Racing: Australian win expected but not at Hawke's Bay

It was widely expected that a stakes-winning Australian horse on its New Zealand debut would win a 1200m race yesterday.
But who it was and where that race was came as something of a surprise.
It was expected to be in the Railway in Auckland, which is a race Australians have won twice in the past six years.
But while hot favourite Monton failed in his bid to make that three out of seven and was a well-beaten eighth in that race behind shock 86-1 winner Miss Raggedy Ann, the now Hawera-trained Joku carried top weight in his first New Zealand race to beat his more fancied rivals in the Russell Roads Hastings Cup.
But while the result itself was something of a surprise, Joku's performance was far from a fluke. The win was his 11th from just 26 starts, and his earnings are now over $578,000.
He has won at listed level at Caulfield in Melbourne, and he was held in high enough regard to take on the likes of Typhoon Tracy in group 1 company.
It seemed that a mixture of the weight and a shorter distance than Joku prefers would trip him up, and that looked set to be the case halfway down the straight.
The son of Xaar was well behind the leaders, stuck with a huge amount to do and not much time to do it in.
Bankside Belle was powering along in front, and we all know how difficult she can be to run down in the closing stages of a race, and Riomoral looked set to storm home down the outside.
Instead, though, it was Joku who produced the big finishing burst.
He grabbed the lead in the last few strides, and the fact that he eventually won by more than a length shows how quickly he was travelling at the end of the race.
Joku will almost certainly improve for the run, and has shown a preference for races over more ground.
On yesterday's performance alone he appears to be heading for stakes class, but when you add that improvement with racing and more distance to the equation, you can confidently predict that Joku will be highly competitive in some of our big handicap races over distances up to a mile.
Bankside Belle and Riomoral ran good races to claim the minor placings, but they didn't quite do enough to force their way into contention for the $1 million Telegraph Handicap, which is now less than three weeks away.
It was a great day for the Foxton training partnership of David Haworth and Matt Dixon.
They produced two winners on the eight-race programme at Hastings, including the extremely impressive three-length maiden winner Supremacy, who looks to have a very bright future; and they also won one of the Ellerslie features when Fears Nothing defeated a top-quality field in the group 2 Rich Hill Mile.
Fears Nothing himself began his career at Hastings with a debut win in a maiden 1200m event in October 2008.