Wooden Edge emerges from humble start

There’s no explaining the vagaries of the horse business.

The wealthy spend fortunes seeking their next winner, others have future stars foisted upon them.

Take Wooden Edge example of the latter.

Former champion jockey Gary Edge runs a beautiful agistment farm on the outskirts of Cambridge.

He takes pride in nurturing thoroughbreds for his clients and the majority happily pay their bills for a job well done.

Now and again some don’t have the readies to settle their accounts and alternatives have to be explored.

When the owner of an unfashionably-bred youngster failed settle an account Edge had to seek retribution through a lien over the horse.

With the matter sorted and as new owner of the horse Edge called on his mate, Cambridge trainer Chris Wood.

‘‘The last thing I needed was a share in another horse,’’ Wood said. ‘‘But Gary said he really liked the horse and he was a good paddock galloper.’’

Wood went about getting a syndication of owners to race the horse and story of the aptly named Wooden Edge began to gain momentum.

The bills were being paid and the gelding by an unknown sire from a nondescript mother showed he could gallop.

He was a tough customer, an ‘‘explosive unit’’ and took con- as an vincing that he wanted to be a racehorse.

‘‘I’ve got to take my hat off to my staff,’’ Wood said. ‘‘They put a lot of hard work into this horse.’’

Taken to his first trial the 4-year-old son of Have No Fear won and scored again at his second of two trials.

On Sunday he made his race debut at Te Awamutu and after a slow beginning, looped the field and ran away to win as he liked in the hands of Wood’s apprentice jockey Viktoria Gatu..

It was a memorable weekend for Wood and Gatu

They combined to win with Pacorus on Saturday and Gatu also won aboard Admiral, on Sunday she also won on Summer Dale.

Wood expects more wins from both his weekend winners and has high hopes for Wooden Edge.

‘‘He can go all the way,’’ Wood said. ‘‘I’ve had a big wrap on him for quite a while.

‘‘He’s been in work for a long time, I’ll give him another one or two and then give him a break for a few weeks.’’

For a horse sired in a paddock in the shadows of a Cambridge industrial area, by a stallion that left just a handful of unraced progeny, from an unfashionablybred unraced mare, he could provide his owners with many more celebrations.