WE RATE THE BEST HOLLINDALE STAKES WINNERS OF ALL TIME 3. DURBRIDGE
SOME OF AUSTRALIA’S BEST HORSES HAVE WON GOLD COAST GLAMOUR RACE, THE HOLLINDALE STAKES. TODAY WE START TO GET TO THE POINTY END OF OUR TOP-6 COUNTDOWN.
DURBRIDGE is one of the equine stars who gave credibility to the Hollindale Stakes in its infancy.
The Victorian won the Gold Coast race in 1994, a year he galloped through the Australian racing calendar with four Group 1 and two Group 2 victories.
He and regular jockey Simon Marshall were on song that year. And in more ways than one.
Marshall sang to Durbridge as a way of relaxing the bold- striding stallion as he set the pace in his races.
Word has it Durbridge quite liked Song Sung Blue by Neil Diamond, Eagle Rock by Daddy Cool and aptly We Are The
Champions by Queen.
In his march through 1994 he beat elite horses such as Mahogany and Veandercross, who had won Australian Racehorse of the Year awards the previous two seasons.
Durbridge was a six-year-old when he won the Hollindale Stakes from Paris Lane, a rising star of the Australian racing scene also trained by Lee Freedman in Melbourne.
The old-timer beat the threeyear-old Paris Lane again at their next start in the Group 1 Doomben Cup.
Adding more lustre to the 1994 Hollindale Stakes, Paris Lane would go on to win the Caulfield Cup and Mackinnon Stakes at the Melbourne spring carnival five months later.