Monbet stamps authority in Dominion
It’s hard not to feel a little sorry for champion trotter Monbet.
He won a Group I At Cup Day last Tuesday, his seventh race win in succession, but because of what Lazarus did two and a half hours later when winning the New Zealand Trotting Cup by 10 lengths, his effort was quickly forgotten.
The current Horse of the Year then advanced his winning sequence to eight in Friday’s Dominion Handicap.
Remarkably, six of the wins have come at Group I level completing the full set of Group I’s for an open class trotter in New Zealand.
Friday’s win took the five-yearold’s record to 23 wins from 34 starts for more than $750,000 in stakes.
But again Lazarus, lined up in the Group I New Zealand FreeFor-All just over an hour later taking the win and the limelight.
Monbet’s Woodend Beach trainers Greg and Nina Hope have a failed vet inspection to thank for their domination of the Group I trotting ranks.
Earlier this year, the Hopes and their co-owner Morrie Molloy were presented with two massive offers for Monbet.
Greg Hope said they never wanted to sell the horse but the money was hard to turn down.
‘‘It was through the vet failing him. We had another one come in behind him and said they’d pay a bit less and it wasn’t far behind but when he failed the vet we thought we were meant to keep him,’’ he said.
‘‘It’s a relief because at the time we didn’t want to be turning down the $600,000.’’
Since the first sale fell through, Monbet went on to win around $450,000 in stakes and win eight races on the trot, with six of them Group I’s.
‘‘We’re rapt that we took the gamble and kept the horse,’’ Hope said.
‘‘Just the fact that he’s won every Group I at cup class level in a 12 month period in New Zealand is an amazing feat,’’ he said.
It was the Dominion win that the Hopes really wanted.
The Dominion win for Monbet was a near perfect result for the Hope partnership, as stablemate Quite A Moment ran into second, three-quarters of a length behind Monbet.