ahead of the Karaka sales and we were always going to buy him. He wasn’t cheap at $210,000, which was a lot for a yearling by a first-season sire, but he had a lot going for him as a son of Eight Carat, and to be fair we would have gone higher if we had had to.”
Octagonal, who was to become the fourth of an incredible five Group One winners produced by Hall of Fame broodmare Eight Carat, showed ability from the start, winning on debut as a December two-year-old and beginning his autumn campaign with victory in the Gr. 2 Todman Stakes. He had to settle for second, bursting from the pack but just failing to overhaul Flying Spur, in the Golden Slipper, but after winning the second leg of the Sydney juvenile triple crown, the AJC Sires’ Produce Stakes, and finishing second in the Champagne Stakes, he claimed age-group honours.
Kiwi jockey Grant Cooksley was Octagonal’s jockey at that point of his career and into the spring with two lead-up wins confirming a trip to Melbourne, but with that a change of jockey to Darren Gauci for the Caulfield Guineas. Enter another Kiwi making big waves in Australian jockey ranks, Shane Dye, who was well aware of Octagonal’s ability but had never had the chance to ride him.
“During the autumn I used to say to Johnny Hawkes that he could win the Cox Plate with the colt, he was that good,” Dye recalls. “He was one of those horses that was older than what he was.”
After finishing third in the Caulfield Guineas to New Zealand three-year-old Our Maizcay, Octagonal was confirmed for the Cox Plate and as one of the few leading jockeys able to ride at 48.5 kilos under the race’s weight-for-age scale, Dye got his chance.
“That was the first of many times he proved to me just how tough he was. It was a big field full of top horses, I rode him back and when I brought him around to challenge on the turn he wasn’t going to get beat. It took a very good horse in Mahogany to push him all the way, but he had his measure and won like the champion he was.
“He knew where the winning post was, he never won by much but more times than not he came out on top. He just loved a scrap and the more pressure you put on him the more he gave you.”
Dye didn’t get to ride Octagonal again until the final four starts of his career as an autumn four-year-old, winning the Chipping Norton Stakes, Australian Cup and Mercedes Classic, but being denied a perfect five from five on him when beaten by Intergaze in the Queen Elizabeth Stakes.
“I’d have to say that if he was racing now, with the whip rules now in force he wouldn’t have won the races he did. I rode a lot of very good horses, and Octagonal was one of the very best.”
Another revelation around Octagonal’s career came this week from Hawkes, dating back to the lead-up to the Australian Cup.
“All week leading up to the race we were battling a foot abscess with him. We couldn’t get on top of it properly and on the day he still wasn’t 100 per cent, but he went out there and he still won.
“The sort of horse he was, they don’t make them like that any more. I’ve been lucky to train a lot of good horses – All Too Hard, Chautauqua, Octagonal’s own son Lonhro and others – but he’s my favourite and always will be.”
Bob and Jack Ingham have since passed, but one member of the Ingham family able to pay tribute to Octagonal is Bob’s daughter Debbie Kepitis, best known as the part-owner of the great mare Winx but well versed in horses from another era.
“Octagonal was Dad and Bob’s all-time favourite, he gave them so many thrills, the races he won and how he won them, he was definitely special to them.
“It would be fair to say the Cox Plate was the pinnacle – they hadn’t won that race until then and they didn’t win another one either. They would have loved to have won the Slipper with him too, but it all came a bit soon and he was running on raw ability.
“He went on to prove what a champion he was and it’s such an honour that he’s going to be inducted into your Hall of Fame. He’s already in the Australian Hall of Fame and it takes a very special horse to be in both – that proves just how good Octagonal was.”
*The 2025 NZ Racing Hall of Fame Induction Dinner is scheduled for Sunday May 11 at SkyCity, Hamilton. For further information and tickets go to www.racinghalloffame.co.nz
