Horses running strongly for Hansen
What are the odds?
If Steve Hansen isn’t coaching on Saturdays, then he tends to be on tour with the All Blacks or attending Super Rugby games. The idea of him having a weekend without professional obligations is largely fanciful.
Only not on October 13, when Sydney’s Royal Randwick plays host to Australia’s richest horse race. Prizemoney for The Everest is a whopping $NZ14.25 million, with $NZ6.5 million going to the lucky winners.
Hansen’s interest in all that? Well, he’s a part-owner in Nature Strip, who’s just been included in the field and installed as third favourite for the 1200-metre race. Nature Strip is being billed as one of the fastest horses in Australia, if not the world, after winning the 1000-metre McEwen Stakes at Moonee Valley on Saturday in a record time of 56.95 seconds. That means Nature Strip has now won eight of his 11 career starts, with Hansen one of 15 owners.
‘‘It’s really exciting to be in the racing game and then to find a horse good enough to win a few races is a highlight. But to have one go to a race like The Everest is really exciting and it just happens to fall on a weekend when I’ve got no rugby, so it couldn’t be better timing,’’ Hansen said yesterday.
The one thing critics have against the four-year-old appears to be a suspicion that he can’t go 1200 metres, despite him winning over that distance at Flemington in July.
Hansen’s got no qualms, then, about Nature Strip ‘‘going the trip.’’
‘‘I think so. Look, Darren Weir’s the guru trainer and he doesn’t seem to think it’s got any problem running it. It run 1200-metres into the wind at Flemington two seconds faster than anyone else on the day, so you’d have to think it will,’’ he said.
Another Hansen horse trained by Weir, The answer my friend, has been in top form in Melbourne of late and will go for its fourth win on the trot at Flemington tomorrow.