Sea King does it with ease

RACHEL FROST doesn’t call Sea King a thick, horrible goat any more. She just smiles, lets the others do the hard yards, and takes the money.

And yesterday, at Te Rapa, the horse who was once barred from racing because he was such a rogue, scored a runaway win in the $50,000 Waikato Steeplechase, scoring what rider Matthew Gillies rated the easiest win of his career.

And in downing Carinya by seven lengths, Sea King became the first horse to win both the Waikato Hurdles and Waikato Steeples after his 2013 hurdles triumph.

The win took his bankroll to a healthy $440,000 but, if Gillies’ rap is anything to go by, that total will be boosted dramatically in the next couple of months.

‘‘ I haven’t won on horse like that . . . well, forever. He won with a leg in the air,’’ said Gillies.

But even better news for Frost and her co-owners Chris O’Reilly and breeder Sue Harty, on the eve of an Australian campaign, was Gillies’ report that the horse was the best behaved he could remember.

‘‘ He can muck round in his races, and tries to run over the top of other horses, but today he didn’t do too much wrong.

‘‘He did try to lean in on the horse inside him and that’s why I kept him out wider.’’

When Frost used to train Sea King herself, he did all that and much more – and no amount of gear helped, she tried blinkers, nosebands, tongue ties and even a severe butterfly bit.

The Shinko King horse was such a handful he was eventually barred by the stewards – which was when Frost banished him to Wanganui expert Kevin Myers.

‘‘He hasn’t done bad for a horse who didn’t have much future on the flat!’’

Frost said Sea King would now campaign in Australia where Myers would most likely concentrate on steeplechases.

‘‘He was going to go to Oakbank but we were worried he’d get too much weight. I think Kevin wants to run only in steeplechases to keep his weight down.’’

Sea King showed he was right up with the best when in three starts in Australia last winter he won two races, including the Grand National Hurdle, and ran third in the GN Steeple.

While he has bagged nine hurdle wins, yesterday’s success was his first over the bigger fences.

But Sea King now must rank one of the favourites for rich events like the $ 100,000 Australian Steeples (3400m) on May 30 and $250,000 Grand National Steeples (4500m) on July 26.

Were he to win the $200,000 Grand National Hurdle (3900m) on July 12 as well, he could claim a $ 300,000 bonus as winner of three of a special six-race series.