Karaka Millions: More magic from Queensland training wizard as Dream Roca wins at Ellerslie

Dream Roca and Ben Thompson grab Magill to win the Karaka Millions Two-Year-Old at Ellerslie on Saturday. Photo / Kenton Wright

The man who wrote the book on how an Aussie can train the Karaka Millions winners did so by throwing another book away.

The sales catalogue.

Queensland trainer Liam Birchley says that has been one of the keys to his extraordinary success in New Zealand’s richest juvenile race, which he won for the third time when Dream Roca scored at Ellerslie on Saturday.

Birchley only buys a couple of horses at the Karaka sales every year, yet the two he purchased last year both made it back for the $1 million sales race tonight, Dream Roca costing just $75,000 from Westbury Stud.

Dream Roca did the rest as she grabbed 150-1 outsider Magill in the dying strides of the race to give jockey Ben Thompson an incredible first night riding at Ellerslie.

He and some of the other star jockeys will now be fielding calls to lure them back to Ellerslie for NZ Oaks Day and the Champions meeting on March 7.

But as good as Thompson’s ride was, it was Birchley’s unique mix of millions magic that was the talk of the race after he had earlier won with Hardline in 2015 and Sister Havana in 2010.

So how does a trainer who never spends much keep coming back to Ellerslie and winning our richest juvenile race? And with horses who have to first head to Queensland, settle in and win a race there before they can even be considered for the Karaka Millions?

“I don’t look at the sales catalogue,” Birchley smiled as he slurped champagne from the bottle in the Ellerslie winner’s circle.

“I look at the book [sales catalogues] only after I have looked at the horses, but only so I can work out what they might cost.

“The pedigrees don’t matter to me as much. I look for athletes who are strong enough to handle a 2-year-old preparation.

“And they have to look fast, that always helps.”

But that is only half the battle as Birchley then has to have horses like Dream Roca handle the return travel and produce their best back in New Zealand, no small achievement with inexperienced 2-year-olds.

“I think it helps that they have to travel back to Queensland from here in the first place, so they have already done the big trip once,” Birchley said.

“And we also race right-handed tracks back home [Queensland] so we don’t have to teach them that to come back here.

“So we have a few things in our favour, but we still bloody love doing it.”

Birchley is being far too modest, as few trainers anywhere in the world have regularly travelled to another country to win their major juvenile races – the most obvious exception being US trainer Wesley Ward with his amazing Royal Ascot list of winners.

To make the victory even sweeter, Dream Roca has plenty of Kiwi connections, including New Zealand Warriors boss Cameron George, who has now shared in the ownership of three Karaka Millions winners.

“And Mark Baker from Hallmark Stud is in this filly and I met his father Denny in a pub at the last ever Trentham sales back in the 1980s,” Birchley said.

“The Bakers are great people, the sort of real racing people you meet at the sales, so to share this with them is bloody awesome.”

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.