Horse racing: Success on synthetic makes fan of trainer

Brave Spirit (R4, No 2) is rated the best hope for the Shaune Ritchie and Colm Murray stable at Cambridge today. Photo / Race Images

A track trainer Shaune Ritchie never used to like could provide him with the perfect end to a successful strike rate season today.

Ritchie and training partner Colm Murray have good winning chances in three of the four $40,000 winter finals on the local synthetic track at Cambridge but Ritchie admits he wasn’t always the biggest fan of a surface the stable has had great success on recently.

“When the synthetic opened I was lukewarm on it at best,” Ritchie tells the Herald.

“But we have grown to understand how to use to it better and have been having some great results on it.

“It is funny how things take some time to get used to, I think you could have asked 10 different trainers their attitude to training and racing on it and have got 10 different answers but what we are doing now seems to work for us.”

The stable’s preferred initial use of the track for emerging horses is trialling once on the synthetic track then looking to trial, when available, on a turf track and if at all possible right-handed.

“If we can do that, giving them a run on the home track then away for a right-handed turf track then we have educated the horses to be ready to race under different circumstances and it gives us more options,” explains Ritchie.

Ritchie and Murray have used the local synthetic surface more for their race team this winter for obvious reasons and it has seen a dramatic improvement in their winning strike rate.

“To be honest, we’d rather race on the synthetic than a heavy winter track and the racing is slightly easier overall.”

That attitude has helped the stable climb to 32 wins for the season, the third most successful tally of Ritchie’s career but even more impressive with a winner every 5.78 starts.

Of the top 20 stables in the country only Robbie Patterson, Allan Sharrock, Ralph Manning and Terri Rae win at a more proficient rate.

That could continue today in three of the big four finals which reward the synthetic trackers.

“Our best chance is Hammer Time (R7, No 1) who we think could end up a Cups-type horse,” says Ritchie.

“He has been crying out for 2000m and gets the claim again with Jess Allen on.”

“I also think Nystrom (R2, No 5) is a good chance for the ace in her race as she won well here last start.”

The stable has three representatives in the $40,000 race over 1300m and Brave Spirit (R4, No 2) is rated the best hope even though he wasn’t impressive to the eye winning his debut.

“We like him and while he probably should have won easier on debut he works like a good horse. But the other two can also get some there.”

Brave Spirit will be ridden by Sam Weatherley who returns to the saddle today after his winter break and has been working hard to get back into riding shape as his family’s stable star Pier resumes at the Te Rapa trials next Tuesday.

Today’s meeting has understandable depth with $237,000 in stakes a huge amount for a Wednesday meeting on the synthetic but it is also not the only meeting in the country.

The Oamaru Cup fixture which was to have been held last Sunday was postponed until today and will start early at 11.08am.

It will be run on a heavy 10 and plenty of the northern interest at Oamaru will centre of whether apprentice jockey Kelsey Hannan can close the gap on apprentice premiership leader Tayla Mitchell, who leads her by four wins with four days of the season left.

Mitchell is finished for the season as she is suspended.

But Hannan will ride each of the next four days to try and catch her rival for the apprentice title, the pair sitting fifth and sixth overall on the national jockeys’ premiership.