Racing heavyweights join forces
Three of the heavyweights of New Zealand racing have gathered to plan their assault on the Melbourne Spring Racing carnival.
The 2018 TAB Kiwis for the Cup — Sydney-based trainer Chris Waller, Cambridge trainer Murray Baker and Waikato expat Jockey James McDonald have won nearly 170 of Australasia’s most prestigious races between them — but so far the greatest prize in racing — the Melbourne Cup — has eluded them.
From small town New Zealand, Chris Waller is the rock star of Australian Racing and the genius behind the world’s greatest racehorse, Winx.
He’s won three Cox Plates and been has crowned the most successful trainer in New South Wales for eight seasons in a row.
Based in Cambridge, Murray Baker is New Zealand’s Cup king.
He’s won a total 48 Australasian Group 1 races, including a Caulfield Cup with Mongolian Khan in 2015, and a respectable second in the Melbourne Cup with The Phantom in 1989.
Like Baker, at just 19, James McDonald came within a whisker of the Cup on board the Gai Waterhouse trained Fiorente in 2012.
Now 26 he is among the greatest jockeys this country has produced, and with more than 34 of Australasia’s greatest races under his belt, McDonald is hot property on the Spring Carnival Scene.
This group of proud Kiwis are the stars of the TAB’s 2018 Kiwis for the Cup campaign.
They took on the Aussies in the Caulfield Cup over the weekend, then have another crack at the Cox Plate on Saturday and the big one at Flemington on Tuesday, November 6.
Last year more than a million bets and $10.2 million was placed on the one race, making Melbourne Cup the single biggest one off event on the TAB’s sporting calendar.
■ Check out the new #kiwisforthecup campaign at www.tab.co.nz/kiwisforthecup