The obsession began nearly 40 years ago with a single question that may have cost Bernard McCormack an academic silver medal on his final exam at the Irish National Stud.

Where is the Queen’s Plate run?

The answer is shockingly easy for anyone in Canada who knows anything about thoroughbreds, but for a teenage Irishman, it was trickier than it should have been. McCormack wrote Victoria Park in Australia and immediately kicked himself when he looked up the answer later and discovered he was just a mark or two away from earning a medal.

“I was very highly placed and one or two questions would have made the difference and that was one of them and it burned me,” McCormack said. “Believe me, I knew where the Queen’s Plate was run from that instant. I found out and I never forgot it. In a very roundabout way, I always put that race in the back of my mind.”

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