The Phantom Chance

The Phantom Chance (foaled 3 November 1989)[2] is a New Zealand Thoroughbred racehorse who won the New Zealand Derby in 1992 and Cox Plate in 1993, earning over $2 million in his 44-race career.

The gelding didn't race at two and made a slow start to his three-year-old career, finishing third in his first two starts. But then he won eight races on end, six of them at stakes level, including the Derby and the Group 1 Cambridge Stud International Stakes against the older horses to confirm his status as New Zealand's champion three-year-old for the season.

His Derby win gave trainer Colin Jillings his fifth win in the race, a number that no other trainer has matched.

As a four-year-old the horse's great success continued not only in New Zealand but also across the Tasman. He started his Australian career with a narrow win in the Turnbull Stakes at Flemington, and after a Group 1 placing at Caulfield became the second New Zealand Derby winner in three years (after Surfers Paradise) to win the Cox Plate, beating fellow New Zealander Solvit by a length and a half in the 1993 running of Australia's weight-for-age championship.

On 28 November 1993, ridden by R D Vance, he placed 12th of 16 in the Japan Cup won by Legacy World. He was three places behind the Australian entrant, Naturalism.

He continued to race through to the age of 8, and occasionally experienced success in both New Zealand and Australia at stakes level. He wasn't the same horse as he was at three and four though, and as a result his record probably looks less impressive now than it should.[3]