Clarry Conners - Warwick Farm

Every leading racehorse trainer has a signature race. For the 71-year-old maestro Bart Cummings, it's the Melbourne Cup. For the late T.J.Smith, it was the Cox Plate, a race he claimed a record seven times.And for the Warwick Farm-based Clarry Conners, it simply has to be the $2.5 million Golden Slipper Stakes.

Conners has just about made the Slipper his own, beginning with the triumph of winning the 1991 renewal with the magnificent Tierce, whose sire Victory Prince had also been a Conners-trained Group One winner back in 1985.

Tierce went on to complete Sydney's juvenile Triple Crown, effortlessly capturing the AJC Sires' Produce Stakes (1400m) and the AJC Champagne Stakes (1600m) and becoming the first two-year-old since the mighty Luskin Star (1977) to do so.

How extraordinary, after such a long wait to welcome another juvenile Triple Crown winner, that Sydney should have a a third just 12 months later. And would you believe, from the same stable as well?

Yes, Clarry Conners did do it again in 1992, capturing all three Group One races in back-to-back seasons, this time with the smallish chestnut filly Burst, a first-crop daughter of 1987 Golden Slipper hero Marauding.

In 1997, Conners experienced a trainer's worst nightmare. His Tierce colt Encounter was the proverbial "good thing beaten" in the Golden Slipper, though the winner Guineas was a highly-admirable opponent who, like a good rugby league front-rower, ran straight and hard for Darren Beadman. Encounter, on the other hand, ran away from Shane Dye's whip and contrived a defeat out of certain victory.

As if to prove the point, Encounter emulated Tierce and Burst by winning the other two juvenile Group Ones at Randwick --- a chilling reminder of a Triple Crown winner that should have been.

And to complete a decade of dominance, Clarry Conners again won the Golden Slipper in 1998 with Prowl, another member of the Marauding clan. That made three Golden Slipper winners (should have been four) within the compass of a single decade.

In case you're thinking this Clarry Conners is just a trainer of two-year-olds, it may pay to remember that his first really big-time galloper was Research, Australia's Horse of the Year in 1989-90 and one of only three post-war fillies to defeat the males in the Group One AJC Australian Derby at Randwick. But of those three fillies, no other was able to capture the Victorian and AJC Australian Oaks like Research did.

And then there was Mouawad, who came and went like a comet, inspiring us with his unmitigated brilliance but leaving us feeling a fraction empty in that so much of his potential was never truly fulfilled because of injury and an early retirement.

Mouawad, the year-younger brother to champion Octagonal, won three successive Group One races in the autumn of 1997, including that stallion-making race, the Australian Guineas, won by his sire Zabeel exactly seven years earlier.

What's Clarry Conners secret? If there is such a thing as "his secret", it's an uncanny ability to peak horses on the right day. You never see Clarry Conners' horses going over the top before the big occasion arrives; they just get better and better as the preparation unfolds.

Classic Bloodstock has for years been a winner in its field, our partnership with the Conners stable has resulted in numerous City wins including wins in some of Australia's most prestigeous races. We invite you to ride with us and share in this prosperity, which we have no doubt will continue to flourish for many years to come.