Top trainers set to unleash
Baker and Forsman try to better freakish black-type record
Adeliberately sedate start to the season is about to go into overdrive for the country’s leading stable. But even champion trainers Murray Baker and Andrew Forsman admit one of the more staggering statistics in recent New Zealand racing history is going to be hard to better.
The premiership winners sit just 31st on the national ladder after a month of the new season, with Cutadeel at Hastings on Saturday their second winner from just 13 starters in New Zealand.
But that doesn’t count their first group winner of the season after Quick Thinker ploughed through the Rosehill mud to win the A$160,000 ($170,000) Ming Dynasty on Saturday, with stablemates Rhaegar fourth on a track heavier than he wanted.
So while the Cambridge pair have one black type win already tucked away for the season and probably earlier than they expected, their personal best set last term is still a very, very long way off.
Last season, the stable saddled 25 black type (group or listed race) winners in New Zealand as part of their 112 domestic wins. That is a scarcely believable rate of a black type winner every 4.5 New Zealand victories.
They also won a black type race in Sydney with The Chosen One and even the laconic Baker puffs his chest out a little over the total of 26.
“I think that 25 domestic black type races might be a record,” he says.
You could waste your time checking whether Baker’s hunch is right or you could just accept the logic that is has to be, because training a black type winner every 4.5 wins as well as winning the premiership defies belief.
As for their slower start to this season, Baker says that was planned.
“We have found getting horses up and ready in the spring only to have to race them on the mainly wet tracks can bottom some of them,” he offers.
“And some of the older, wet track horses we train have come to the end of it so we haven’t had the numbers. But that is about to change.”
Domestically the stable has some serious firepower to aim at races on the last two days of the Hastings carnival while the whole racing nation saw the country’s best male maiden Holy Mongolemperor scorch up the Hastings straight and announce himself as a 2000 Guineas force.
But while the local rockets are getting ready for blast off, it is the
Australian team who harbour the richest dreams.
Quick Thinker and Rhaegar will stay in Sydney for the next month and more than likely contest the Gloaming over 1800m at Rosehill on September 28 on their way to the Spring Champion Stakes, those Sydney races being auditions for the Victoria Derby a month later.
“Lion Tamer won the Ming Dynasty
for us with Hughie [Bowman] riding a few years back and went on to win the VRC Derby and these two horses could end up there too. But their Sydney form will tell us that.”
It is not like the stable is struggling for Derby talent as Long Jack flew into Victoria on Sunday to be set for the Derby, accompanied by two of last season’s best 3-year-olds in Madison County and The Chosen One.
The latter will be first of the open class horses on deck in Aussie as he heads to the A$250,000 Feehan Stakes at The Valley on Saturday.
“We think he is a pretty fair horse and he holds a nomination for the Cox Plate alongside Madison County, but of course they will need to prove they are up to that,” says Baker.
“Madison County is also over there but won’t start until the Rupert Clarke at Caulfield [September 21] and they have so many options.
“Primarily we see them both as 1600m-2000m horses, not Cups horses, but there are so many options.
“Even away from the Cox Plate there are races like the MacKinnon and the Kennedy Mile and of course the Golden Eagle in Sydney.”
And that is where Baker realises the often tried and true programmes he has used for his record number of black type winners by a New Zealand trainer in Australia might take some interesting detours this spring.
“There are just so many big races over there now there are a lot of options,” says Baker.
“You even take some of their country cups races which are worth A$300,000 or more and then those new A$1 million races in New South Wales at places like Kembla Grange.
“So Andrew and I might have to spend a bit more time looking into all that. But it is early days, who know what will come of it all.”
With so many options, such incredible stakes and a stable full of stars, putting a number on what team Baker/Forsman might achieve this season is pointless.
But their most likely totals, both wins and money, when it is all run and done: A lot.