He sure was butt ugly that horse, but geeze, tough as old goats knees with it.
Some horses have really surprised me conformation/gait wise. One was Monkey King. I saw him race a few times at Menangle during the 2010 ID & again later in the year at the MM and he seemed to me to go quite clean & he went bloody fast as well...and yet to my eye when I saw him down in the stabling are I thought he stood like Charlie Chaplin in front. I was a bit surprised he didn't belt his knees off. Another couple were Elsu and Thorate. Elsu's gait as a prospective sire reminded immediately me of the results of the subsequent siring career of Nihilator, not because he went the same as Nihilator but moreso because like him, I thought Elsu had a way of going that was all of his own...and if it was to be inherited by his foals, that they were largely not going to be able to live with it like he could. I think Nihilator had much the same problem, his foals often got his gait...one which had a kind of 'rack' to it, kind of like a Tennessee Walking Horse... but by and large they did not get the motor that he had, the one required to make it work. Thorate was a wonderful race horse too but he used to all but 'run' inside of his hopples. The vision in my head of him was watching him rip down the straight at Bathurst one night and hair into the first turn. Always thought he was a pretty strange going horse, for me he was pound for pound the most perculiar action for the fastest lifetime mark and most big races $$$ won of any horse I've ever seen.