WEEKEND RACING HIGHLIGHTS
Saturday:
** $150,000 Al Basti Equiworld Dubai Sunline Vase, Ellerslie 3.24pm
** $400,000 Proisir Plate, Ellerslie 4.34pm
** A$1 million Concorde Stakes, Randwick 5.55pm (NZ time)
** A$750,000 Moir Stakes, Sandown 6.15pm (NZ time)
Sunday:
** Grant Squires Building Tararua Steeplechase, Woodville 2.37pm
** HK$4.2m Chief Executive’s Cup (featuring Ka Ying Rising), Sha Tin, 5.30pm (NZ time)
Well Written will try to extend racing’s near-impossible dream at Ellerslie today: perfection.
The champion 3-year-old of last season returns to racing in the $400,000 Proisir Plate, taking the huge step up from racing her own age group to the best gallopers in the country, and with very little help from the weight-for-age scale.
In doing so, she puts her unbeaten record on the line in a way that few, if any, New Zealand gallopers of the modern era have done.
Because when she canters to the 1400m start around 4.30pm, Well Written will still be perfect.
She has won all six of her career starts, which puts her in the most rarefied of air.
No New Zealand horse in recent decades has started their 4-year-old season unbeaten and then won a Group 1 fresh up.
They all get beaten.
Sunline was beaten twice at 3, Xcellent just the once in the ATC Derby, and while Seachange was unbeaten in six starts at 3 and won the 2006 version of today’s race, she had been beaten for the first time a few weeks earlier in the Foxbridge Plate.
Even the champs taste defeat: Phar Lap, Secretariat, Winx, even Ka Ying Rising, who returns to racing in Hong Kong tomorrow.
Unless, of course, you are one of racing’s supernovas like Frankel and Black Caviar.
They and a few others have remained perfect throughout their careers, but that almost certainly won’t happen to Well Written.
Her targets this spring alone include the Epsom and Golden Eagle in Sydney, so if she ends 2026 unbeaten, she will be standing on the doorstep of greatness.
But for now, for today, she is perfect, and trainer Stephen Marsh believes he has found the perfect race to keep her that way.
“Everything has gone exactly how we wanted it to this prep, including the way this race shapes up,” he says.
“She has thickened up nicely, so is a better model of herself, and her work has been spot-on.
“Her trials have been good, she galloped well up at Ellerslie last week, and her coat looks great.”
For today’s race, Well Written seems ideally drawn in barrier 7 to follow Alabama Lass (barrier 6) across the front of the field and sit handy, almost certainly putting her in front of the hard-headed old male warriors who could have made life uncomfortable for her had she been back in the pack.
Even second favourite Alabama Lass, as a genuine Group 1 speedster likely to lead, probably suits Well Written, giving her a clear target from the top of the straight.
Well Written’s times and explosiveness last season left little doubt she will measure up to Group 1 racing, at least on this side of the Tasman.
So she should earn her $500,000 bonus today, for the first NZB Kiwi starter from last season to win a domestic Group 1 this term, but she may also need to reach a new career peak to do so.
She is, after all, still 21 days away from actually turning 4, and if Alabama Lass gets her expected easy time in front and turns the 1400m into a sprint home, she is going to take some catching.
Well Written’s stablemate Media World is likely to race handy and looks the place value.
Today’s Ellerslie return has some serious back-up firepower in the $150,000 Al Basti Equiworld Dubai Sunline Vase, in which She’s No Saint will be the one to catch, while a talented male 3-year-old in Excite carries topweight and has a wide draw but is still favoured to beat maiden rivals in the first race.
But for all the thrill of being back at the headquarters of Group 1 racing, and the emotion of Alabama Lass racing in the memory of late co-trainer Bev Kelso, one question will matter most to punters and purists when racing wraps up tonight.
Is Well Written still perfect?
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.