Former track superstar Atlantic Jewel dies in Hunter after foaling
Four-time group 1 winner and one-time Cox Plate favourite Atlantic Jewel has died at Coolmore Stud after giving birth to a foal by Triple Crown winner Justify.
The Fastnet Rock mare won 10 of her 11 starts, including the 2011 1000 Guineas, the 2012 All Aged Stakes and the Memsie and Caulfield Stakes the following year at the top level.
Atlantic Jewel takes the 2011 Thousand Guineas at Caulfield.Credit:Wayne Taylor
"Sadly we lost the brilliant Atlantic Jewel last night when she haemorrhaged after foaling," Coolmore's Tom Moore told ANZ Bloodstock News.
"It is very sad news but she did leave behind a cracking Justify colt who is doing well."
The Mark Kavanagh charge had a career plagued by injury, despite her enviable record on the track. A tendon complaint saw her miss her entire four-year-old season, having earlier missed a tilt at the 2012 VRC Oaks where she would have started a short-priced favourite after a spectacular win in the Wakeful Stakes.
She returned in August 2013 with the easy Memsie win before tasting defeat for the only time in her career when It's A Dundeel took the Underwood Stakes by a short half-head at Caulfield. The group 1 Caulfield Stakes three weeks later would prove to be her final start after another tendon injury saw her ruled out of the Cox Plate as a raging favourite.
The weight-for-age championship of Australasia would go on to be won by Shamus Award, the first emergency, who broke his maiden at Moonee Valley paying $21.
Melbourne Cup-winning jockey Michael Rodd, who rode Atlantic Jewel in all but one of her starts, described her as 'the best horse I have ever ridden' in a column for the Herald and The Age ahead of what at that point appeared an inevitable retirement.
"Atlantic Jewel was one of those rare thoroughbreds, an equine machine," Rodd wrote.
"But, unfortunately, she was prone to injury. That's where Kav has excelled himself. His management and training skills during her career had to be seen to be believed. To prepare her to 10 wins from 11 starts, including a Memsie Stakes blitz when first-up from 18 months on the sidelines, was a real feather in his cap.
"Looking at her feats on the racetrack, you wouldn't know Atlantic Jewel was a day-by-day prospect. She took on the best of her generation as a three-year-old filly and won a Thousand Guineas, a race Kav was declaring her the winner of before she'd even won a maiden at Geelong."