Waitak won the Howden Mile at Te Rapa and is now favourite for the Livamol at Ellerslie this Saturday. Photo / Kenton Wright
Welcome to the busiest black-type week in New Zealand thoroughbred racing history.
That is what this week has unwittingly become, more through bad luck than any good planning, after the Ōtaki meeting scheduled for Saturday was abandoned because of surface water. It has been moved to this Thursday.
It will now be run a day after the listed Team Wealleans Matamata Cup, which couldn’t be run because of a partial abandonment nine days ago and so has moved to this Wednesday – resulting in the busiest week of daily black-type gallops action ever held here.
Other weeks, like Boxing Day to New Year’s Day or when the Karaka Millions leads into Wellington Cup week, have far more black-type races and more money on offer in a single week.
And Cup week in Christchurch has three days of black-type thoroughbred action, two mammoth harness meetings and the New Zealand Greyhound Cup.
But from the Saturday just gone through to this Saturday at Ellerslie, there are a remarkable five separate days with black-type thoroughbred action, a first in New Zealand racing history.
It started with the Group 3 Barneswood Farm Stakes at Ashburton on Saturday before the Sweynesse Stakes at Arawa Park on Sunday, also at Group 3 level.
The Matamata Cup on Wednesday is a Listed race while the Spring Stakes at Ōtaki on Thursday is also a Group 3 race, before the Group 1 Livamol and Group 2 Windsor Park Soliloquy Stakes are both held at Ellerslie on Saturday.
The narrative fits in nicely with the TAB promoting this Saturday as the “Greatest Day on the Punt”, with the Livamol meeting running into the A$20 million ($22.6m) Everest meeting at Randwick and the Caulfield Cup.
Punters with plenty of stamina, coffee and who back enough winners can even roll that into Victoria Cup night for the harness at Melton on Saturday night, featuring a host of horses heading to New Zealand Cup week and headlined by Leap To Fame.
But only the real stayers or insomniacs will make it through to the early hours of Sunday morning for the Qipco Champions Day at Ascot in England, the grand-final meeting of the English flat-racing season
While the Livamol is the undoubted domestic highlight of the week, it has lost two major players in La Crique and Tuxedo, both of their connections preferring to rest them now and aim for summer riches.
That leaves Waitak, El Vencedor, Ladies Man and Quintessa, all of who have won Group 1s in the last year, in the 2040m weight-for-age thriller, as well as glamour mare Legarto.
Everest favourite Ka Ying Rising’s every move at trackwork in Sydney this morning will be picked apart.
The champion Hong Kong sprinter sent some sectors of the racing media world into a spin when only running third in his Randwick trial last Tuesday, with reports ranging from “okay” to “disappointing” – and some sections even suggesting his Everest start this Saturday is now in doubt.
There is always going to be intense scrutiny of a red-hot favourite in what has quickly become Australia’s most-talked-about race, so how Ka Ying Rising looks, moves and even breathes at this morning’s open trackwork session will be picked over with a fine-tooth comb.
The good news is that most punters here, or anywhere for that matter, don’t need to worry, because if you are taking $1.70 about a horse to win the Everest five days out from the race, you have far bigger problems than anything Ka Ying Rising has going on in his life.
Trainer-driver Grant Dixon wasn’t panicking after Leap To Fame was stunned by a 10-year-old veteran pacer at Melton on Saturday night.
Leap To Fame was the $1.04 favourite for his sprint race and would usually have bolted in after leading easily, but he never looked totally comfortable and was dive-bombed late by open-class journeyman Bulletproof Boy.
It was hardly the ideal dress rehearsal for this Saturday’s Victoria Cup, which itself is Leap To Fame’s next step to the $1m IRT New Zealand Cup at Addington on November 11.
Dixon told the Herald on Sunday that Leap To Fame was showing no ill effects from Saturday’s run and he will still go around a hot favourite in the Victoria Cup, especially with Swayzee not starting.
But Leap To Fame’s defeat and Swayzee’s absence will have Kiwi trainers daring to dream the New Zealand Cup is still a winnable race rather than a battle between the Aussie half-brothers.
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.