Ellerslie, first race 1pm
Kevin Myers is eyeing a repeat of one of New Zealand’s most remarkable summer doubles, starting with the Kumara Gold Nuggets today.
The $40,000 feature at today’s iconic picnic meeting on
the West Coast circuit may be one of the cheaper feature races held on any Saturday during the racing season, but it holds a special place in racing folklore.
The tiny town of just 400 people sometimes attracts crowds of up to 10,000 to the “bucket list” meeting, with the annual fixture being famously saved from extinction by late Prime Minister Rob Muldoon.
One of the greatest supporters of the West Coast circuit is Taranaki trainer Myers, who says it plays an important role in developing human and equine talent.
“You need circuits like this.
“We send horses down there and they learn so much, through the travel and racing a couple of times in a week, and they come back different horses.
“And it is also a chance for young jockeys to learn their craft with consistent riding in summer, which most of them aren’t going to get at bigger tracks.
“I have supported it for years and will keep doing so, and so many owners, not just mine but other trainers’, love going somewhere different for some old-school racing.”
That doesn’t mean the horses Myers sends to the Coast, and particularly the Golden Nuggets today, are battlers.
In 2011, he used the Kumara Nuggets (1810m) and the trip away to harden his stayer Titch, who followed up his Nuggets win with victory in the Auckland Cup at Ellerslie less than two months later.
Myers says his Nuggets favourite today, Sunset Boulevard (R8, No 2), could chase that same double.
“If he keeps going the way he is, then he could be in the Auckland Cup.
“He is a good stayer who should handle 3200m eventually.”
Sunset Boulevard races in the Sir Peter Vela colours and is by the stallion Eminent (son of Frankel), who finished fourth in the Epsom Derby for Vela in 2017.
Eminent is starting to produce some progressive stayers. Sunset Boulevard has won five of his last seven starts, including last Sunday’s Greymouth Cup.
But while he may be on an Auckland Cup path to try to repeat the Titch double, Myers also has another Cup winner in today’s race in Bozo, who just two starts ago won the New Zealand Cup.
“Bozo will only be starting if the rain comes,” Myers told the Herald.
“She needs to get her toe into the ground, and it was a better-than-usual track down there on Thursday but with some rain forecast.
“So we will wait until Saturday morning and see how the track comes up because, if it doesn’t get wet enough, then she will go to Trentham next week instead.”
And what happens if the track gets into the soft or even heavy range and they both start?
“The wetter the better for Bozo and, with the 3kg claim if she starts, then she will be very hard to beat,” he says.
There is real depth to the Nuggets, with Shaking Stevens (No 3) having won four of his last five, including the Timaru Cup last start.
Myers’ horses often strike fear into bookmakers at Kumara and, to support the circuit, he makes a rare exception to his usual media silence rule to suggest a couple of his stable are worth punters following today.
“I think Rubirosa [R5, No 6] will like the step up to 1810m on Saturday, while I think Texas [R9, No 7] will be better for his run at Reefton on Wednesday and hard to beat in the last race.”
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.
