New Zealand racing’s toughest record could be broken today

Pacers like Sweet Maggie Mae helped Team Telfer record strong winter numbers and set them up to break the record for NZ training wins. Photo/HRNZ

There will be more than a touch of irony if one of the longest-standing records in New Zealand racing is broken in Race 2 at Cambridge today.

Brother and sister trainers Steve and Amanda Telfer go into the meeting on 168 wins for the season, equal with training legends Barry and the late Roy Purdon, who set their mark in 1994.

That record has rarely been threatened since but is all but certain to go before the end of the harness racing season on December 31 and there is a very good chance it could happen today.

Team Telfer have reps in six of the 12 races and could realistically win any of them with the possible exception of Delightful Chic upsetting red hot favourite Princess Of Savoy in Race 3.

If not today, Steve Telfer expects the dual stable business to claim the outright record somewhere on the West Coast circuit starting on Friday or even at Gore on Saturday.

The fact they have horses racing at all those venues sums up not only the size of their operation but its importance to harness racing up and down the country.

But by the weight of numbers and talent of those involved, the record could be an early Christmas present for the Telfers, their staff and the big boss of parent company Stonewall Stud, Steve Stockman today.

Telfer is a numbers man, smart enough to know the record is probably theirs but not looking for chickens to count.

“I thought going down to Invercargill last week we might get it there but a few things went wrong and we got one winner instead of the two we needed,” he admits.

“So I am not nervous about this meeting because that doesn’t help and what will be, will be.

“And we have a few numbers on our side over the next week.”

Even if everything that could possibly go wrong over the next seven days does, then the Telfers will have pulled off an incredible feat to have even equalled a record held by two of the greatest trainers to ever touch a horse in this country.

S S Guppy is a tricky pacer who could win Race 1 today but a better chance and potential record setter is Andarta (R2, No.4), who has been placed in both career starts and meets moderate maiden opposition.

The odd thing about Andarta is she is a trotter and of those 168 Telfer wins this season, only four have come from trotters.

In fact, of the 515 careers winners Steve and Amanda have trained together, only nine have been by trotters.

It isn’t that they can’t train trotters - they just haven’t tried that hard, only recently starting to put them on their yearling sales shopping list.

Having purchased some blueblood trotting yearlings this year, a new string to their bow awaits.

“She is a really well mannered mare and although she might be better right-handed, she can win,” admits Telfer.

But if today is to be the day his stable passes the mark set by Telfer’s former bosses, then he thinks Upstage (R7, No.12) or Amazing Captain (R11, No.4) are the most likely record setters.

“We have two horses in the handicap pace but they can be hard races.

“But we think Upstage is a pretty good horse, not much inferior to J T Boe who has been racing really well down south.

“And Amazing Captain is dropping back from Alexandra Park company so she has to be a good hope.

“We have a chance to get it on Wednesday but we will go to work and give the horses their best chances, that is what we do.”


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.