Grail Seeker winning the Tarzino Trophy.
This summer’s sprinting sensation may not have already won today’s BCD Sprint at Te Rapa but she has already won the closest thing to it.
And that is why even after Australian raider Here To Shock has been sensationally backed to win today’s Group 1, Grail Seeker can defend New Zealand’s newfound sprinting pride.
The BCD shapes as a race with so many layers it is our thoroughbred race of the season so far.
There is Grail Seeker, on the most unusual preparation of two starts in the past 10 months, winning both in such dazzling fashion.
Co-trainer Lance O’Sullivan talks of taking her to Australia to try to replicate what other Kiwi sprinting heroines Imperatriz and Roch N Horse have done in recent years.
Then then are there are the 3-year-olds Savaglee and Bosustow, the latter an Aussie who won the A$3 million Magic Millions Guineas last start, possibly the richest lead-up race win to a New Zealand Group 1 in a decade.
Maybe even better than him is local classic crop star Savaglee, who has been bombproof all season and seems to thrive on new challenges. He gets that and plenty more today.
While most of New Zealand’s sprinting elite, minus Crocetti and Alabama Lass, are also lining up today, a fascinating dynamic has been added with Here To Shock.
He won the A$1m Supernova at Pakenham last start and is a rarity, a big-time Aussie sprinter coming to New Zealand.
So if Grail Seeker can win today she will be the new sprinting queen of New Zealand and a horse out-running her ceiling.
“I can’t see any reason she can’t win again,” says O’Sullivan, who trains her in partnership with Andrew Scott.
“She hasn’t missed a beat since winning the Telegraph and she has been to the races a couple of times to keep her mind dialled in and even worked between races there [Te Rapa] last week.
“So I don’t see any reason she can’t race as well as she did at Trentham.”
When she won the Telegraph, Grail Seeker got back, wove through then exploded down the outside of the track, giving the impression of a mare who likes time and space to warm to her work.
But go back one race further to the first Group 1 race of the season, the Tarzino Trophy at Hastings, and you find a race almost a mirror image of today’s BCD.
It was a 1400m weight-for-age Group 1 and contained some of today’s combatants in Sacred Satono and Waitak, but also Railway winner Crocetti and middle-distance superstar Snazzytavi, sadly missing from today’s Herbie Dyke through illness.
In the race that most replicates today’s contest, Grail Seeker settled midfield inner, which could be similar today from barrier 2, but came around heels in the straight and bolted in.
That was on a Good 4 track at Hastings which is a left-handed 1700m track. Te Rapa is a left-handed 1800m track and likely to be a Good 4 by BCD start time at 4.08pm.
So the question is whether the Grail Seeker who won that day turns up today – and whether that is good enough to keep winning.
The Tarzino version of Grail Seeker will be too good for the older sprinters today and most likely Bosustow.
Here To Strike won’t be so easy to hold out as he is tough and battle-hardened without being near the best of the best back home.
So maybe Grail Seeker is going to Te Rapa needing to beat a horse she sees working on the same Matamata track most days, Savaglee.
He is an exceptional 3-year-old but he will need to be because he has never won a race like today’s BCD Sprint – whereas Grail Seeker has won a carbon copy.
Meanwhile, the O’Sullivan/Scott filly Prosegur has been scratched from today’s Ellis Classic with a leg issue, paving the way for Leica Lucy to start long odds-on in the Group 2.
“But I think we have a good each-way chance in the Karapiro Classic with Ever Charm (R5, No 1).
“He just keeps getting better and it is great a horse like him can race for $350,000.”
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.