Racing: Chris Waller’s big idea for the Karaka Millions

Chris Waller. Photo / Getty Images

New Zealand’s greatest modern day horse trainer has thrown his weight behind the revamped Karaka Millions but says he would further boost the mega meeting.

Chris Waller trained his 150th Group 1 winner at Randwick on Saturday when Fangirl won the A$1 million Winx Stakes with another expat superstar James McDonald in the saddle.

While both Waller and McDonald are now at the height of their powers in Sydney, both are still small-town Kiwi boys who love the thought of returning home to show off their skills.

There is no bigger stage to do that than the new Karaka Millions, possibly returning to a reopened Ellerslie on January 27.

“I love what they have done with the Karaka Millions,” says Waller.

“They already had the two big Sales races but I really like them adding the new $1million four-year-old race.

“With races at that level I will be keener to target the meeting and suggesting it to owners with the right horses.”

But Waller says he would go further and expand Karaka Millions from six races.

“I’d have 10 races. You can only capture the public’s imagination so many days a season and when you do you need to cash in on that. The bigger the meeting the better.

“I’d love to see a Group 1 fillies and mares races that night and I hope very quickly the four-year-old race becomes a Group 1.”

Waller has campaigned very few horses in New Zealand since moving to Sydney but any involvement from his stable, plus internationally renowned jockeys like McDonald and Damian Lane, would increase the profile of the meeting.

* Yesterday’s abandoned Rotorua meeting has been transferred to tomorrow.

The Arawa Park track had surface water on it when inspected on Sunday morning so will now become a rare Tuesday domestic thoroughbred meeting.

While the meeting has four jumps races it is a highweight race on the flat that will contain the best two jumpers, with star hurdle Nedwin and Great Northern Steeplechase favourite The Cossack using the race as their final blow out before the Pakuranga Hunt jumping races at Te Rapa on Saturday.

The delayed Rotorua meeting raised the extremely unusual situation of a meeting in that region on the same day Cambridge was to hold trials, but the latter will now have to be moved as both meetings needed to use the same set of starting gates.