It is appropriate that Sharp N Smart returns to Te Rapa to start penning that chapter, it is after all the track which made him famous.
Back as a raw-boned 3-year-old, he had already won the Spring Champion Stakes in Sydney and finished second in the VRC Derby, but it was when he got to his home track in the summer of 2023 that Sharp N Smart hinted at greatness.
He beat the older horses at weight-for-age in the Group 1 Herbie Dyke Stakes, then three weeks later won the NZ Derby, beating horses who have since gone on to prove themselves top class.
The world was his playground, with talk of Cups, Cox Plates and Hong Kong International races.
He was voted New Zealand Horse of the Year, beating Imperatriz.
Sharp N Smart has not won a race in 15 starts since.
Co-trainer Graeme Rogerson thinks he knows the day the demise started.
“We took him to Hastings one day and it was cold and wet and we think he picked up a bacterial virus,” says Rogerson, who trains with wife Debbie.
“He has never really been the same since. He has been good on occasions, and he has had his excuses and some bad luck along the way.
“You go back to last year’s Moonee Valley Cup and he was a very good third carrying 60kg, so there are signs there.”
The problem for Sharp N Smart was he looked so very, very good, with the scope to get even better, that his 29 months without a win is one of the great disappointments of New Zealand racing this century, even if it isn’t his fault.
Rogerson has achieved almost everything you can do in racing and says he has learned that when it comes to viruses, particularly ones that make heroes look like has-beens, you only have one friend: time.
“That is all you can do, give them time,” he explains.
“And I think we are seeing some positive signs. His trial two weeks ago was good, and when Legarto came up alongside him, he wanted to go with her.
“So he might be coming back to it, and if he is, there are a lot of big races here for him before he has to start thinking about Australia again.”
Even at his best, Sharp N Smart would probably struggle to be competitive over the 1200m of today’s $150,000 Waikato Stud Foxbridge Plate, his enormous stride hardly suited to scampers on heavy tracks.
But in reality, today is not about that; it is about signs of life, to tell us if there is ambition left inside the huge frame of a once special horse.
If the big fella isn’t a likely winning chance today, then who is?
That may depend on how wet Te Rapa gets, with Rogerson suggesting his local track could be drier than the Heavy 10 it has been rated all week. It has officially improved to a Heavy 9 last night, so it was heading in the right direction.
The better the track, the better the chances of favourite Sacred Satono, one of the few in the race with sprint form at the highest level and the horse best suited by the weight-for-age scale.
If Te Rapa is racing more like a soft track than a heavy one, come Foxbridge Plate time he really should win – but that means backing him may be a watch-and-wait deal.
If the track remains heavy, Twain should be a top pick, but with plenty of challengers in Midnight Scandal, Sterling Express and Joshua Brown, to mention a few.
** Sydney racing fans were praying for an end to the rain before today’s A$1million Winx Stakes meeting at Randwick.
The meeting signals the start of the major racing spring, but has been dogged by winter weather as the track has been deluged this week.
While Randwick has copped some famous soakings before and still held even meetings like The Championships, stewards have been monitoring the track after 175mm of rain in four days.
The weather was expected to improve yesterday, but it could still be a less than ideal kick off to the campaigns of some of Australia’s best horses, with suggestions that some of the absolute elite horses could bypass the meeting if the track remains too heavy.
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.
