Best in show
Party time at Auckland Cup Day
Neighbours star Jodi Anasta is set to join thousands of punters for the last hurrah of the summer racing season.
The Aussie actress and style icon has crossed the ditch for today’s Auckland Cup Day at Ellerslie Racecourse, which features fashion, cocktails and the group one $500,000 Barfoot and Thompson Auckland Cup race.
Although she is a regular at racing events around Australia, this will be Anasta’s first time at the races in New Zealand.
“I’m really excited to see the fashion. For me, races [are] always about the fashion,” said Anasta, who plays schoolteacher Elly Conway on Australian soap Neighbours and is the exwife of former rugby league star Braith Anasta.
“I’ve pretty much judged fashions on the field at [every] race day I’ve gone to. That’s why it will be interesting for me now to come over to New Zealand and see how the Kiwis do it.”
Anasta is set to get a good view of the event’s fashionistas, with the role of crowning the winners of the Cup’s new fashion competition.
The competition will see judges including Silver Fern Maria Folau (nee Tutaia), seek out the 13 best-dressed people. Those 13 will then draw the name of a horse in one of the day’s races, and the fashionista whose horse wins will take out the competition and 200,000 Hawaiian Airlines air miles.
And the glitz and glamour doesn’t stop there. The winner of the day’s main race will be awarded a trophy made in 1889 by Queen Victoria’s personal jeweller, House of Garrard.
The jeweller also crafted Princess Diana’s engagement ring, now worn by Kate Middleton.
Auckland Racing Club CEO Paul Wilcox said the silverware gifted to the Club in the 1930s by member Moss Davis was “a cool bit of history”.
Auckland Cup Day is one of many events in the city today, including the Volvo Ocean Race’s
New Zealand Herald In-Port Race and Neil Finn performing his new album Out of Silence at Silo Park as part of the Auckland Arts Festival.