3 minute read
It's a Triple Crown with a difference, but a Triple Crown just the same - the 2004 Birdsville, Bedourie and Betoota Cups in outback Queensland have been won by the same horse.
Vain Joe, a seven-year-old trained at Winton by Ray Hermann, completed the treble last weekend in the Betoota Cup.
Vain Joe has actually won four races in succession, his winning streak having started at Prairie last month.
He then won the Birdsville, Bedourie and Betoota Cups on the three successive Saturdays, becoming the first winner of the treble since 1996, no mean feat as two of the races are run left handed and the other in the clockwise direction.
Vain Joe's winning jockeys were Les Critoph in the Birdsville and Bedourie Cups and Ross Tilley in the Betoota Cup.
Vain Joe originally raced in the Newcastle/Hunter Valley region of NSW and was sold to Queensland after he won a maidern at Muswellbrook in 2001.
He went through three other country stables in Queensland before he was sold to o Ray Hermann’s father last year.
Queensland Racing