Trainer Kirsty Lawrence and strapper Kushla Edgarton acknowledge Intransigent's come-from-behind victory in Hastings.Photo/Warren Buckland
Listen closely to the TV footage and you'll hear a frenetic female voice almost drowning out the horseracing commentator.
"The day I give up cheering is the day I give up training," Waipukurau trainer/co-owner Kirsty Lawrence said, not long after etching her name on the $70,000 Windsor Park Hawke's Bay Gold Cup, in Hastings, on Saturday.
Resplendent in her red hat, Lawrence revealed Intransigent and jockey Robert Hannam had powered to the biggest win of her career.
"People give you a hard time but there's nothing like screaming your horse home."
The 38-year-old championed the title for the little guys, claiming she was going to remain "boutique" with 11 horses in her stable on a one-on-one arrangement.
"We're only a small team. Waipukurau is a small community so we look out for each other."
Hannam also struggled for big opportunities in his career.
"Robbie never quits. He followed instructions."
As strapper Kushla Edgarton led the pair to the winners' park space at the Birdcage, a grinning Hannam said to Lawrence: "The plan wasn't a panic, was it?"
A co-owner, Annette Hawkins, of Palmerston North, sent her a text not long before the start of the 2200m group III race: "What's the plan? Are we coming from the back? Nothing's coming from back."
Intransigent habitually has to go back to settle into a race, regardless of whether he is inside or outside at the start.
"My instructions to Robbie were don't hunt him out of the gate, let him settle. If you get angry with him he'll stick it to yer."
Born and bred in the Bay, Lawrence highlighted the significance of winning a cup first raced a year before the Melbourne Cup in 1861 at the defunct Greenmeadows track for 100 guineas.
"There are some amazing names on that trophy. You look back through time and a little old horse from Waipukurau wins the Hawke's Bay Gold Cup."
The 7-year-old gelding is Intransigent by name and Intransigent by nature.
"He's a little horse and a little bit arrogant. He doesn't know how little he is but he's got a big heart.
"You can't beat his ticker. He's 437 kilos wet when he's racing - that's small - and he does little things wrong all the time but you've just got to sit quiet with him."
Lawrence knows the horse "inside-out", instructing jockey Robert Hannam not to "muck with him but just let him travel".
She was mindful people were shaking their heads in disbelief thinking Intransigent wasn't capable of shifting gears into overdrive from last place.
Lawrence broke a self-imposed cardinal rule as the horse clocked 2:27.2.
"I never back my own horses, something I've never done in my whole career.
"I'm superstitious but I broke that superstition today. When I saw the TAB fixed odds come out [15-1] I was pretty confident he was pretty forward going into the race so I just backed him."
Besides, it was a 10-heavy track and Intransigent had failed to find traction in similar conditions just once.
Unlike other camps, the Waipukurau campaigners had no qualms about the inclement weather leading up to raceday.
"I was the one rain dancing all week. For me, that's what made it because he's a heavy-track specialist."
Even when it rained cats and dogs on Thursday Lawrence chuckled because Intransigent had won the 2100m Kiwifruit Cup on a heavy 10 rating in Tauranga last year and on a slow eight won the Taumarunui Gold Cup over a similar distance listed race at Te Rapa.
"The problem we've got here in New Zealand is that I really struggle to find races above a group III now on a wet track for a staying horse on a winter track so that's really bad.
"The thing that frustrates me is there's no foresight. The Parliamentary Handicap, the big race for Trentham, has dropped from $40,000 to $25,000," she said, lamenting Intransigent was exciting but it was difficult to lure people to the Bay Cup race that only had a 13-horse field after Tempelten was scratched.
Lawrence said Intransigent wasn't a horse she would take to the big races but Australia beckoned with its smaller weekend meetings.
"He's not up to group racings there, I think, because he wouldn't be able to handle a dry track. He's an out-and-out wet-track horse."
Intransigent's victory gives him an automatic entry into the group I Hawke's Bay Spring Racing Carnival Classic on October 4 but she said that was out, too.
The group 3 $70,000 Rotorua Cup on May 10 was first up on his agenda.
"He won the listed Rotorua Plate there so he's honest as the day is long. We'll sit back and have a look at the handicappers' dozen in terms of the points ... because if they give him too many points he'll struggle again."
Intransigent is the first horse the group has ever owned.
"I'm going to struggle to get them [co-owners] in another horse because they've had the dream ride. To come out and win a race like this and to have a horse like this as your first owned is massive."
John Clapham, of Pukekohe, bred Intransigent and Lawrence has four other horses of his at her stable.
The Moroneys have bought Intrasigent's half brother for $87,500.
Lawrence and husband Steve are major shareholders of Intransigent. Brendon and Barbara Ray, of the Bay, Barry Sizer, of Waipukurau, and Brian and Annette Hawkins are other co-owners of a horse who has claimed nine wins and pocketed more than $265,000 for the group.