Category: Meeting Previews

By Adam Hamilton  Reigning WA Pacing Cup winner Wildwest finally has his first run for Team McCarthy at Menangle on Saturday night. The highly talented Kiwi-bred is owned in similar interests to King Of Swing and was across from Perth in the hope he could follow in that champion’s hoofprints. Wildwest made it 13 wins from just 28 starts when he caused a huge upset for trainer Gary Hall Sr to win the Group 1 WA Pacing Cup at Gloucester Park on February 4. Soon after, he was sent across…

By Michael Guerin The sulky-go-round leading into Friday’s $400,000 Trillian Trust Auckland Cup has stopped with Natalie Rasmussen to now drive hot favourite Self Assured. And that puts the great race’s most successful ever driver Tony Herlihy on Spankem, the horse Rasmussen herself drove to finish second the last time the Cup was run. The Cup, Auckland harness racing’s biggest prize, will have its first May running this Friday as the final feature of a huge autumn after Harness Racing New Zealand radically altered the feature-race calendar. The change from…

More than 100 weanlings, from established as well as emerging sires, will go under the hammer when the NZB Standardbred weanling sales are held at Karaka this Thursday, a day before the Auckland Cup meeting at Alexandra Park. Sixteen sires feature. In the pacing ranks Art Major, Sweet Lou and Downbytheseaside front up with the biggest numbers while super sire Bettor’s Delight will be represented by just two fillies, including Lot 52 who is a full sister to Spanish Armada. Buzz sire Always B Miki will have six lots, closely…

By Michael Guerin Steven Reid says his driving days may be over after a freak accident at Alexandra Park on Friday night. But he realises it could have ended a lot worse. Reid was driving Take The Miki, the talented pacer he trains with partner Simon McMullan, in race two when the sulky seat came loose and slipped off, dumping Reid on to the track around the 180m mark. That wasn’t much fun but Reid was relatively unscathed until Enjoy Me ran over him as he lay on the track,…

by Adam Hamilton  Former high-class Kiwi pacer Triple Eight looks set for another big campaign. The Jess Tubbs-trained seven-year-old returned from a break with a dominant win, thanks to a perfect trip and a lovely Greg Sugars drive. It was Triple Eight’s first start finishing third in the Group 1 Ainsworth FFA on that rain-drenched track on the Miracle Mile night which was postponed straight after that race. Triple Eight has thrived in the care of Tubbs and Sugars and now boasts 18 wins and 30 placings from his 82…

By Jonny Turner Trainer Chelsea Faithful dedicated Pay Me Speedy’s win at Ascot Park on Saturday to the memory of Dunedin horseman Leon Crawford following his passing earlier in the week. Known as a man of many talents with horses, Crawford was a successful trainer and driver, farrier and worked on many horses’ ailments through his work as an equine therapist, chiropractor and acupuncturist. The former Tomahawk trainer died peacefully, surrounded by his family, in Dunedin on Thursday. Crawford was a close family friend of Faithful’s and he also treated…