Horse racing: Horrendous weather forces change to Nelson/McDougal stable

Aaron Kuru gives a fist pump as he brings Nedwin back at the head of the field following their win in the Waikato Hurdle. Photo / NZ Herald

Trainer Paul Nelson says he won’t know what effect the horrendous Hawke’s Bay weather has had on his team until things get serious at Trentham tomorrow.

Nelson and training partner Corrina McDougal take a powerful team to the capital tomorrow, with Nedwin the hot favourite for the Wellington Hurdles and The Cossack the favourite but going up against rising star West Coast in one of the races of the jumping season, the $75,000 Wellington Steeples.

The Nelson/McDougal stable has been in stunning form, but the master trainer says there has been a major chance in his stars’ training regime in the last few weeks.

“We simply haven’t been able to work them how we usually do because of the rain,” Nelson told the Herald.

“It has been that wet down here. Farms I have driven past for years that have never had issues are flooded.

“At home, we have a round track with a slight incline, but also a straight track up the hill - both have been so waterlogged we can’t work on them.

“That has forced us to take all the horses to town [Hastings track] for their gallops, which obviously is very different from working at home.

“How it will affect them, I honestly don’t know. We hope they will be just as fit and hard, but we really won’t know until things start to get tough in the home straight tomorrow.”

The stable’s two favourites face different challenges tomorrow, with Nedwin looking a class above his rivals in the Hurdles but being asked to carry 5.5 kilograms more than all of them, while The Cossack faces one of the biggest challenges of his New Zealand career, going up against last season’s Grand National winner West Coast.

West Coast is trained by another of our leading jumps horsemen in Mark Oulaghan, and with neither horse seeming to have a chink in their armour for tomorrow, Nelson is relishing the challenge.

“Until his last start, I wondered what West Coast had beaten, but he won very, very well and that got our attention,” he says.

“He is obviously very good, but so is our horse, and it might come down to who handles the track best and jumps best.” The Cossack will be ridden by Irish jockey Jack Power, who has impressed Nelson since arriving in the country.

“He had only ridden the one winner under rules (what NZ would call normal race conditions) over there, but he had plenty of experience at point-to-point meetings and he rides well so we are happy to have him on.”

Power will also ride Nedwin, who won the Waikato Hurdles last start, but a few weeks before ploughed through the Trentham mud to win an open flat handicap by 13 lengths.

“He has to carry a hell of a lot of weight, but we have one of the other better chances in the race too in Suliman, and to be honest, something would have to go wrong with Nedwin for Suliman to beat him.”