Mick On Monday: Galloping elite sneak back to work today

La Crique winning the A$500,000 National Classic at Eagle Farm last year.

Just four days into the new racing season, some of the superstars of New Zealand racing are heading back to work.

Which makes today anything but a normal Monday morning in winter.

While punters’ focus for much of this week will be on the Grand National carnival which started so beautifully at Riccarton on Saturday, today the faster, sleeker examples of the thoroughbred step out for the first time this campaign at the Taupō trials.

The list of names on show in the 10 open catchweight trials are a teaser to what the $400,000 Proisir Plate at Ellerslie on September 6 might look like.

Last season’s two-time Group 1 winner Grail Seeker is the headline act today and is joined by La Crique, Habana, Tuxedo, Wild Night, Checkmate, Tomodachi and New Zealand 1000 Guineas winner Captured By Love.

They will start in either 900m or 1100m trials today as trainers take advantage of turf trials set to be run on a Soft 6 surface or better.

Also spinning their wheels for the first time this new season will be exciting 3-year-olds Lucy In The Sky, Tajana, He Who Dares and Little Black Dress – to mention a few.

Today’s trials will be followed by more at Te Rapa on Tuesday and a further set for better class gallopers before the Te Rapa race meeting on Saturday, those trials to feature Legarto and Alabama Lass.

Some who trial today will likely return to Taupō for another trial before the race meetings there on August 17, leaving them an almost perfect 20-day gap to the Proisir, the first Group 1 race of the season which has been moved from Hastings to Ellerslie.

The Proisir being at Ellerslie is one reason a high-class mare like La Crique will kick off her campaign there.

“Ideally she could have been in Australia by now and that might still be the aim after the Proisir,” co-trainer Simon Alexander said.

“But with the Proisir moving to Ellerslie, it gives us a lot more certainty.

“We don’t have to travel all the way to Hastings and we know the track will be okay, rather than the possibility it could come up heavy.

“And just as importantly, we know the meeting will go ahead.”

La Crique has just turned 7, remarkable when it feels like only a year or two ago she was destroying an Avondale Guineas field.

That was was actually February 19, 2022, two weeks before she went on to finish second as the hot favourite in the New Zealand Derby.

She has become the beloved bridesmaid of New Zealand racing, finishing second in four straight Group 1 weight-for-age races last campaign, beaten by a nose, a half-head and a neck in three of them.

As it turns out, there is good money in being a Group 1 bridesmaid, with La Crique starting this campaign having earned over $1.9 million (plus bonuses).

“I wouldn’t say she has gotten any taller but she has thickened up a bit, there is more of her,” Alexander said.

“The Proisir is the ideal kickoff point because it will tell us and a few others where we stand and then we can decide whether to stay here or head to Australia.”

Grail Seeker and Legarto head the Proisir Plate market at $4, with Captured By Love rated an $8 chance by the TAB and La Crique at $10.

If even two-thirds of those at the top of the market turn up in the $400,000 over 1400m, it is going to be just the launching pad to the Group 1 season that New Zealand racing needs, especially being held the same day at the Gold Trail Stakes and Sir Colin Meads Trophy.

The road there starts at Taupō today.

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.