A dream run for trainer
Taranaki trainer Robbie Patterson has enjoyed a dream run through the first four months of this season.
With 11 winners from just 31 runners after last weekend, he has a strike rate of a winner every 2.82 runners – clearly the best in the top 50 on the New Zealand trainers’ premiership.
That spectacular spring has already taken Patterson past his tallies of nine, five and two wins from the three previous seasons, and his career-best total of 20 from 2013-14 is now well and truly in his sights.
Patterson’s big season hit its pinnacle at his home track of New Plymouth last Thursday. He saddled horses in three races and won all three with Barney Rubble, Dee Keepa and Regal Rock. For good measure his only other runner, All That Jazz, finished second behind Barney Rubble.
‘‘It’s been a great run – couldn’t be much better, really,’’ Patterson told RACEFORM.
‘‘From only a 20-horse barn, the results have been pretty amazing.’’
Patterson’s overall total now stands at 163 wins in a training career that began in the mid-1990s but only started to get serious a decade later.
‘‘I’m from Southland originally, and my dad was a farmer who was also a private trainer of a few racehorses,’’ he said. ‘‘I did a bit of work for him, and that’s how I first got into the racing business. It all went from there.’’
Patterson’s career really got going when he decided to relocate to the North Island.
‘‘That move actually came about after I found a horse [called Something Happened] in the
Friday Flash,’’ he said. ‘‘Bill Thurlow was leasing the horse out. It worked out really well, he ended up winning four races for me including a Gore Cup.
‘‘I got to know Bill quite well through that, and he sent a few horses down to me afterwards. Then he made the suggestion that I should move north, so I went up there and worked for him for a few years. Then I went into a partnership with Kevin Gray.’’
That was a fruitful association netting 14 wins and more than $350,000 in prize-money, headed by the Gr. 1 Kelt Capital Stakes victory by Legs in the spring of 2006.
‘‘It was a good ‘leg-up’, you could say,’’ Patterson joked.
‘‘But we had a great partnership that was a big help to my career.
‘‘It only ended when Kevin shifted his stable from Patea to Palmerston North. I’d met a lady in Taranaki, so it was a good time for me to go off on my own.’’
Patterson has never looked back, and this season his stable has been gathering serious momentum. But he is keen to stick to his current numbers.
‘‘I think 20 is a good number in terms of the attention you can give each horse,’’ he said. ‘‘If your stable gets too big, you get to the point where you lose touch with the horses a little bit.’’
Patterson highlighted some up-and-coming mares as runners to watch from his stable over the summer months.
‘‘Coventina Bay is the obvious one – she’s won three of her four starts and will hopefully continue through the grades,’’ he said.
‘‘There’s also Dezella, who won really well at Otaki last start. She’s thriving.
‘‘Then there’s Dee Keepa, who won a maiden at that New Plymouth meeting last week. She’s another one that I think can develop into a really nice horse.’’