Navigator has to lump 62kg in the open sprint at Trentham today. Photo / Peter Rubery
TODAY’S RACING
It is one of racing’s oldest sayings: weight can stop a train.
For punters betting on three of the biggest races in the country today it turns out that might depend on the train and just how far it is going.
If you don’t speak racing jargon, “weight can stop a train” refers to the belief that even the best horse can get beaten if it has too much weight allocated by the handicapper.
To a degree it is probably true but conventional norms can also be queried.
Take New Zealand’s horse of the moment, Well Written.
She smashed her rivals so easily in the Karaka Million 3-Year-Old at Ellerslie last Saturday carrying 55kg, compared with the male gallopers’ 57kg, you could almost guarantee she would have won not only carrying their 57kg but would still have won carrying 60kg.
But chuck an extra 20kg of weight in her saddle, or the world’s fattest jockey on board, and would she have won carrying 80kg?
No she wouldn’t have.
Because, as the saying suggests, you can stop a train if you put enough weight on it.
Which brings us to Well Written’s stablemate El Vencedor, who carries 62kg in the $100,000 Fulton Family Stakes at Ellerslie today.
He is the reigning horse of the year and carried 61kg to win this race last season so winning with 62kg today sounds reasonable, albeit we rarely see horses pull that weighty feat off.
Often a horse’s ability to carry a huge weight will come down to what its key rivals horses are carrying, and in today’s 1500m, El Vencedor’s only rival with Group 1 form this season is Jaarffi and she carries 58.5kg.
That is 3.5kg less than the big boy but she isn’t much better off than she would be with the standard mare’s 2kg allowance.
El Vencedor has already been backed in from $5 to $3 favouritism, and he is a powerful, strong lad so the best version of him could carry 62kg and still win today.
But this is where the calculations get tricky.
Trainer Stephen Marsh says El Vencedor is in good form for today but will be a better horse in next Saturday’s Herbie Dyke Stakes at Te Rapa.
So now the question becomes do you want to back the less-than-100% El Vencedor carrying 62kg and now paying just $3 rather than $5?
The answer should be no, even though it would be bloody good fun to see him pull it off.
At Trentham another Group 1 winner in One Bold Cat has to lump 59kg in the $400,000 Wellington Cup which doesn’t sound quite so bad but he has cart it over 3200m.
Quick history lesson, the last horse to win the Wellington Cup carrying 59kgs is ... um, nothing. Ever.
Since NZ racing went to kilograms as its handicapping unit of measure in 1974, only Castletown has carried even 58kg to win the Wellington Cup, doing it twice.
Again we look at One Bold Cat’s key rivals and he his giving huge weight to Tshiebwe (54kg) and favourite Rosso, who will also carry 54kg even though he was allocated 53kg with expat jockey Daniel Stackhouse not able to get down that low.
So even with Craig Grylls on board you might struggle to make a case for backing One Bold Cat, although at $9.50 he could be used as a cover bet option just in case he feels like breaking the record.
One trainer not bothered by 62kg today is Cody Cole with Navigator (R8, No 1) in the open sprint at Trentham.
Navigator finished second to First Five in the Group 1 Telegraph at Trentham on January 3, and none of those he meets today are proven at that level yet so Cole thinks his stable sprinting star can still win.
“He carried 59kg in the Telegraph and nearly won so I think the $4 [TAB fixed] is great money,” says Cole.
Navigator has the advantage of it being a shorter race, and with Ryan Elliot in the saddle who won’t carry much dead weight, which is harder on a horse than a heavyweight jockey who can balance their weight more evenly.
So yes, weight can stop a train.
It will probably stop One Bold Cat in the Wellington Cup.
It probably won’t stop Navigator in the open sprint.
And it probably won’t be the main thing that stops El Vencedor defending his Fulton Family Stakes title today, but paying just $3 it is not worth you finding out.
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.