Can I go?:
Yes, tickets at www.ellerslie.co.nz or walk up available.
Watch: Trackside 1 (Sky Ch62).
The punt: TAB or Betcha apps and website.
It is the battle of promise versus proven in the $270,000 Rich Hill Mile at Ellerslie today.
And Cambridge trainer Shaune Ritchie hopes the TAB bookmakers have got it wrong by favouring those who might versus those who already have.
The Group 2 Rich Hill is one of our great mile races every season but today is populated by horses on the way up more so than those already with big, bold black type success.
The most obvious exception is Tuxedo, the Waikato Guineas winner from last season who was also second to Damask Rose in the Karaka Millions Three-Year-Old.
Already an open handicap winner, he raced twice in Group 1s in the spring and is thrown into today’s race carrying just 53kg.
But he could start close to $5 as Smart Love (R9, No.11) opened very short and then She’s A Dealer was smashed in early betting from $4.20 to $3.
Both mares are clearly very good and trained by two of our leading stables so could win today without surprising.
But the two recent wins of the exciting mares were both in R75 races and while they are going to go a lot further in their careers than that, neither is particularly well off under today’s handicap conditions.
They will both carry the minimum 53kg but Smart Love is rated 8 points lower than Tuxedo and She’s A Dealer rated 6 points behind him.
So if it wasn’t for the top heavy handicap created by Meaningful Star accepting but being scratched, the two favoured mares could be getting between 4-6kg weight off Tuxedo.
Instead, they all carry the same weight today.
Tuxedo and Smart Love clashed last start in the J Swap Sprint at Te Rapa and the latter was undoubtedly unlucky but she finished fourth to Tuxedo’s second and that was with a 2kg advantage she loses today.
Factor all that in and it is hard to make a case the mares should be $3 and Tuxedo around $5, even though the mares may have more left in their improvement curve.
“I think we are better off than they are, and that is no disrespect to their ability,” says Ritchie, who trains Tuxedo in partnership with Colm Murray.
Any of the three could win because so often our big handicap miles are won by the horses on the usual 53kg minimum and the fact the O’Sullivan/Scott team, who train Smart Love, has gone to the trouble of flying outstanding Queensland jockey Angela Jones in to to ride her.
They also have Checkmate in the race, who comes out of that same J Swap at Te Rapa and he, like Tuxedo, was a high class three-year-old last term.
So too was Midnight Edition, who was under-rated at three for trainer Bruce Wallbank and now finds himself at the top of the handicaps in a Group 2.
He has the tactical speed to overcome barrier 11 but how hard he has to go if he wants to cross Pericles (barrier 3) could be a key factor in the race.
Add in Queen Zou, who is Group 2 proven behind Hinekaha in the Cal Izusu at Te Rapa the same day that J Swap Sprint was run and The Scunner, with hard to line up Central Districts form, and the Rich Hil proves even with a smaller than usual field handicap miles provide some of our most interesting betting challenges.
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.
