It's Queensland's greatest race, and just like Australia's other famous handicaps it holds a special place in the punters heart.
It's also the Sunshine State's richest racing prize worth $3m in stakes, and perhaps more importantly, the winner's name is engraved for evermore in the annals of Australian turf history.
As is the name Stradbroke - the race being so called in honour of the titled Earls of Stradbroke, whose family motto is Je Vive En Espoir ( I live in hope) - an appropriate association with horse racing!
The racing-mad Lords of Stradbroke were intrepid characters addicted to exploring, governing, acquiring estates, breeding and racing Thoroughbreds and all the usual aristocratic pursuits.
The family were involved in the colonies from the earliest days, but the 4th Earl, Henry John Rous, who arrived in Australia in 1827 was particularly influential.
In later life, this Earl of Stradbroke became the British Jockey Club handicapper and inventor of the weight for age scale.
The inaugural edition of the race which would become fondly referred to as “The Straddie” was a six furlong event.
It was run in 1890 and won by Pyrrhus.
Pyrrhus descended from the Soothsayer daughter Spaewife, also ancestress of the champion racehorse and 1867 Melbourne Cup winner Tim Whiffler ( aka “Sydney Tim” because there was another bay stallion by that name running in the Cup that year, dubbed “Melbourne Tim” who had won the SA Derby - race caller's nightmare)
Sydney Tim had a son who was also named Tim Whiffler and he was linebred to Spaewife - she was his own ancestress. This “Tim” won the 1881 ARC Derby.
Of course - as was the fashion of the time - they were all named in honour of the original top class stayer and sire Tim Whiffler(GB), foaled in 1859 and no relation at all - but just to make things completely confusing, that stallion was exported to Australia and sired the magnificent filly Briseis ( 1873 VRC Oaks / Derby / Melbourne Cup) and other fine females to make their mark in the studbook.
Thank goodness sanity prevailed and naming restrictions were eventually imposed.
In 1953 the Stradbroke distance was raised to seven furlongs, and from 1972 onwards it has been a 1400m contest.
Between 1982 and 1988 the race was briefly known as the Elders Handicap (one imagines the former Earls turning in their graves at this commercial vulgarity).
It was once not unusual for two year olds to contest the Stradbroke and five were successful - Sweetheart, Fitz Grafton, Line Gun, Amberdown and fittingly the last in 1958 was the mighty Rego daughter Wiggle, a small filly built like a colt who had won the now G1 Champagne Stakes by six lengths before lining up in the Stradbroke.
Altogether the iron-legged and famously ill-tempered Wiggle won fourteen races in Australia and six more in America.
No horse has ever won three Stradbrokes, but dual winners of the great race up until 1950 were Babel, Gold Tie, Highland, Petrol Lager and Lucky Ring.
In 1984 Daybreak Lover took the prize, then retired to serve a full season at stud and returned to the track in 1986 to win again - the brilliant son of Namnan is still the only horse to win non-consecutive Straddies. He sired some pretty good horses too!
Then in 1992 came the race that gave us what most would regard as the iconic Stradbroke finish - the legendary Kiwi Rough Habit was shooting for back to back wins in the race with “The Pumper” JA Cassidy on board.
Rough Habit had to jump from barrier 18 and lug 58.5kg. As the field turned for home the pair were dead last and marooned behind a logjam of tiring horses.
Betting tickets would have been cast to the wind like confetti by despairing punters at this point, but neither “Roughie” nor Cassidy were the kind of characters who ever had any truck with a quitting mentality.
With 200m to go Rough Habit began to accelerate and weave, finding runs where none seemingly existed, Cassidy riding like a demon, horse and hoop united in fierce determination.
“Weight will stop a train” they say, but it doesn't have much effect on a missile - which is what Rough Habit was that day.
The incredulous cry of racecaller Wayne Wilson as he spies the blur on the rail in the shadows of the post is always spine tingling no matter how many times it is heard.
“And look at Rough Habit!”
He had to beat a couple of great sprinters in Barossa Boy and Schillaci, but Roughie got up to win his second Stradbroke.
The charismatic Black Piranha was the last horse to claim multiple wins in the race in 2009/10.
Bart Cumming's freakish mare Dane Ripper was the 1997 Stradbroke heroine and she went on to win a Cox Plate, Australian Cup, Memsie Stakes and a Manikato Stakes.
Fittingly the race named in her honour is now a curtain raiser to the main event on Stradbroke Day.
In 2002, two great Queenslanders Show A Heart and Falvelon were both in the ruck turning for home and seemed out of contention, but the pair of thrilling speedsters rocketed to the line side by side to the roar of the parochial crowd.
It was the distinctive blazed face of Show A Heart just in front at the post from his great rival.
Once retired, those two fine stallions continued a more friendly spirit of competition at their home Glenlogan Park Stud, where they were often observed having fun burning up and down the fence lines of their adjacent paddocks. They lived long, and they prospered. Show A Heart passed away in 2023 and Falvelon was buried beside his old mate this year.
Nobody thought Linton, the remarkable grey son of Galileo, had a hope in hell of winning the Straddie of 2013.
Nobody except his trainer John Sadler, who had hatched the plan many months before.
While domiciled in the Lloyd Williams camp, Linton had at one time been a strong Melbourne Cup fancy. He had won the G2 Herbert Power over 2400m and been runner up in the G1 BMW at the same distance.
It's hardly the profile of a Stradbroke winner, but Sadler had long believed the horse was a natural sprinter miler and he trained him that way when he got the opportunity.
All the punters' money was on Queensland's iron horse Buffering who had placed the previous year. But again the mighty Buff was to be denied!
Linton came up the rail with a blistering turn of foot to win and put to rest any suggestion that his sire Galileo would get nothing but plodmobiles in Australia - we can all laugh at that idea now.
Buff never got his Stradbroke but he did go on to claim a swag of G1 races and become one of the best loved Queenslanders of all time.
His trainer Rob Heathcote has another Queensland legend Rothfire (Rothesay) lining up again in this year’s Stradbroke, a race in which he has placed twice.
The beloved Rothy arrives in 2026, at the age of eight, as the reigning G1 Doomben 10,000 winner - which is the best lead up form of his career!
2022 was memorable for the emotional return of turf warrior Alligator Blood from what had seemed to be career - ending injury, as he stormed home to win the Straddie from Private Eye and Rothfire. The ageless $12.8 million dollar horse Private Eye ( Al Maher) is lining up again this year as well. Like Rothy, the big Eye will be snorting in appreciation at the sound of rain on his stable roof!
In 2024, three year old filly Stefi Magnetica made a special piece of Stradbroke history when she beat champion Bella Nipotina to win, thus following in the hoofprints of her dam Mid Summer Music who was victorious in 2012.
Last year War Machine got the chockies as favourite - a rare occurrence! Favourites have a shocking winning record in the race, though they usually run well.
Just not well enough to win - before War Machine and Think About It in 2023 you had to go back to 2009 to find a winning fave - that was good old Black Piranha, winning his first Straddie in 2009.
