Late entries save harness racing bosses from Messenger mess

Swayzee, seen here winning the NZ Cup in 2023, has drawn the ace in Friday's Messenger Pace. Photo / Ajay Berry

FULL-ON FRIDAY


The Group 1s at Alexandra Park on Friday

** $200,000 Reharvest Rowe Cup, open-class trotters

**$200,000 Magness Benrow Sires’ Stakes, three-year-old filly pacers

** $100,000 Dawson Harford New Zealand Messenger, pacers

** $100,000 Breckon Farms Northern Trotting Derby, three-year-old trotters

** $100,000 IRT Young Guns Easton Light, two-year-old trotters

Harness racing bosses have had to scramble to save one of New Zealand’s iconic races from being abandoned this Friday.

The $100,000 New Zealand Messenger was in danger of being canned right up the nomination deadline on Monday, after drawing only four initial entries.

The first three home in both the Taylor Mile and Roy Purdon Memorial in the past fortnight, Got The Chocolates, Swayzee and The Lazarus Effect, were nominated, as was We Walk By Faith, but for various reasons the other open-class regulars were not.

Harness Racing New Zealand was understandably reluctant to run the Group 1 with only four starters, as that would have meant no place betting and almost certainly a small turnover, resulting in the race running at a huge loss.

Enter the most unlikely hero in open-class history, Rating 43 pacer Dave Duley, a last-start winner at Manawatū.

He was nominated at the last minute to take the Messenger entries to five and guarantee the 2700m mobile got off the ground.

The field later gained another three late nominations almost equally unlikely in Mr Miki, Leo Lincoln and Another Collect, to take the Messenger’s final field size to eight.

There was no coincidence the first of the battlers to be thrust into the Messenger, Dave Duley, is trained by Robert and Jenna Dunn, who also train race favourite Got The Chocolates.

Clearly his entry was about ensuring the race actually went ahead and therefore helped Got The Chocolates obtain his best chance of winning another Group 1.

Not only is Dave Duley owned by the same connections as Got The Chocolates – he may well effectively be racing horses of his own class in Mr Miki, Another Collect and Leo Lincoln for the $3000 stake for fifth, presuming the four open-class horses fill the first four placings.

The other three starters are also guaranteed $1750 each, which would pay at least half a month’s training fees for a harness horse.

So should the battlers be starting?

Well, why not?

They will almost certainly be driven to cut corners, keep up for as long as they can and then try to beat each other home for the $3000 fifth prize.

And because of the programming for this Friday’s meeting, with five Group 1s and separate pacing races for fillies and one for mares, the four late arrivals only had one other race they could have been entered for that realistically offer similar earning expectations.

The fact the four outsiders needed to be nominated at all brings into question whether our leading pacers should be racing this deep into May, when many of them started racing in September and have only had small breaks rather than significant spells.

That glut of opportunities, in combination with form losses and a bout of respiratory issues that have been circulating among some northern harness horses, has decimated the open-class ranks.

Saving the Messenger was worth the effort, though, because it has for decades been the doorstep to open-class greatness, often won by pacers who went on to win major cup races if they hadn’t already done so.

In the last 20 years alone Republican Party, Self Assured, Copy That, Lazarus, Christen Me, Auckland Reactor, Gotta Go Cullen, Monkey King and Mainland Banner have been Messenger winners who have also won either the New Zealand or Auckland Cups, or both.

Even with the issues getting the Messenger off the ground and a Rowe Cup down on the high wattage of past editions, Friday’s meeting has a huge programme, with a special emphasis on the trotters, who in a rare instance get three Group 1s on the same night.

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.