Category: Gallops

Exciting jumper Dictation (NZ) (Tavistock) exacted a large measure of revenge for a costly last fence blunder twelve months ago when he dashed away with Saturday’s Avon City Ford Sydenham Hurdles (3100m) at Riccarton. The Paul Nelson and Corrina McDougal-prepared eight-year-old had the 2024 version of the race in apparent safekeeping when he botched the last fence and dropped jockey Hamish McNeill. With Matthew Gillies now his regular pilot, the 2025 version of the son of Tavistock has proved he is right up there with best in the hurdling game…

Local trainers Kevin and Stephen Gray will head to Awapuni on Sunday with a spring in their step as they get set to line-up two live chances in the $100,000 Japac Homes Polytrack Championship (1400m). Exciting sprinter Cosentino will be the leading light for the stable, having won two of his last three starts on the track, and finished in a dead heat for second in his other outing. Stephen Gray has plenty of time for the four-year-old son of El Roca, and while he has yet to be tested…

It’s been a whirlwind last few years for Maija Vance, and the former jockey is taking the next step in that journey after joining her partner, Josh King, in a training partnership this week. Vance won 94 races in the saddle in New Zealand before she was involved in a well-publicised race fall in 2018, where she suffered several injuries, including damaging her spinal cord. Doctors feared she wouldn’t be able to walk again, but after intense rehabilitation, she was able to defy those odds, and 18 months later she…

Shaun Fannin has spent plenty of time in the winner’s circle during the Grand National Festival of Racing, and this year’s carnival presents an entirely new challenge for the Awapuni horseman. One of the country’s top jumps jockeys for the better part of a decade, Fannin has won each of the four jumping features at Riccarton on numerous occasions, including two of the last three editions of the Racecourse Hotel and Motor Lodge Koral Steeplechase (4250m) with West Coast. Fannin relishes the opportunity to tackle the picturesque circuit each year…

Young speed merchant Love The Sort will be on trial on Saturday for a return visit to Ruakaka for an early black-type opportunity. She will make her three-year-old debut in the Ben & Nola Wortelboer Memorial (1100m) for trainers Shaune Ritchie and Colm Murray, with an eye on a sterner challenge. “I don’t think she’ll stay, I think she’s too fast and that being the case another race that looks on the agenda, providing she performs well, is the Northland Breeders’ Stakes (Gr.3, 1200m) in two weeks,” Ritchie said. “She’ll…

Time has been a friend to a once-erratic Bradman, who will have just celebrated his eighth birthday when he tackles Saturday’s Gr.3 Winning Edge Presentations 128th Winter Cup (1600m) at Riccarton Park. The son of Pins and champion broodmare Baggy Green, Bradman was a frequent in the stewards report through his early years on the track, but perseverance paid off for trainer Roydon Bergerson when as a six-year-old, Bradman had his best-ever season collecting a stakes victory and over $146,000. “He was mentally insecure, you go back through his history…

Earlier in the year, Bevan and Robyn Wilson mapped out a plan for three of their talented gallopers to tackle Saturday’s Gr.3 Winning Edge Presentations Winter Cup (1600m), and despite a few challenges, the trio will each take their place in the Riccarton showpiece. Well-known for training and racing their homebred horses, the Ashburton couple have had their best season since Robyn joined the partnership in 2018, training 10 winners and 12 placegetters from just 45 starters. Royal Valour, Lord Darci and Victorian Charm have all contributed to that amount,…

Kelvin Tyler will be represented by young and old at the Grand National opener on Saturday at Riccarton Park, including a pair of promising juveniles stepping out at three for the first time. The aptly-named Four The Moment and Fourofus will go head-to-head in the Christchurch Casino 30th South Island Awards – 12 September Three-Year-Old (1200m), both appearing off a spell after they quinellaed the Excellency Stakes (1100m) in April on their home course of Riverton. Only a nose could split them on that occasion and Tyler expects a similar…