“He raced pretty greenly and did a lot wrong, but looks to have plenty of ability,” a relieved Garry Trow said this week.
He is a member of the Te Akau Merlotti Racing Partnership that races the horse and is one of the biggest stakeholders, with a 10 per cent share.
Trow has had a lifelong interest in thoroughbreds and enjoyed success with another Te Akau syndicate a few years ago.
He owned a 25 per cent share in Military Step, who was raced by the Te Akau Quick March Syndicate and recorded three wins, three seconds and three thirds from only 12 starts between 2019 and 2021.
“Unfortunately, Military Step got injured and has now been put out to pasture but the Te Akau team have been so good to me that I decided to take up some more shares,” Trow added.
“I’ve got 10 per cent of Merlotti and I’ve also taken a 10 per cent share in a horse called Lightning Dream.”
Lightning Dream is an unraced two-year-old filly by Rip Van Winkle who has recorded two fourth placings in barrier trials, the most recent being over 1000m at Taupo on Tuesday.
Merlotti was purchased by Te Akau principal David Ellis for $30,000 from the 2021 Ready-To-Run Two-year-old sale, while Lightning Dream was a $40,000 purchase from last year’s Karaka yearling sales.
As a youngster Trow started out working on the Awapuni racecourse after school, mowing lawns and cleaning up the course. He then took up a position as a strapper for the late Eric Temperton, a legendary Awapuni trainer who prepared Silver Knight to win the 1971 Melbourne Cup and Magnifique to finish runner-up in the same race the following year.
“I was strapper for some of the best horses he trained including Young Ida, Purdie and Thun,” Trow recalled.
Walker closing in on record
Leading trainer Mark Walker enjoyed another strong day last Saturday as he marches towards the record for wins in a season.
Predecessor Jamie Richards holds that title with 160 wins in the 2020-21 season but with a Tauranga treble and a Trentham Gr.1 win, Walker rocketed to 149 wins for the season.
He then went to 160 wins with a victory by Quintessa at Wednesday’s Pukekohe meeting and, with more than four months of the season to go, he seems sure to set a new mark.
He also had three horses entered for yesterday’s Taranaki meeting in Zakaya, Invincibeel and Firriato, and has a strong hand at Tauranga and Riccarton today and at Tauherenikau tomorrow.
The Te Akau head trainer produced the first and second placegetters in the Gr.1 Levin Classic (1600m) at Trentham, with Romancing The Moon getting off the canvas to defeat stablemate Skew Wiff.
Romancing The Moon was winning her fourth race from only 11 starts and has also recorded four second placings for stake earnings totalling $327,695.
The El Roca filly is raced by the Te Akau Moonstruck Racing Partnership, with one of the members being Waipukurau’s Michael Ormsby.
Walker said Romancing The Moon will now be spelled until next season while Skew Wiff will go to the Gr.1 New Zealand Thoroughbred Breeders’ Stakes (1600m) at Pukekohe on April 8.
Walker was at Tauranga last Saturday where he saddled up the first three winners on the card — Inca Belle, Merlotti and Aotea Lad.
He now has 29 group and listed wins to his name domestically this season and almost $7 million in prizemoney.
Dress rug format reviewed
Post-race protocols are being addressed in the wake of the serious injury suffered by trainer Darryn Weatherley in the Trentham birdcage last Saturday.
In dramatic scenes following the listed Barneswood Farm New Zealand St Leger (2600m), Ess Vee Are kicked his co-trainer while Weatherley was adjusting the winner’s dress rug.
Ess Vee Are struck Weatherley on the upper thigh with sufficient force to knock him to the ground and, while he suffered no fractures, a potentially far more serious situation arose.
It quickly became apparent, by the profuse bleeding from Weatherley’s upper left leg, that there was damage to an artery. But thankfully, the speedy reactions from a raceday veterinarian and ambulance personnel managed to stem the bleeding.
“Darryn had gone to the back of the horse to straighten up the dress rug as it had slipped to one side,” Weatherley’s wife Louise explained.
“He’s normally a very relaxed and unaggressive horse, but he still had his blinkers on and was understandably a bit stirred up from the race, and he took fright when Darryn pulled on the rug and he double-barrelled him.
“The crack it made when he struck Darryn made me think he had broken his thigh, but straightaway you could see the blood through the top of his pants.
“Thank heavens there was a duty vet nearby and when he realised what had happened he whipped off his tie and applied it as a tourniquet above the wound, which is probably what saved Darryn’s life.
“There was blood everywhere, but thankfully the ambulance people were right there as well.
“Once they had assessed the situation and stabilised Darryn, they took him to Hutt Hospital and he had surgery to close the wound.
“We think the toe-clip on the horse’s racing plate just caught him in the wrong place —the crazy thing is the actual wound was only 2cm wide.”
Weatherley underwent further surgery this week before being released from hospital.
Kim Treweek, who was on duty at Trentham in his role as GM Racing of the RACE group of clubs, described Weatherley’s injury as a “random incident” but a scenario that required addressing.
“It’s been a tradition around the country to throw a dress rug on feature race winners, however, after what happened that procedure obviously needs looking at,” Treweek said.
“The Trentham birdcage is actually one of the safer ones in the way it separates owners and connections from their horses, but even so it just shows what can happen.
“I had a brief discussion at the end of the day with a couple of board members about changing our format and, from a health and safety perspective alone, it definitely cannot be ignored.”
The next programme of feature racing in the lower North Island, Manawatu Sires’ Produce Stakes day at Awapuni on April 1, also comes under Treweek’s jurisdiction.
“The Awapuni birdcage is quite different to Trentham and, without knowing the exact detail, we will have to change the way we do things there quite markedly,” he said.
Hong Kong run for Aegon
The well-travelled Aegon is now heading to Hong Kong and a clash with local hero Golden Sixty in the Gr.1 Champions’ Mile (1600m) at Sha Tin on April 30.
Connections will forgo another crack at an Australian feature in favour of a trip further afield with their son of Sacred Falls as he targets the HK$20 million ($4.03 million) feature.
“We were going to run him in the Doncaster Mile, but when the Hong Kong invitation came up we accepted that,” trainer and part-owner Andrew Forsman said.
“It’s probably going to be a small field, which will suit him, with a few likely to run away from Golden Sixty.”
It will be a formidable test for Aegon because Golden Sixty has won 24 of his 28 starts, including the last two editions of the Champions’ Mile.
Aegon finished ninth in last weekend’s A$5 million All-Star Mile (1600m) at The Valley but had taken no harm from the outing and still collected A$100,000 for connections.
“He’s come through the race well so he’ll go to Hong Kong, run there, and then go out to the paddock for a good spell,” Forsman added.
