Racing: Last Premiership races could go right down to the wire

Popthebubbles won at Tauranga on Saturday.

The last two remaining Premiership battles of the thoroughbred season could go down to the last meeting.

While Michael McNab bolted clear months ago in his defence of the jockey’s Premiership, Mark Walker still has a personal milestone to chase in the trainer’s ranks — while the last week of the apprentice jockey’s Premiership comes with a twist.

Tayla Mitchell leads Kelsey Hannan by four wins (67-63) and both were set to ride at the Oamaru Cup meeting on Sunday but that was potstponed early on Saturday morning because of the heavy rain forecast in the region. That was moved to Wednesday, when it will run alongside the Cambridge synthetic meeting to give New Zealand for a rare Wednesday with two domestic meetings. But Mitchell will miss both as she starts a suspension today until next week so won’t ride again before next season, which starts August 1, even after her team asked for a dispensation to ride at the re-scheduled Oamaru meeting.

While Mitchell misses out, so too does Hannan because she can’t ride at both Oamaru and Cambridge, so will head south. She will follow that with Awapuni on Thursday, Riccarton on Friday and will ride at Te Rapa on Saturday rather than Otaki. Hannan needs to average a winner per meeting to tie Mitchell.

Walker has already declared becoming the first Kiwi trainer to win 200 races in a season is not a major priority but he is in touching distance as he moved to 197 when Popthebubbles won at Tauranga on Saturday. Walker only has two runners at Cambridge on Wednesday and won’t have runners at the two southern meetings this week, so could only have the three northern meetings after that to get to the 200-win mark, something no trainer is likely to ever threaten again.

Kiwis fly high

Waikato Stud boss Mark Chittick may be teaming up with an Australian to try and win the A$20 million ($21.8m) Everest in October but he couldn’t hide his parochialism on New Zealand breeding’s biggest night.

Chittick is the majority owner of I Wish I Win, who is now trained in Victoria by Peter Moody and will tackle the Everest in the TAB Trackside spot on October 14.

Chittick and his family were on stage at the Thoroughbred Breeders Awards in Cambridge on Saturday to receive the Breeders of the Year award for Waikato Stud and he did some calculating of his own at the end of the extended awards ceremony.

Each Group 1 winner bred in New Zealand was recognised, a remarkable 35 wins across New Zealand, Australia and Hong Kong including many sprint and 2-year-old races, the types of horses which aren’t traditionally renowned as breeding.

“I reckon the equivalent night in Australia might be a pretty short night, because all of the Australian Group 1 races are up on that big screen,” quipped Chittick.