Racing
A Closer Look – Empire chasing Manikato
Past winner out to join a select club in this Saturday’s WA feature.
Western Empire will be in esteemed company if he wins the $1.5 million Group 1 Railway Stakes for a second time this Saturday at Ascot in Perth.
Not only because he will become just the third multiple winner of Western Australia's signature race, joining Tudor Mak (1966/67) and Luckygray (2011/13).
The eight-year-old gelding is striving to become the first horse since the legendary Manikato to win the same Australian Group 1 four years apart.
Manikato made a habit of repeat feature wins and his most famous streak came in the William Reid Stakes, which he won five years in a row, but that was a Group 2 race when he owned it.
The Futurity Stakes, however, has always been run at the highest level and Manikato first won that race in 1979 and again in 1981/82/83.
Manikato is the only horse to have achieved the feat since the Group 1 classification system was introduced in 1979.
Cagou won The Metropolitan four years apart – 1913 and 1917 – while Lough Neagh achieved the feat in the Rawson Stakes, which we now know as the Ranvet Stakes, when he won in 1933, 1936 and 1937.
The record, however, is held by St Joel, who created history in the race we now know as the Sir Rupert Clarke Stakes.
His first win came in 1953 and he won it again at the age of 10 in 1959. Just for good measure, he also won the race then known as the Invitation Stakes in 1956.
The Railway Stakes that Western Empire won is the only one he has contested, having had stints with Danny O'Brien and John Leek before returning to Grant and Alana Williams – who prepared him to win the Railway – after being sold for $150,000 on Inglis Digital in late 2023.
He won't be the first horse to try and win a Railway four years after adding his name to the honour roll of the race first run in 1887.
Jacks Or Better won in 1995 and was there again in 1999, but could manage only 15th behind Slavonic. He also ran in the two editions held in 1998, finishing fourth in January and runner-up to Machine Gun Tom in December.
Jacks Or Better and Luckygray are among 17 Railway winners to run in a subsequent edition since 1990 with only one other managing to place.
That was Good Project, the 2015 winner who was runner-up the following year.
Luckygray won his second Railway under 58kg and he is the only horse to win under more than 56.5kg since the introduction of metrics in 1972 and is the only horse to win with more than 53.5kg in the past 15 years.
Storyville is the lone 53kg limit-marker this year, while Admiration Express, Depth Of Character and Ginger Baker are those on 53.5kg.
Western Empire has the job of lumping 58kg topweight this year with Magnificent Andy (57.5kg) the only other above 56.5kg.
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