Inter Dominion champion Shakamaker passed overnight aged 23, with the brilliant Victorian speed machine fondly remembered as a giant of the sport.

Shakamaker passed and will be buried today at owners John and Glenys Wolfe’s Ballarat farm, where he spent his past 10 years enjoying retirement.

“He lived well and now he’s resting,” Mr Wolfe said. “I think he had a pretty good life. He was good yesterday, he didn’t suffer and was enjoying life. He didn’t have a day he was sick.

“He’s been looked after good in his own paddock. He did a lot for us personally. We looked after him, fed him, gave him a pat, but he was a bit of an independent type. Our kids loved him.”

Shakamaker’s crowning glory came in the 2000 Inter Dominion, giving us Dan Mielicki’s infamous call ‘here comes Shaka’ as the brilliant entire came from last to first to send a delirious Moonee Valley crowd into raptures.

“He was running last then up the straight he picked them up and spat them out,” Mr Wolfe said. “It was a magnificent night. He won in arrogant fashion.

“He had a big following, they loved the horse. He was that sort of racehorse, he gave a lot of pleasure to people.”

They were extraordinary highs that Mr Wolfe could have barely dreamed of when he purchased the young colt by Bookmaker out of Shakira for $2500 at a pacing gold sale.

“I knew the people who bred him (Borambola Stud), I liked his breeding and no one wanted him at sale so I bought him,” Mr Wolfe said. “He was always going to be a racehorse. He was pretty independent, mucked around a bit but when it came to the race track he always switched on.”

Shakamaker was placed with trainer-driver John Justice, who “took him under his wing, broke him in and kept telling me you’ve got a good one here”.

“John was a good trainer, he looked after the horse and did everything possible to get him fit and drove him to win,” Mr Wolfe said.

“He lost his first race and after that he just kept winning. Nothing could get near him. His finishing burst was enormous. He had very high speed.”

After finishing second on debut his next 24 starts would produce 18 wins and six placings, culminating in the aforementioned Tabcorp Interdom 2000 Pacing Championship Grand Final.

“He was in the elite of racing from then,” Mr Wolfe said.

He would race for three more years in a career that also captured the 2001 Victoria Cup, the 2002 South Australian Cup, the 2000 Tasmanian Pacing Championship, the 2000 Ben Hur, the 1999 West Australian Derby and the 1998 Australian Pacing Gold final.

They were the star-studded trophy cabinet items that contributed to a stakes haul of $2,219,634 from 81 starts that yielded 46 wins and 22 placings, including a second and a third in A. G. Hunter Cups.

He raced until 2003, retiring after an unsuccessful Inter Dominion campaign in Addington.

“We took him to New Zealand and he struck bad weather and didn’t acclimatise,” Mr Wolfe said. “We bought him home and he was about seven and we decided to retire him – he had done us proud.”

Shakamaker followed with a modest career at stud, with one of his more successful foals being Classic Maker, a now five-year-old out of Total Package who’s owned by Mr Wolfe.

A winner of six starts, the Shakamaker gelding will no doubt be a sentimental favourite when he steps out in tomorrow night’s Hunter Rural Pace at Shepparton.