Month: January 2024

It’s been a long road back to the racetrack for six-year-old gelding Master Fay (Deep Field), but he made a winning return at Tauranga on Friday when taking out the Ray White Pukehina 1200 for owner-trainer Chad Ormsby. It was full circle for Ormsby, who purchased the son of Deep Field out of Highden Park’s 2019 New Zealand Bloodstock Book 1 Yearling Sale draft for $100,000 as a pinhooking prospect. However, Master Fay didn’t make it back to the sales ring and was sold to Hong Kong interests following two…

Chris Bothwell has got his hands on the final golden ticket for the $350,000 Remutaka Classic (1600m) at Trentham on Saturday-week, and the Stratford trainer couldn’t be more excited. He will head to the inaugural running of the rich feature with his six-year-old mare Roulade, who broke through for her maiden win at the most opportune time when taking out the Palamountains Animal Nutrition Maiden 2040 at Wanganui on Thursday, a ballot exempt race for the Remutaka Classic. Bothwell went into the race relatively confident, with Roulade having finished runner-up…

A bumper contingent of 29 entries this weekend for Te Akau Racing includes three-pronged attacks on a pair of races that hold special recent memories for the syndication juggernaut. The first of those is Saturday’s Gr.1 Cambridge Stud Levin Classic (1600m) at Trentham, in which Quintessa, Trobriand and Certainly give Te Akau a trio of leading chances to land their third consecutive win in the race alongside Imperatriz (2022) and Romancing The Moon (2023). A day later in the long-awaited reopening of Ellerslie, Te Akau will be represented by Maracatu,…

Matamata trainer Graham Richardson has previously had much better luck in the Gr.1 Railway (1200m) than the Gr.1 JR & N Berkett Telegraph (1200m), but he is hoping to flip that script with Bonny Lass at Trentham on Saturday. Richardson has won the Railway with Kailey (1997) and Volpe Veloce (2018), and both horses carried on down to Wellington to contest the Telegraph a couple of weeks later. Neither of them had all favours in the Trentham feature and both performed well below their best, finishing sixth and seventh respectively.…

Wingatui local Capo Dell Impero will be vying for more Cups success when he heads to his home track on Saturday to contest the WAE Waikouaiti Cup (2200m). The six-year-old son of Ghibellines has two Cup victories to his name amongst his six career victories, including the Founders Cup (2000) and Cromwell Cup (2030m) two starts back. The Group Three performer followed that up with a ninth placed run in the Timaru Heritage Cup (1600m) last month and trainers Brian and Shane Anderton believe his run was better than the…