“But we have all been there. That is the racing game. I actually thought it was the horse we had to beat, so it will make her [Too Sweet’s] chances a little bit better.”
Bergerson is a hard-nosed racing man and admits Saturday’s race could be a bit early for In The Air, but when they are dangling $1m in front of you, it is hard to say no.
“He is part-owned by Chris Rutten, who has done an amaxing job to buy both these horses really cheap, so it is a good reminder of what a great eye he has for a horse to have them both there.”
But Bergerson having two starters in the Million isn’t the strange part of this story.
It it is how he has prepared last-start $225,000 SkyCity Eclipse Stakes winner Too Sweet for this Saturday.
Too Sweet is part-owned by Bergerson’s son Sam, which is a lovely family touch but also unusual because Sam is Mark Walker’s training partner at Te Ākau, so therefore the co-trainer of three of the other Karaka Million favourites: To Bravery Born, La Dorada and Belle Du Monde.
Bergerson senior didn’t want to truck Too Sweet all the way back to Awapuni and then north again in the summer heat, so after her Ellerslie win, the filly returned home with Sam – to Te Ākau’s Matamata stables.
So the second favourite for the Karaka Million and Roydon Bergerson’s best chance ever of having a $1m winner is being trained alongside her biggest rivals.
“It is kinda funny, isn’t it?” laughs Bergerson.
“I didn’t want to be trucking her up and down the island, and of course I can trust Sam to look after her, but you couldn’t write a script where they are all together.” So when your son is a premiership-winning trainer and part-owner, does Dad give him instructions on how to train “their” horse to beat his own horses?
“We talk once or twice a day anyway, and I came up last week to work her and am heading up again tomorrow [Tuesday],” says Roydon.
“Obviously she is getting the best of care there, and I am sure if we pulled it off, all the people at Te Ākau would be stoked for us, and if we get beaten by a Te Ākau horse, I will be happy my son co-trained the winner.
“So I guess I have an each-way bet and so does Sam. But I know who I’d like to win,” he smiles.
Too Sweet looked every inch a Karaka Million winner when she won the Eclipse on New Year’s Day.
She is quick and mentally mature, not phased by her Ellerslie debut and putting all her energy into running forward fast rather than stargazing.
That and champion jockey Michael McNab will take her a long way on Saturday.
“I am sure she can win and I’d love her to get a good draw, something between barrier two and barrier five.”
Too Sweet is the $4.60 second favourite for the Karaka Million, headed only by Te Ākau colt To Bravery Born, with La Dorada, Sierra Leone and Belle Du Monde on the next lines of betting.
The final market will be greatly shaped by the barrier draw, which will be live on Trackside from the Karaka Sales complex at 10.30am on Wednesday.
Regardless of the draws, if you based it purely on how the market rates the field, there is about a 65% chance a Bergerson will have trained the winner of our richest juvenile race on Saturday.
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.
