“He could also stay on for the BCD Sprint at Te Rapa and that would give us two in that race as Here To Shock is definitely going back for that race.”
Here To Shock blew his Kiwi opposition away in the BCD Sprint last season and while he disappointed in the A$1 million Supernova at Pakenham last start, in which Arkansaw Kid finished third, Hayes is not concerned.
“We are going back to what worked for him in the BCD Sprint last season, freshening him up and all going well he will definitely be there.”
The Hayes boys are also bringing juvenile filly Torture to the Karaka Millions 2-year-old race even though she was unplaced at Geelong on Saturday.
The daughter of Sword Of State was last for much of that 1100m event but made good ground late and Ben Hayes says Torture will head to Ellerslie for a course proper gallop either on Thursday, January 15, or the Tuesday before the Millions meeting.
Torture will be joined in the Karaka Millions by two Liam Birchley-trained reps in Dream Roca and Vanzadee, both fillies who are already race winners.
They will gallop at the second of the two course proper gallop days at Ellerslie, Tuesday, January 20.
Future favourite Jigsaw is still expected to come across for the Sistema Railway after a hot back end to 2025 in which he won the Group 2 McEwen Stakes and the A$1m Meteorite at Cranbourne on November 22, beating Arkansaw Kid at level weights.
But one horse who is unlikely to be in the Railway is Saturday’s TAB Telegraph winner First Five.
While he is rated a $10 chance trainer David Greene says the Railway was never really a main target race for First Five and he will almost certainly be kept for the BCD Sprint on his home track, which is shaping as one of the races of the summer.
Karaka Millions night will also have one of Australia’s leading stables involved in the $1m Elsdon Park Aotearoa Classic for 4-year-olds with Knobelas to represent the Mick Price and Michael Kent junior stable.
A daughter of Belardo, Knobelas has three wins and three seconds in six career starts and sits at $11 in what is a confused market, after the recent defeats of some of the earlier favourites.
With so many Australian-trained horses coming to New Zealand in the next month there will be plenty of high-class Australian jockeys accompanying them, headlined by Damian Lane and Craig Williams.
They could be joined by Logan Bates, Ethan Brown and Jason Collett while Queensland rider Angela Jones is keen to return to Ellerslie for the Millions meeting after a wonderful debut there on New Years Day, winning the $250,000 QEII Cup.
Ellerslie hosts one more race meeting this Sunday before the massive twilight fixture and Sunday’s meeting will also see at least one black-type trial run, which is likely to have both Alabama Lass and Savaglee among its entries.
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.
