RACING: One of the best returns to train from Hastings

John Jenkins
Hastings-born Patrick Campbell, the district's leading racehorse trainer of the early 1980s before being lost from the area for nearly 18 years, has come home to roost.
Campbell, who has spent time in Palmerston North, Australia and Malaysia in recent years, has decided to resurrect his training career back in his old home town.
He is presently leasing stables off Hawke's Bay Racing, at their Wall Road site, and is keen to take in as many horses as he can.
At present Campbell has six horses in his care but says he has room for up to 20.
Patrick Campbell started his training career in Hastings in 1973, when in partnership with Bruce Marsh.
The two split in 1976, with Campbell staying in Hastings while Marsh moved to Woodville.
Campbell continued to build a successful solo career and was leading Hastings trainer for three consecutive seasons, from 1982-83 to 1984-85.
In that time he prepared some of the best horses to come out of Hastings, including the likes of Burletta, Claymore Boy, Out Of The Blue, Tarlton, Our Buddy and Lagerfeld.
Burletta was the 1983-84 three-year-old Filly of the Year, who won a total of 16 races and $205,000 in stakemoney.
The daughter of Three Legs won the group one New Zealand 1000 Guineas as well as the Levin Bayer Classic (then rated group two), ARC Ladies Mile (group three), HBJC Gold Trail Stakes (group three) and Manawatu Eulogy Stakes (group three).
Claymore Boy won 11 races including an Ipswich Cup in Australia while Tarlton won eight races and Out Of The Blue six.
Our Buddy and Lagerfeld were members of Campbell's team when he decided to shift camp from Hastings to Awapuni, Palmerston North, in August 1987.
Campbell's success continued there when he prepared such top liners as Avedon, Val dArno, Straight Order, Merrett, Merry Maiden, Val dArno and Wexford King from his Awapuni Lodge Stables.
Avedon captured three group one races, the New Zealand 2000 Guineas, Levin Bayer Classic and Waikato Draught Sprint among his 15 wins.
Val d'Arno included the group one Avondale Cup among his 12 victories while Straight Order was also a group one winner, taking out the DB Mile at Trentham.
Merry Maiden was another group one winner from the stable, taking out the New Zealand 1000 Guineas at Riccarton.
Merrett won the group two Stewards Handicap at Riccarton and a race at Ipswich, Australia.
Our Buddy and Lagerfeld won 10 races each, with Lagerfeld taking out the Wellington Handicap (2200m) in race record time and was also placed in both the Hawke's Bay and Rotorua Cups.
Campbell left New Zealand in October 1998 and spent just under a year training on the Gold Coast of Australia before then taking up a training position in Malaysia. He has spent the last six years there.
Campbell, who has trained in excess of 500 winners, said things got tough in Malaysia and he was basically left with very few horses to work with.
"I was practically finished up there so it was time to come back home," Campbell said.
"I didn't want to go back to Awapuni and thought that Hastings, with its great climate and location, was an ideal place to kick off again."
Campbell has taken on former Palmerston North-based Jason Lake, who holds a permit to train licence, as his stable foreman and also has his son Phillip to help out.
Among the six horses Campbell has in his care is a Danasinga filly out of Whakanui Heights, a half-sister to the winner Kettle Hill.
The rising three-year-old has plenty of size and shows a lot of promise.
Jason Lake brought two horses he had in his care at Awapuni with him when he joined Campbell at Hastings, one of them being the promising maiden Spinspex and the other a prospective jumper called Izzy Groovy.
Spinspex, a mare by Spectacular Love, has been placed four times from seven starts and Izzy Groovy was also placed once on the flat before being tried as a jumper.
Campbell also has a rising five-year-old mare by Grosvenor and one by Super Imposing and is in the throes of breaking in a yearling filly by Colombia that hails from the family of the Melbourne Cup winner Jezabeel.
Besides being a top trainer, Patrick Campbell has also been the tutor of two of the best jockeys produced in New Zealand in the last 30 years in Jimmy Cassidy and Chris McNab. Both were leading apprentices of their time and served the bulk of their apprenticeship under Campbell.