A Southern hero has run his last race.
Majestic Man, the 9yr-old trotter who oozed class right from his first start, has been retired after winning 24 races and over $850,000 in stakes.
The Griffins Syndicate, who bred and raced the Majestic Son-Love Hate Revenge gelding with North Otago trainer Phil Williamson, said the time had come for him to enjoy his retirement.
"He is by far the best horse we’ve had," syndicate manager Mark Noonan said.
"He has done us proud. It’s incredible when you think, of those 105 starts he’s had, 73 were in group races and he was in the top three 43 times out of those 73."
He was known as "George" after the eldest child of the Prince and Princess of Wales.
"We just thought as he was a Majestic Man that George was the right stable name for him."
A short course specialist with devastating gate speed, Majestic Man won races in this country from Auckland to Invercargill, and was a multiple Group 1 winner across the Tasman.
Such was his speed that in 2022 he smashed the NZ record for a 2000m stand by over three seconds. His fastest winning mile in this country was 1min 54.1sec at Ashburton in 2020.
While he finished up with 24 wins and $855,545 in stakes, his trainer said it could have been so much more.
"He ran so many placings behind Sundees Son, Winterfell, Muscle Mountain, Oscar Bonavena that he could have won well over $1million and then some,” Williamson said.
“He was a wonderful horse for us and his syndicate of owners."
Noonan credited the wider Williamson family as the main reason for their trotter’s success.
"Phil, Bev and the rest of the Oamaru team have looked after and cared for George, and the careful way he’s been driven in his races, mainly by Brad."
With Brad Williamson in the bike (as he invariably was), Majestic Man hit a purple patch of form in Australia in 2021 when he won three group 1 races in six starts, including the TAB VL Dullard Cup, bankrolling over $150,000 in the process.
He won the Dullard again last year, beating trotting’s new hero Just Believe.
For Noonan, there were many highlights.
"That win at Forbury Park in his first start showed us he had something."
The then 2yr-old galloped at the start on a rainy and murky Dunedin night in April 2017, and looked to have done his chips. But he gradually caught the field up before going on to beat out the pace-making Moniburns and Dexter Dunn by a nose.
His win in the Sires’ Stakes trotting championships at Addington in May 2017 was another standout, as was his 2020 group 2 win in the Flying Mobile Mile at Cambridge.
"We beat Sundees Son and Bolt For Brilliance that night, and he led all the way," Noonan said.
Majestic Man’s last race was a fourth behind Muscle Mountain in the group 1 Fred Shaw Memorial New Zealand Trotting Championship at Addington on March 30.
Now he is off to a property outside Oamaru to join his old mate and fellow Griffins Syndicate horse, Monty Python.
