Republican Party has been New Zealand's best pacer in 2025. Photo / Ajay Berry
TRILLIAN TRUST AUCKLAND CUP
What: Auckland’s biggest harness race.
Where: Alexandra Park.
When: Wednesday, first race at 2.55pm.
Highlights: Two Group 1 races, the Auckland Cup for the pacers and the Peter Breckon Memorial National Trot for trotters.
Preview: Box Seat Auckland Cup preview on Trackside 1 (Sky 62) at 8pm on Tuesday.
Cran Dalgety shakes his head when he looks at the TAB market for the Trillian Trust Auckland Cup.
It is not that the Canterbury trainer doesn’t believe his stable star Republican Party should be a warm, or even hot, favourite for the $250,000 iconic feature at Alexandra Park on Wednesday night.
It is just that Dalgety never thought he’d have a pacer paying $1.40 to win one of our great races.
“It is kinda crazy when you think about it,” he says.
“We don’t often have $1.40 chances in maiden races and here we have one in the Auckland Cup.
“I know how hard these really big races are to win and apart from when Mark [Purdon] was really flying you don’t often see those sort of odds in a Cup.”
While $1.40 in a 3200m Group 1 sounds incredibly short, the Auckland Cup has had even hotter favourites in the past decade, with Vincent paying just when he won in 2017 and Self Assured was $1.40 when he won the Cup for a second time in 2022.
It is hard to argue with the bookies’ assessment because in the last 12 months, since he won the Invercargill Cup and Auckland Cup last year, Republican Party has clearly been our best pacer.
He has been near perfect: sound, brave, well-mannered and willing, whereas plenty of his rivals have been on form or injury rollercoasters.
Republican Party bent to the will of the powerful Australians in Kingman and Leap To Fame during New Zealand Cup week, but there tends to be less pressure in the Aussie-less races and that could be the case in the eight-horse Cup at Wednesday’s twilight meeting.
It is a balanced field, with most of the better open-class pacers going around, but there are few brutes good enough to bully horses so if Republican Party steps safely from barrier 2, not many of his rivals would seem likely to want to get into a battle for the lead with him.
The obvious threat is Merlin, who finished second to Republican Party in this race last year.
He has yet to win over 3200m, albeit in only three attempts, but has actually looked stronger in the past two months and he did beat Republican Party home in the New Zealand Cup (3200m) when third last month.
“He looks like the one we have to beat,” says Dalgety, who worked for Merlin’s co-trainer Barry Purdon for four years at the start of his career.
While Republican Party has had a big year, travelling up and down the country and across the Tasman, Dalgety says for a stallion he handles being away from home well.
“Especially when he comes up here to Pukekohe,” he explains.
“He stays in the same box every time he comes here and while being a colt he yells out a bit and gets boisterous, he is all talk.”
Merlin will have two Purdon/Phelan stablemates in the Cup in Sooner The Bettor and Better Knuckle Up, Cambridge trainer Arna Donnelly has two in Little Spike and Jolimont, while Akuta returns after winning the Cup when it was run in May in 2023.
Wednesday’s other Group 1 is the Peter Breckon Memorial National Trot, which has also drawn a small field. Mighty Logan is a $2 favourite from barrier 2 with Oscar Bonavena on the unruly for the 2700m mobile but still the $2.80 second favourite in a race missing two-time winner Muscle Mountain and Bet N Win.
The 12-race twilight meeting starts at 2.55pm.
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.