Swayzee (left) defeats Don't Stop Dreaming in last year's IRT New Zealand Cup at Addington. Photo / Ajay Berry
The market for New Zealand’s greatest harness race is in disarray less than three weeks before it will be run.
The $1 million IRT New Zealand Cup will be held at Addington on November 11 and even with the emergence of thoroughbred racing’s NZB Kiwi and the growing success of the much-boosted Karaka Millions meeting, the New Zealand Cup can still lay claim to being one of the biggest races, if not the biggest, in New Zealand of any code.
But for punters right at the moment, it is like trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube with some of the stickers missing.
The Cup market has quite rightly had Australian superstars Leap To Fame and Swayzee at its head since it opened.
Leap To Fame has been clearly the best pacer in Australasia for the last two years but in his absence, Swayzee has won the last two New Zealand Cups.
So if Swayzee makes it to Addington on November 11, he has a shot at becoming only the fourth horse since 1904 to win three New Zealand Cups.
But nobody knows if either Australian will actually make the trip to Christchurch and if they don’t, another late entry in Victoria Cup winner Kingman might.
All of which has the Cup market in such a mess that six horses are paying $5.50 or less – and that includes Leap To Fame at $2.20.
This is, shall we say, less than ideal and basically amounts to the TAB bookmakers putting the market into a holding pattern until they know more, their confusion shared by harness racing fans.
The cat was thrown among the Cup pigeons when Leap To Fame was beaten at Melton two weeks ago and then again in the Victoria Cup last Saturday.
He underperformed by his very high standards and, perhaps most worryingly, he didn’t travel strongly in either race, suggesting something is not right physically or mentally.
Leap To Fame has passed the usual vet checks associated with underwhelming performances this week and trainer Grant Dixon has surprisingly entered him for an A$22,500 ($25,400) Free-For-All at Melton this Saturday (8.29pm NZT).
It is very clearly a trial for Addington: if Leap To Fame wins, well, you can bet he will be at Addington. If he doesn’t, he won’t.
While all his dramas have been going on, Swayzee has not only missed last Saturday’s Victoria Cup but will also skip a New Zealand Cup lead-up race he was supposed to have at Menangle, outside Sydney, this Saturday.
His camp insist he is still on target for the Cup but he will have to have a lead-up race on Saturday week, or surely his Cup defence is doomed.
There is an element of cat-and-mouse to some of this because surely Swayzee’s chances of going to Addington if he is healthy and fit increase if Leap To Fame gets beaten this Saturday and doesn’t get his passport stamped for New Zealand.
Which brings us to Kingman.
He is the most improved pacer in Australia but wasn’t in the original New Zealand Cup entries, yet his connections have indicated they may now bring him if he qualifies from a standing start in a trial next week.
That, of course, also gives them time to monitor the developments around Leap To Fame and Swayzee, because if the two favourites both withdraw, paying that late entry free for Kingman becomes a far more prudent investment.
The Cup build-up is more normal on the local front, with many of the big names heading to the NZBS Flying Stakes at Ashburton on Monday, which includes the return of Akuta after he was found to have a lung infection following a recent failure.
But both Merlin and Sooner The Bettor will bypass Ashburton to head to the Kaikōura Cup on November 3, which has been boosted to $100,000 this year.
So in a New Zealand Cup where so little looks certain, the one thing for sure is the field for the iconic race will have vastly disparate form lines come November 11.
One big-race question that has been answered is around the $400,000 Renwick Farms Dominion, the Group 1 Trot run the same day at the Cup.
Victorian driver Jason Lee has confirmed to The Box Seat television show that the favourite, Keayang Zahara, will not be coming to Addington, with her stablemate Jilliby Ballerini to be their stable’s starter.
What: New Zealand’s richest harness race and one of biggest races of either code.
Where: Addington, Christchurch.
When: November 11.
Money: $1 million total stake.
Who: All the big names in Australasian pacing are nominated.
The question? Just who will start in the Cup remains a mystery.
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.