Horse racing: Group 1s target in final campaign

Coventina Bay is being aimed at Group 1 races early next year before she is retired.

One of New Zealand’s best gallopers is being aimed at a race she can’t win to get ready for a Group 1 she can.

And trainer Robbie Patterson says that campaign, starting at Trentham next month, will be the last one for Coventina Bay before she heads to the broodmare paddock.

The Taranaki mare is already a two-time Group 1 winner and looked to be heading back to peak fitness with a late-closing second to Darci La Bella at Trentham on Saturday.

She will now embark on what could be an almost exclusively Group1 campaign in the new year that could see her race at the highest level up to five times before she is retired.

The first of those Group 1s Patterson thinks Coventina Bay can win is the $300,000 Harcourts Thorndon Mile on January 28, and the only suitable lead-up race is the Telegraph two weeks earlier, one of our iconic sprint races in which she would probably be left flat-footed by Levante and Imperatriz.

“A lot of the good judges are telling me that is the perfect lead-up to the Thorndon, so I think we go to the Telegraph, even though we can’t win it,” says Patterson. “That should clean her up nicely for the Thorndon, then we aim at the Group 1s we won last season, the Herbie Dyke [$450,000 at Te Rapa on February 11] and the Bonecrusher NZ Stakes [$320,000 at Pukekohe on March 11].”

That would still leave Coventina Bay with the option of the NZ Thoroughbred Breeders Stakes, also at Group 1 level, to end her career in early April, with Patterson suggesting she will be sold once she finishes racing, with at least two overseas buyers already making inquiries.

Although expected to be outpaced in the Telegraph, Coventina Bay is the $8 fourth favourite, with Levante heading the market at $3.20.

Carter’s career change Young reinsman Carter Dalgety might have to start taking his driving career a little more seriously after the biggest win of his career on Saturday.

The 19-year-old son of trainers Cran and Chrissie Dalgety drove their stable star Krug to an effortless win in the $100,000 Invercargill Cup, the first Group 1 held in Southland.

Dalgety was a talented first XV rugby player in Canterbury and still plays to a high level and seemed to get into race driving last year almost for fun as well as studying at university and, of all things, developing his own casual clothing line.

His natural sporting ability, a combination of timing and the ability to understand the importance of momentum and oxygen debt has quickly made him one of the more promising young drivers in the country and he says a career in the sulky now looms.

“I hadn’t really thought about it much when I started driving but it has gone so well and I’ve had such great support, I can see myself doing it more for a job now,” says Dalgety.

“I’m loving it and I love this horse [Krug], so to win my first Group 1 on him for Mum and Dad is unbelievable.”