El Vencedor has already won the Herbie Dyke Stakes at Group 1 level at Te Rapa this year. Photo / Kenton Wright
Stephen Marsh is not happy.
Not grumpy, old man unhappy. No, that wouldn’t be the Cambridge trainer’s style, with his cheerful demeanour one of the best advertisements for his hugely successful stable.
This is a different sort of unhappy.
This is “I am going to a Group 1 day just down the road and might not win a race” kind of unhappy.
Marsh was one of the stars of the show at Ellerslie last Saturday with two stunning fresh-up winners and a phone full of congratulatory text messages after.
But that was on a good track, whereas Te Rapa is threatening to be heavy for Saturday’s $400,0000 Howden Insurance Mile meeting, which also includes the $175,000 Timberspan Hawkes Bay Guineas.
Te Rapa was rated a Heavy 9 on Wednesday with more rain expected and that will not suit Horse of the Year and Marsh’s flag-flyer El Vencedor.
“It is not what we want, very obviously,” Marsh told the Herald.
“I can’t see it being anything but heavy and ideally we would scratch him but he is a big horse who can’t afford to miss races.
“We considered the Matamata Cup next week but the weather doesn’t look great for much of next week either and he’d get topweight, which I think would be 61kgs.
“So we are pretty much resigned to starting on Saturday knowing that he doesn’t really like heavy tracks these days.”
So what then becomes a pass mark for the $6.50 equal-third-favourite?
“I can’t see him winning on a heavy but if he could finish anywhere from third to sixth, we’d accept that and move on to the Livamol.”
The question marks over the weather have plenty of trainers second-guessing their teams and waiting until the final track conditions on Saturday morning before really knowing what to expect.
“I don’t think a heavy really suits any of my team that much,” Marsh said.
On paper, the Howden Insurance is a beauty, stacked with seven previous Group 1 winners and plenty who have won well enough at the next level down to take the step up.
Mares like Legarto (barrier 3) and La Crique (6) may have seemed the winners in yesterday’s barrier draw but low barriers could easily become less than advantageous if the inside of the track cuts up by late in the day on Saturday.
All of this has left the TAB bookies as confused as everybody else, with Legarto and La Crique opening the equal $5 favourites while El Vencedor shares the $6.50 next line with Quintessa, whose trainer Sam Bergerson has already indicated he won’t start on a really heavy track.
To further complicate matters, there is no shortage of heavy-track winning form in the race – but most of it belongs to horses who possibly aren’t racing at their best at the moment.
The most obvious exception is Sterling Express, who won the Foxbridge Plate on a Heavy 8 on this track two starts ago and looked right up to Group 1 level when fourth after racing three and four wide in the Proisir Plate at Ellerslie on September 6.
The head-scratching will continue in the Group 2 Hawkes Bay Guineas, which has drawn an even field in which almost every horse has won one race but none have won two.
One of the favourites is Quondo, who will be representing champion stallion Wootton Bassett, who left the breeding industry stunned when he had to be put down in Australia on Tuesday.
The exceptional stallion with an amazing back story got sick at Coolmore Stud in New South Wales and deteriorated to the point he could not be saved, in a tragedy for his connections and the breeding industry in both hemispheres.
$400,000, 1600m at Te Rapa at 4.04pm on Saturday,
1: El Vencedor (barrier 11)
2: Ladies Man (13)
3: Waitak (15)
4: Sharp N Smart (12)
5: Whangaehu (5)
6: Sterling Express (9)
7: Habana (2)
8: Matscot (10)
9: Herbert (8)
10: Tuxedo (14)
11: Legarto (3)
12: La Crique (6)
13: Quintessa (4)
14: Qali Al Farrsaha (7)
15: Val Do Zoldo (1)
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.