Going back in time, wins up the Straight Six confirmed the reputations of champions. Vain, Century, Royal Gem, Ajax and the turf legend Bernborough are just a few on a list stretching back to Heroic, Gothic, Wakeful and 1884 Melbourne Cup winner Malua. Phar Lap never raced up the straight course but his great-great-grandsire Carbine did, finishing third in the 1889 Newmarket. And yet it is little Aurie’s Star, a bay gelding bred in South Australia (descended from Carbine) ,whose name became synonymous with the Straight Six. The VRC honours him annually with this winter sprint. Eighty years ago, on 7 September 1940, Aurie’s Star as an eight-year-old set a time record that was never broken – and never will be. For the next three decades, observant racegoers saw the name in their racebooks - Flemington six furlong course record: Aurie’s Star, 1 minute 8¼ seconds. When Australia replaced imperial measures with metrics, this six furlong course (3/4 mile) was shortened by 7 metres to 1200, the nearest round number. Mathematicians calculated ‘pacesetter times’ for all race distances. They converted Aurie’s Star’s time to 1 minute 7.8 seconds. It was a theoretical number, and even this proved impossible to match. Eventually in 1991 Final Card equalled Aurie’s Star’s pacesetter time. No horse beat it until the spring of 1996 when Gold Ace (his half brother) ran the 1200 in 1:7.5. Five years later, on New Year’s Day 2001, Iglesia set a new benchmark of 1:7.16. And – shades of Aurie’s Star – Iglesia’s dazzling wind-assisted time has remained unbroken for a further twenty years
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