Horse racing: Donna versus Goliath in Westbury Classic at Ellerslie

Chateau Vallee in winning form. Photo / Supplied

The most glamorous race meeting of the New Zealand year isn’t just about racing royalty and mega-money winners.

It is also the story of Donna versus Goliath. Well, actually, versus all the Goliaths.

Donna is Pukekohe trainer Donna Coutts who trains one horse, Chateau Vallee.

She is the only horse 56-year-old Donna trains and the only winner she has ever trained.

Yet after winning her last two starts Chateau Vallee and Donna take on Group 1 winners, millionaire stud owners and training hero Chris Waller in the $600,000 Westbury Classic at Ellerslie’s giant party meeting.

“It is all a bit nervewracking,” she admits.

Chateau Vallee in winning form.

But Donna has overcome far more than a case of nerves to be at Ellerslie tonight with the horse she bred and part-owns.

The tough times started back in 2017 when she was diagnosed with cancer in her nose and throat.

The treatment worked yet took it toll on Donna’s voice. But not her spirit.

She was just getting back on her feet when she was knocked off them again, literally.

“I had a horse get loose in the paddock and I was worried it was going to get hurt so when it started galloping back toward me I put my hands up and stood in its way, to try and slow it down.”

The horse didn’t play its part and Donna spent the next two months in hospital.

Now Donna and her one horse - she finished eighth of 10 in a lowly maiden race just three months ago - are off to the big dance.

If Chateau Valle wins tonight’s $600,000 Westbury Classic, Donna and her partner will win $300,000, and the 5-year-old mare will be worth way more than that.

“It is exciting, going to a big meeting like this with our only horse,” she says.

“There have been some tough time, as you can hear from my voice, but this is very special.”

The bookmakers say Chateau Vallee is 70-1, the complete outsider of the field.

Those horses don’t win often, if ever, on the biggest nights. Most fairytales remain just that.

But there have been times in the last decade if you had told Donna and those close to her she would be training racehorses, let alone one who had won its last two starts and was racing for $600,000 on our brightest stage, that would have also sounded like a fairytale.

Goliaths, step aside.

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.