Trainers eye Zabeel Classic at Ellerslie to break La Crique’s winless streak

La Crique (closest camera) was just nosed out in the Bonecrusher NZ Stakes in March. Photo / Kenton Wright

BOXING DAY AT ELLERSLIE

What: One of New Zealand’s biggest race days.

Where: Auckland.

When: Friday, first race 12.45pm

Who: Many of our best open grade gallopers as well as exciting 3-year-olds.

Major races: $500,000 Cambridge Stud Zabeel Classic (Group 1), $270,000 Jimmy Schick Shaw’s Auckland Guineas (Group 2), $270,000 Hallmark Stud Eight Carat Classic (Group 2), $125,000 Dunstan Feeds Stayers Final, $110,000 Stella Artois Championship Final.

Can I go? Yes, tickets available for most levels at www.ellerslie.co.nz

The trainers of La Crique have an interesting problem: how do you fix something that isn’t really broken?

The mare goes into one of the races of the season at Ellerslie on Friday, the $500,000 Cambridge Stud Zabeel Classic, on a run of Group 1 placings that would make any trainer proud and slightly frustrated.

She has been placed in seven straight Group 1 races over 12 months, racking up nearly $800,000 of earnings.

Left-handed, right-handed, 1400m to 2000m, on a Good 4 to a Heavy 9, La Crique has been the poster girl for equine class and courage.

The only problem is, La Crique doesn’t win.

She has won a fair bit in her life, such as two Group 1s, a A$500,000 ($574,000) race in Brisbane and the Group 2 Auckland Breeders Stakes last year, and trainers Katrina and Simon Alexander are proud of their diminutive mare.

They just wouldn’t mind coming back to the stables after a major race with a dress rug or garland of flowers rather than a knowing nod of respect.

So do they have an ace up their sleeve for Friday’s clash of the titans?

“No,” laughs Simon Alexander.

“We know she is going well and of course we are proud of her but we’d love to win one.

“We thought she went super last start at Trentham and it was a hell of a training performance from Katrina considering she hadn’t raced in 10 weeks.

“She has run third, beaten two noses, and you can make a case if the winner doesn’t get the rails run and we haven’t had to come around Waitak [second] then we win.

“But that has been the story of the last 12 months. There is so little between these top four or five horses that the one who gets the run to suit often wins and that hasn’t usually been us.

“The thing about it is she has been trying so hard and going so close you couldn’t say there is anything we can or need to do differently.

“If she wasn’t trying or the tracks or distances hadn’t suited you could use any of those things for an excuse.

“And if she was running up to win then not seeing it out we could tell the owners she was ready for the broodmare paddock.

“But none of that is true. She just usually finds one better on the day.”

The Alexanders can take hope from the fact La Crique will surely improve from that fresh-up run in the TAB Mufhasa at Trentham last start.

“While we were happy with her going into that, logic would suggest she has to be better for the run,” Simon said.

“So we are confident we will get another really good run on Friday, albeit she has a slightly sticky draw again.”

La Crique will start from barrier seven in the Zabeel Classic if there are no more scratchings after Whangaehu was pulled out straight after acceptance time yesterday.

While that is two from the outside, at least the two favourites Waitak (8) and El Vencedor (9) will start from outside her, which probably inconveniences El Vencedor more than Waitak.

But, ultimately, the Group 1 could come down to the tempo in the race, often the key in a 2000m weight-for-age contest at Ellerslie.

The Zabeel will be the centrepiece of a day that will have repercussions for some of the richer races ahead, with Well Written and Affirmative Action set to clash in Friday’s Jimmy Schick Shaw’s Auckland Guineas, which will potentially have a huge bearing on the Karaka Millions and NZB Kiwi markets.

Lollapalooza will start a warm favourite in the $270,000 Hallmark Stud Eight Carat Classic, while the Dunstan Feeds Stayers Final tends to unearth horses who will be factors in the big cups later in the summer and the Stella Artois Final produces serious milers of the future.

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.