The performance of the Bart Cummings trained God’s Own to win the Group I Carlton Draught Caulfield Guineas at the Melbourne Racing Club’s first day of their Spring Racing Carnival on Saturday is still quite simply astounding, and becomes more so with the benefit of reflection.

There are races, and good performances and wins that do dim with time, and sometimes quite quickly. But on Saturday all who saw the race either on-course, and there was an excellent crowd of 20,932 who wisely braved the cool conditions to witness first hand the win, or on television no matter where, will keep God’s Own’s win very much to the forefront of their memory as an exceptional thoroughbred feat.

The media were collectively in awe and great racing minds searched for equal races to match God’s Own.

“There have been no more extraordinary wins in the Caulfield Guineas than yesterday’s performance by God’s Own, which marked a triumphant return of Bart Cummings to group I success,” wrote the doyen of Victorian racing media Tony Bourke in The Age on Sunday.

“Monstrous win. Could he be the Cox Plate wildcard, a la Octagonal?,” said Matt Stewart in the Sunday Herald Sun already making a comparison to the mighty Octagonal.

Think Saintly, think the same family, think champion.

Saintly, as it happens is, on his way to Melbourne for his usual round of social engagement befitting a retired champion and he is expected to put in an appearance at Moonee Valley as well as his Melbourne Cup parade stroll up Swanson Street. He would approve of the youngster in the family.

The omen was there on Saturday for all to see with the dark rain clouds providing a suitably dramatic back drop to the running of the Guineas. The chap upstairs was making sure the props were in place as this was not to be just another race and we were to know it. The colt was not named God’s Own for nothing.

So we had it all, the race interference that would have put off any normal lightly raced three-year-old still figuring out what the game was about, the impossible distance to make up, the horse considered the best three-year-old around leading with 150m to run, and who after all had demolished the older sprinters at Rosehill in the Group II Theo Marks Stakes. Paratroopers was tough, strong, seasoned, and very good.

The sight of God’s Own striding past Paratroopers, who even though he was tiring rapidly, would have won the race in any other year, is the memory, the one to hold onto, special, astounding.

This of course sets up the Victorian Spring Racing Carnival so well, that famous face of Bart Cummings in every newspaper and on television and Group I Glen Boss once again in the zone.

What can we expect over the coming weeks now? Well, confirmed crowds that is for sure as racing once again rules supreme in the Victorian media, but also a Cox Plate that changed complexion in just 12.66 seconds when God’s Own made up 4L on Paratroopers over the final 200m of the Guineas.

The Diva does not have a lock on the Carlton Draught Cox Plate in any shape or form now. TAB Sportsbet had Makybe Diva at $2.35 for the race after racing on Saturday and God’s Own on $6.50. Unusual for the TAB fixed odds chaps to had the plate around.

The difficult life for stud masters did not get any better as well with the win. They had had a feeding frenzy over the other top Sydney colts months ago preparing for the possibility of one of them scoring the invaluable, utterly invaluable that should be, group I over there three-year-old year.

They all missed out this time, not like John Messara’s Arrowfield Stud who scored with Redoute’s Choice before the 1999 Caulfield Guineas, and we all know the rest of that story.

Cummings knew he had a very good colt maturing at Princes Farm and his Randwick stable, and at 77 years-of-age Cummings has plenty of patience, he wanted the $1 million, listed, Golden Rose (1400m) in just the third start for the colt. He was fourth after giving the field lengths at the top of the straight. Two further runs and the main prize was his. The studs should now turn their collective minds to God’s Own, because the words of Cummings’ Flemington foreman Reg Fleming immediately after the Guineas that this was going to be the best horse that Cummings had ever had, should be ringing in their ears.

The last word is on the Sydney Turf Club’s Golden Rose. This race must be elevated to Group III next year at a minimum, with Econsul, In Top Swing, Savabeel, Paratroopers and now God’s Own all emerging from the race. Pendragon, third this year, also trained by Cummings and part-owned by Dato Tan Chin Nam, just might win the AAMI Victoria Derby as well.

By ThoroughbredNEWS.