Horse racing: James McDonald coming home for the Karaka Millions

James McDonald riding Long Leaf to win a Karaka Million 3yo in 2019. Photo / Supplied

The glamour relaunch of the new Ellerslie track has secured the mega attraction racing officials were hoping for with superstar Kiwi jockey James McDonald coming home for the TAB Karaka Millions.

While Ellerslie will return to racing on Sunday week after a near two-year absence for the installation of a StrathAyr track its official opening and one of the most anticipated race meetings in New Zealand for decades will be on January 27.

The meeting will feature $4.45 million worth of races with the Karaka Millions Three-Year-Old boosted to $1.5million, a new $1m four-year-old race, the Elsdon Park Aotearoa Classic, for four-year-olds and the entire support card inflated, with the Westbury Classic now hitting $500,000.

The meeting was already guaranteed a world-class jockeys room headlined by the King Of Karaka Millions in Opie Bosson, new hero Warren Kennedy fresh from his bag of seven on New Year’s Day, two-time premiership winner Michael McNab and Australian star Blake Shinn, who returns to partner Molly Bloom in the three-year-old race.

But McDonald is the icing on the cake, the massive name Ellerslie officials hoped to get when the Millions meeting became a reality because he brings with him profile, an army of punters and international recognition, having starred in Hong Kong and even at Royal Ascot.

McDonald confirmed to the Herald he would return for the meeting and was already booked for Velocious in the Two-Year-Old and Orchestral in the Three-Year-Old race.

“I am excited to be coming back,” says McDonald, who lives in Sydney and is the most in-demand jockey in Australia.

“Obviously it is great to come home and Ellerslie has long been one of my favourite tracks and I am looking forward to riding on the new surface.

“I am hearing good things about it and I am on a couple of really good fillies already.

“I know there are some really exciting things happening not only at Ellerslie but in New Zealand racing so I want to be part of it.”

McDonald has never ridden the winner of the Karaka Millions two-year-old race but did win the three-year-old on Long Leaf, part-owned by his close friend and mentor Sir Peter Vela in 2019.

Velocious was equal $4 favourite for the juvenile event before news of McDonald’s engagement broke and the filly instantly moved into $3.50 outright favouritism.

She has been high-class, and beautifully ridden by Sam Spratt in her three starts, and for once the TAB bookies will be yelling for McDonald as they stand to lose $1m to the Boys Get Paid on a stunning futures bet is the other favourite Cool N Fast wins the race.

Orchestral moved from $5 to $4 with the TAB after the McDonald news and she was brilliant beating key rival Lupo Solitario at Pukekohe on New Year’s Day. Molly Bloom remains the $3 favourite for that race, which is now the richest in New Zealand.

The Millions meeting has all but sold out of hospitality packages and is likely to sell out of even general admission as it not only will include the six rich races but the return of the Ellerslie after party and will have hundreds of overseas guests, who are in Auckland for the NZB yearling sales which start at Karaka the next morning.

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.