New Zealand Cup hero Kingman will skip Friday’s Pacing Free-For-All as trainer Luke McCarthy heads home to New South Wales to drive his stable star.
Yes, you read that right, the horse who sat three wide to beat Leap To Fame and the best Kiwis in Tuesday’s $1 million IRT New Zealand Cup at Addington may not be the best in McCarthy’s stable.
Not officially anyway.
McCarthy also trains Inter Dominion, Miracle Mile and Eureka winner Don Hugo, which would at least give him the title of the “Best Performed” pacer in McCarthy’s stable, even if his peak performance wouldn’t match Kingman’s stunner from Tuesday.
“It is a very privileged position to be in,” says McCarthy.
“They are both wonderful horses but they have very different plans over the summer.”
While Kingman will skip the NZ Free-For-All on Friday, that doesn’t mean his New Zealand campaign is over as he will remain in Canterbury and contest the Group 1 Christian Cullen Pace at Addington on Friday week.
It is for 4-year-olds only and not only might Kingman scare some rivals away from the new race, which was run for the first time last year, but he will start incredibly short in the market.
McCarthy will come back to drive him next week but heads to Wagga in New South Wales tonight as Don Hugo contests the first of five Carnivals of Cups races, named The Bidgee, spread over the summer which carry an A$1 million ($1.15m) bonus if any horse can win all five of them.
Don Hugo faces a second line draw and a hot field over the 2800m mobile tonight.
Last season’s New Zealand Cup winner Swayzee won four of the races and a A$500,000 ($577,000) bonus but missed the A$1m pay-out when beaten into second in the other race.
While Kingman will miss tomorrow’s Pacing Free-For-All, Leap To Fame, Republican Party, Akuta and Merlin will back up from the Cup into the sprint race which will be run at 8.07pm at the twilight meeting.
The Trotting Free-For-All is the other open class race at Addington tomorrow and sees Queenslander Gus returning after Tuesday’s Dominion alongside fellow big guns Oscar Bonavena, Muscle Mountain and Victorian mare Jilliby Ballerini, who should be suited by the mobile conditions.
But as iconic as the two free-for-alls are, they won’t hold richest race status at tomorrow’s meeting with the second running of the two $500,000 slot races, The Velocity for 3-year-old pacers and The Ascent for 3-year-old trotters.
New Zealand’s best juvenile pacer of last season, and the top dog in the 3-year-old ranks in the first half of the season, Marketplace gets the perfect draw at barrier two in the Velocity as he tries to fend off arch-rival Got The Chocolates, who has beaten him fair and square the last two times they have met.
Got The Chocolates has drawn the outside of the front line over the 1980m tomorrow so Marketplace opened the $1.85 TAB favourite.
The Ascent Trot could see the Australian domination of this Cup week continue with Victorian fillies Tracy The Jet and Gatesy’s Gem well up to the locals and having the advantage of inside front line draws as fillies draw inside males in the two slot races.
Northern trotter Meant To Be, who starts on the unruly, is narrowly the favourite for The Ascent for trainers Barry Purdon and Scott Phelan.
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.
