TODAY’S RACING
- New Plymouth, first race 12.20pm.
- Ruakākā, Cambridge Stud Breeders Stakes, first race 12.40pm.
- Rosehill, Rosebud Stakes Day, first race 1.35pm (NZ time).
- Caulfield, Lawrence Stakes Day, first race 2.25pm (NZ time).
Mark Walker has been doing this long enough to know that you just don’t know.
The question the champion New Zealand trainer, these days predominantly based in Victoria, is seeking to answer is simple: is Lara Antipova up to the best Australian fillies?
The answer might start to reveal itself just before 5.30pm (NZ time) at Caulfield today.
Lara Antipova was our unbeaten juvenile darling last season and is certain to win Juvenile of the Year at the NZTR annual awards on September 6.
She is fast, light on her feet and would be the early favourite for any 3-year-old race in New Zealand.
But she isn’t in New Zealand. She is in Victoria where she starts her Australian career in the Quezette Stakes, a Group 3 over 1100m.
The decision to take Lara Antipova across the Tasman was an easy one. Already the winner of a Group 1 in New Zealand, the best way to embellish her future broodmare worth is to try replicating that in Australia.
And of course proper horses race for silly good money in Australia and Lara might be a proper filly.
But as Walker knows better than anybody; Group 1 winners in New Zealand can go one of two ways in Australia and more often than not that way is backwards.
“It is just so hard to win Group 1s over here now,” says Walker, who should know – he is the last Kiwi trainer to do it with a New Zealand-based horse, Belle Cheval in the Vinery Stakes on March 28.
“This is a really good filly but some horses come across and thrive on the new type of racing, the pressure and the climate, while others don’t bring their best form.
“Last season we brought La Dorada across and didn’t see the best of her but the year before Bellatrix Star came across and turned into one of the best 3-year-olds of her year.”
The equation for Lara Antipova this spring is made more awkward as her Group 1 win in the Sistema Stakes in March makes her automatic topweight for almost all the fillies’ races before she gets to the 1000 Guineas at Caulfield in October.
“That makes it hard on Saturday too, having to carry 59kg fresh up,” Walker says.
“I think she will improve as the campaign goes on too but it really is up to her now.
“I think she is good enough but we also don’t know how strong that New Zealand juvenile form was last season.
“We are going to find out.”
The Te Akau spring fact-finding mission could start at Ruakākā today where the Cambridge Stud Breeders Stakes kicks off the serious part of the 3-year-old season here.
The stable potentially have Kinnaird and Honour Roll starting their campaigns today unless co-trainer Sam Bergerson decides to send them to Taupō tomorrow instead.
“We are on weather watch with that,” explains Walker.
“There is a race at Taupō for both of them on Sunday but the forecast isn’t very good so we will have to decide where they go.”
If the weather holds, then Taupō’s race restricted to the boys would be an easier option as today’s Breeders Stakes, which sees a trio of speedster fillies drawn well, headlined by Shalabiya alongside Summer Shchemer and She’s No Saint.
Shalabiya has been backed into red odds after opening at $2.40; her debut victory on the track two weeks ago was that of a good filly.
Just how good, we will find out today.
As we will with Lara Antipova and about 100 other potentially high-class 3-year-olds racing around Australasia this weekend.
Welcome to racing’s first day of spring, held in winter.
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.