Kate Hercock was seen at her vigorous best when urging Tolstoy to victory in a $35,000 race at Ōtaki last Saturday. It brought up the Hawke’s Bay jockey’s 57th win for the season.
John Jenkins is a longtime racing journalist based in Hawke’s Bay
Ōtāne-based jockey Kate Hercock’s perseverance and dedication, even in times of adversity, was rewarded when she broke her record number of wins for a season at last Saturday’s Ōtaki meeting.
When Hercock kicked home Tolstoy to win the $35,000 DG Farriers Handicap (1200m) it brought up her 57th success for the 2024-25 racing season, which ended on Wednesday.
That figure is one more than Hercock’s previous best tally of 56, recorded back in the 2003-04 season.
It also placed her 12th on the national jockeys’ premiership for last season, and her mounts won more than $1.9 million in stake money.
She has been one of the busiest jockeys in the country, making regular trips to South Island meetings as well as travelling north whilst still preparing a team of 10 horses from her Ōtāne property.
That dedication saw her drive from her home to Wellington Airport this morning to catch a flight to Christchurch, where she was booked for six rides on the first day of the Grand National meeting.
She will then be on a flight back to Wellington this evening and will drive back home so she can work her horses early tomorrow before driving to Palmerston North, where she has five rides at the Awapuni Synthetic meeting.
It is a workload that most people couldn’t even contemplate, let alone undertake, but Hercock seems to take it all in her stride.
“You’ve just got to keep going and do the best you can,” she said when contacted this week.
“It has been a tough season for me, and it has been hard getting up in the morning sometimes, but you have to just keep going.”
Hercock’s success last season is even more remarkable given the fact that she lost her partner, Danny Champion, who died suddenly in November last year.
Champion had made the move north from Canterbury to join Hercock and take over the training side of the operation, and the pair were in the throes of establishing a great partnership together before he suffered a fatal heart attack.
Hercock said the loss of her soulmate left her devastated, and she even contemplated giving up race-riding. But, with the help of family, close friends and counselling, she has managed to get through it and continue what she does best.
It was poignant that she chalked up her biggest success to date aboard Marotiri Molly in the Group 2 $150,000 Manawatū Challenge Stakes (1400m) at Trentham on December 21, just over a month after Champion’s death.
“I wasn’t in a good space and if it wasn’t for Marotiri Molly I might have given up,” she said.
“I have been with her all the way through and have ridden her in all of her six wins. She is a really good mare and prepared by Matt Dixon, who is a good friend and a great trainer.”
Hercock said Soldier Boy’s wins in both the Listed Wanganui Guineas and Listed Marton Cup at Trentham and Pep Torque’s Feilding Gold Cup victory at Awapuni are other memorable races she has won in recent years.
Hercock has now kicked home 432 winners in a career that, although spanning 30 years, was punctuated by a 10-year break from race-riding between 2010 and 2021.
The Hastings-born jockey was based in the Waikato for most of her initial riding career, chalking up 237 New Zealand wins in the eight years between 2002 and 2010. She then had a two-year stint in Macau, where she racked up a further 20 wins but also broke both arms in a nasty race fall there, resulting in her giving up race-riding for a decade.
She made a comeback in 2020 and has kicked home a steady stream of winners since, finishing in the top 20 on the jockeys’ premiership in each of the past three seasons.
Still able to ride comfortably at 53kg, Hercock has set herself a goal of notching up at least 60 wins in the new racing season and will have the help of a new riding agent in former multiple Group 1 winning jockey Michael Coleman.
“My aunty Rose [Sellwood] has been doing my rides since I started, but it is getting too tough on her now and I’m lucky that Michael has agreed to take me on,” Hercock said.
“Not only will he be able to get me the rides but he’s been a top jockey, so he can also help with my riding.”
Coleman is already the agent for last season’s leading jockey, Gary Grylls, and will also be taking on Opie Bosson when he resumes race-riding this season.
Stella Success may have stunned punters when winning at odds of 28 to one in a maiden 2200m race at Waverley on Friday of last week, but for Napier thoroughbred owner Garry Trow it was a significant success.
It was Trow’s fourth individual race winner from four horses he has raced but, more importantly, he got to share the success with several members of his family, including his father, Doug Trow.
“My father turned 97 last Sunday and it is the first horse he has raced, so it was a great birthday present,” Garry Trow said when contacted this week.
“My brothers, Scott and Warren, and my sister Janice Beauchamp also have a share.”
Stella Success is trained at Foxton by Joshua Levelle and Sacha Rennie, who also share in the ownership.
The 4-year-old Staphanos mare was having only her fourth race start, with Trow saying the horse was troubled with shin soreness after her debut run last year and didn’t have any luck in her first two starts this campaign, both over sprint distances.
“She is bred to be a stayer, with Zabeel blood in her pedigree,” Trow added.
He said his family decided to buy into Stella Success because they wanted to race a horse in the Central Districts.
Military Step (three wins), Merlotti (two wins) and Lightning Deam (one win) are the other horses Garry Trow has raced, and all of them were prepared from the Te Akau stables in Matamata.
Weanlings by exciting new stallions Armory, Profondo and King Of Comedy and other youngsters by proven sires Per Incanto, Ribchester, Dundeel, Vanbrugh and Satono Aladdin were among more than 30 horses on show at last Sunday’s annual Hawke’s Bay/Poverty Bay Thoroughbred Breeders weanling and yearling tour.
More than 70 people attended the tour, which took in four properties.
Included among the weanlings on display was a strongly built filly by Armory out of the four-race winner Maria Dior.
Armory was joint champion 3-year-old in Europe in 2020 and finished second in that year’s Group 1 Cox Plate (2040m) in Australia. His oldest progeny have just turned 2.
Little Avondale Stud resident sire Per Incanto, who has just had his most successful season at stud, was represented by a nice weanling filly out of the stakes-winning mare Mohaka, while Hastings breeder Chris Russell paraded a well-conformed yearling filly by Vanbrugh out of the Redoute’s Choice mare Dorotea Dior.
One-time Melbourne Cup fancy Mark Twain will make his first public appearance for more than 12 months when the Roger James and Robert Wellwood-trained gelding has an exhibition gallop at Te Rapa this Saturday.
The lightly-raced son of Shocking won last year’s Listed Roy Higgins (2600m) at Flemington to secure a place in the 2024 Melbourne Cup, only for a tendon injury to quash the Cup dream.
A year on and the rising 6-year-old has pleased in his recovery with the OTI-raced gelding on the Cup comeback trail.
“He’s in great order. He didn’t have a lot of idle time,” James said. “The OTI team have used the services of Matthew Williams in Warrnambool, who has had a lot of success with similar injuries.
“We are mixing his work up with a combination of swimming, treadmill and some trackwork, so he’s on a varied programme.
“We were very grateful to Terry Henderson and the OTI team to get the horse back. I actually sowed the seed as to whether Terry wanted to leave the horse there, given he had rehabilitated in Australia, but it was never in question.”
The winner of four of his 12 starts with a further three placings, including a luckless third in last year’s Group 2 Auckland Cup (3200m), Mark Twain will likely have just one start in New Zealand this spring before an Australian campaign.
“All going well, he will have a trial on August 12 and then head to the races at Te Aroha over a mile on August 31 before heading to Australia,” James said.
OTI’s Terry Henderson described Mark Twain as the most talented horse in their southern hemisphere arsenal.
“He needs to qualify for the Melbourne Cup again, so he will be aimed towards a race like the Bart Cummings (2500m) in October,” Henderson said.
Mark Oulaghan has called on one of Australia’s leading jumps jockeys to partner West Coast, as the outstanding jumper heads south in pursuit of a historic fourth-consecutive Grand National crown.
West Coast has been partnered in each of his 11 steeplechase victories by Shaun Fannin, who will race against the son of Mettre En Jeu in today’s Racecourse Hotel and Motor Lodge Koral Steeplechase (4250m) aboard his own horse Jesko.
With Fannin unavailable, Oulaghan has secured the services of Willie McCarthy, an Irish hoop based in Victoria. McCarthy is no stranger to high-pressure races and has a wealth of experience riding in America, England and Ireland, and Oulaghan is rapt to have him on board the rising 10-year-old.