He came off a sub-par Leap To Fame’s back that night to beat him and animated owner-breeder Mick Harvey started to dream.
For that dream to become reality he had to dig deep, some $25,000 plus GST deep, the late entry fee to get Kingman into today’s race.
While it might have come out of the Victoria Cup stake, it is still not small change and a hell of a risk to take with a 4-year-old pacer just starting his open class journey and one who had never had a standing start.
Harvey gambled and won.
Although it didn’t quite look that simple when Kingman was near last at the halfway stage of the 3200m Cup with the two favourites first and second.
Trainer-driver Luke McCarthy, the polished prince of harness racing, had no choice but to ask Kingman to do it the hard way from three wide, which got harder when the muscular stallion started to hang at the 1000m mark.
That should have been his chances extinguished, $25,000 plus the same in expenses down the drain.
Clearly, Kingman can’t count.
He covered the most ground, did the most wrong but took a deep breath at the 250 mark and went again, an equine boxer throwing his knockout punch in the championship rounds.
It was so brutal it bordered on rude. You aren’t supposed to come to others’ houses and play the bully.
McCarthy had gone into the Cup full of belief in his horse but realistic about the challenges for their afterthought bonus race. The icing on a cake never tasted so good.
“He is wonderful horse but I’ll admit I didn’t think he could sit three wide and win,” he said.
“I had to move to get closer, even though I knew I wouldn’t get the breeze off Leap To Fame, because I knew if I waited much longer he’d get pushed out when I did go.
“He did the rest and he is just a special horse and I’m so proud to win this for Mick.”
This New Zealand Cup also provides a new zenith in the storied career of McCarthy, who has won Miracle Miles and Inter Dominion and drove the first two winners of the world’s richest harness race, the Eureka on his home track of Menangle.
“I have been lucky enough to go all over the world, to races like the Elitlopp in Sweden and the Little Brown Jug in the States but this is the best race day in harness racing and I have always wanted to win the Cup.”
It was the second year running a horse trained at Menangle has won the Victoria Cup, paid the late entry fee, come to New Zealand and returned home with the Cup after Swayzee did it last season.
Leap To Fame was magnificent in second after sitting parked throughout, while Merlin ducked into a gap looking like the winner for a few seconds at 150m before finishing third.
That was just ahead of stablemate Better Knuckle Up, who came from last for fourth and had “NZ Cup 2026” written all over him.
That is, of course, if they ban Victoria Cup winners, or horses making late payments, from getting into the Cup next year.
Or maybe Australian horses altogether
Because the way things are going, the New Zealand Cup is going to need a name change soon.
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.
