Racing: Kawi ready for Hastings

Kawi (foreground) will be one of the star attractions at Hastings on Saturday. Photo / NZME.

The metal-lined container about the breadth and width of your laptop in the corner of the horse box is New Plymouth trainer Allan Sharrock's gauge to the chances of Kawi in Saturday's $200,000 Makfi Challenge at Hastings.

It's called a feedbin and for the best part of a century and a half it has been the measure of a thoroughbred's health and fitness.

Top horsemen get an excellent guide to a horse's wellbeing from casting an eye, but a horse's appetite is the definitive indication.

It's why many champion trainers, even in later life, rise at 3.45am to check how much each of their horses has eaten of its overnight feed, rather than trust a junior staff member's calculations. Sharrock knows he's on the right track with his checks of Kawi's feedbin.

"Before he ran in the Foxbridge Plate he was a typical early spring horse, he'd leave a handful of feed one night, a double handful the next then the following night one handful.

"Since the Foxbridge he hasn't left one grain of his feed, he's licked the feedbin every night. The oldtimers always said that's how you know you've got them in the groove.

"He's in the groove for his big test for Saturday."

Sharrock says the Foxbridge Plate essentially got Kawi to the fitness level he was looking for and to keep the horse topped up he's had to give him just two pieces of fast work in the meantime.

This is not a plan that was randomly put in place. No one is more aware than Sharrock that what he is trying to achieve has never been accomplished - winning all three of the group one races at the Hastings carnival.

Even the great Starcraft, who went on to beat the best Europeans when he left New Zealand, won the first two legs but couldn't get over the line in the last race, the Kelt Capital Stakes. The following year, Starcraft was voted the best horse in the world of his type, but the Hastings treble was beyond him.

Sharrock thinks a lot about that, especially that Starcraft was stabled in Hawkes Bay in his campaign from Australia and did not have the strain of three long float trips to Hastings in five weeks, which has undermined a number of topline horses in the past decade and a half.

The trip from New Plymouth to Hastings is not one you would be happy to do on a pushbike every day.

"Yes, it's a big ask what we're trying to do and one of the big factors is just how fit you have to have your horse for each of the races.

"Obviously, I had to leave some fat on him for the Foxbridge if I was going to take him through to the Livamol [old Kelt Capital] in good shape. It's a fine line you have to tread. I couldn't have him too unfit for the Foxbridge that it was going to hurt him, but couldn't afford to have him too fit."

Kawi finished a tremendous second and was relegated to just behind the placegetters for causing interference.

Equal favourite at $4.50 with Kawi is Cambridge's Turn Me Loose, stylish trials winner at Ruakaka before a not-to-worry beaten effort on an "off" track in last week's Taupo barrier trial.

The latest no-refund futures betting market: $4.50 Kawi, Turn Me Loose; $7 Ryan Mark, $8 Addictive Habit, Whosyourmaster; $12 Vespa, $14 Puccini, Soriano, Tomorrowland; $18 Pondarosa Miss, $41 Farm Boy, Mighty Solomon, Nashville, Pussy O'Reilly, The Filly.