Flemington honour for Moroney

The 1400-metre event for three-year-olds, formerly known as the Exford Plate, now carries the name of one of the track’s most popular training tenants.

Moroney passed away in his sleep eighteen months ago, aged 66, following a period of ill health in his final years that he faced with characteristic resilience, never losing his enthusiasm for the sport or his eagerness to return for another spring carnival.

A 55-time Group 1-winning trainer, he ran his Ballymore Stables operation from Flemington’s famous Chicquita Lodge from 1998, having crossed the Tasman via an earlier base in Adelaide. It became, in every sense but geography, his home track. “He did consider Flemington to be headquarters, even though he was brought up near Matamata and trained there for a long time,” his brother Paul Moroney told Racing.com.

“In fact, he really did love Australia – so much so – that he even sang the national anthem and backed the Wallabies, just not when they played the All Blacks. He was a proud Kiwi, but he loved Australia, and he loved Australians.”

Moroney won the Victoria Derby in 1997 with Second Coming and again in 2009 with Monaco Consul, the VRC Oaks in 2010 with Brazilian Pulse, the Mackinnon Stakes in 2011 with Glass Harmonium, and a Newmarket Handicap–Champions Sprint double in 2022 with Roch ‘N’ Horse. But nothing defined his career quite like the first Tuesday in November, 2000.

That year Moroney saddled three runners in the Melbourne Cup, including Third Coming, who finished third. The headline act, though, was Brew – a horse whose path to Flemington had a strange, almost prophetic beginning. “A few years earlier, I’d dreamed that I trained a Melbourne Cup winner, and I dreamed it was Brew,” Moroney once recalled. “I remember telling my wife that I’d won by two lengths with Brew, who was number 24. My wife said, ‘Who is Brew?’ My dream didn’t make sense then because, at the time, Brew was a three-year-old in work with Paul O’Sullivan.” When O’Sullivan later mentioned the horse was under offer to Singapore buyers, Moroney moved fast. “Within 24 hours, Brew was ours. The rest is history.”

That history involved a young Kerrin McEvoy in the saddle, and a racing coincidence punters couldn’t resist.

“They told us how they’d backed the winner based on pure logic,” Moroney recalled of a group he met leaving the course that night.

“Barrier 24, 24 horses in the race, 24 beers in a slab, and a horse called Brew!”

Moroney’s influence extended well past race day. His long-time racing manager, Anthony Feroce, worked alongside him for 24 years.

“It’s fantastic by the club to do this, and it will be really nice,” Feroce told Racing.com of Saturday’s tribute.

“I started with Mike in February 2001, so it was 24 years, our working relationship. It was fantastic, just super working for Mike. A lot of people said we were like an old married couple, as we used to argue, but that’s the type of relationship we had. He was a real gentleman and great to work for.”

Members of the Moroney family will travel from New Zealand for Saturday’s race, including his daughter Aliesha, her husband Chad, and his two granddaughters, alongside his 90-year-old mother, Mary, who was long regarded as his most devoted supporter.

“When Mike trained a winner, no matter where it was, the first message of congratulations he got was from his mother,” Moroney said.

For a trainer whose name became inseparable from the Cup he won and the track he called home, the honour lands exactly where it should. As Moroney put it: “This is as big a feather in his cap that he’s ever had posthumously.”