But from the Saturday just gone through to this Saturday at Ellerslie, there are a remarkable five separate days with black-type thoroughbred action, a first in New Zealand racing history.<\/p>\n
It started with the Group 3 Barneswood Farm Stakes at Ashburton on Saturday before the Sweynesse Stakes at Arawa Park on Sunday, also at Group 3 level.<\/p>\n
The Matamata Cup on Wednesday is a Listed race while the Spring Stakes at \u014ctaki on Thursday is also a Group 3 race, before the Group 1 Livamol and Group 2 Windsor Park Soliloquy Stakes are both held at Ellerslie on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The narrative fits in nicely with the TAB promoting this Saturday as the \u201cGreatest Day on the Punt\u201d, with the Livamol meeting running into the A$20 million ($22.6m) Everest meeting at Randwick and the Caulfield Cup.<\/p>\n
Punters with plenty of stamina, coffee and who back enough winners can even roll that into Victoria Cup night for the harness at Melton on Saturday night, featuring a host of horses heading to New Zealand Cup week and headlined by Leap To Fame.<\/p>\n
But only the real stayers or insomniacs will make it through to the early hours of Sunday morning for the Qipco Champions Day at Ascot in England, the grand-final meeting of the English flat-racing season<\/p>\n
While the Livamol is the undoubted domestic highlight of the week, it has lost two major players in La Crique and Tuxedo, both of their connections preferring to rest them now and aim for summer riches.<\/p>\n
That leaves Waitak, El Vencedor, Ladies Man and Quintessa, all of who have won Group 1s in the last year, in the 2040m weight-for-age thriller, as well as glamour mare Legarto.<\/p>\n
Rising again<\/p>\n
Everest favourite Ka Ying Rising\u2019s every move at trackwork in Sydney this morning will be picked apart.<\/p>\n
The champion Hong Kong sprinter sent some sectors of the racing media world into a spin when only running third in his Randwick trial last Tuesday, with reports ranging from \u201cokay\u201d to \u201cdisappointing\u201d \u2013 and some sections even suggesting his Everest start this Saturday is now in doubt.<\/p>\n
There is always going to be intense scrutiny of a red-hot favourite in what has quickly become Australia\u2019s most-talked-about race, so how Ka Ying Rising looks, moves and even breathes at this morning\u2019s open trackwork session will be picked over with a fine-tooth comb.<\/p>\n
The good news is that most punters here, or anywhere for that matter, don\u2019t need to worry, because if you are taking $1.70 about a horse to win the Everest five days out from the race, you have far bigger problems than anything Ka Ying Rising has going on in his life.<\/p>\n
Larry\u2019s loss<\/p>\n
Trainer-driver Grant Dixon wasn\u2019t panicking after Leap To Fame was stunned by a 10-year-old veteran pacer at Melton on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Leap To Fame was the $1.04 favourite for his sprint race and would usually have bolted in after leading easily, but he never looked totally comfortable and was dive-bombed late by open-class journeyman Bulletproof Boy.<\/p>\n
It was hardly the ideal dress rehearsal for this Saturday\u2019s Victoria Cup, which itself is Leap To Fame\u2019s next step to the $1m IRT New Zealand Cup at Addington on November 11.<\/p>\n
Dixon told the Herald on Sunday that Leap To Fame was showing no ill effects from Saturday\u2019s run and he will still go around a hot favourite in the Victoria Cup, especially with Swayzee not starting.<\/p>\n
But Leap To Fame\u2019s defeat and Swayzee\u2019s absence will have Kiwi trainers daring to dream the New Zealand Cup is still a winnable race rather than a battle between the Aussie half-brothers.<\/p>\n
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 <\/b>Herald<\/b> as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the <\/b>Herald\u2019s<\/b> Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world\u2019s biggest horse racing carnivals.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But from the Saturday just gone through to this Saturday at Ellerslie, there are a remarkable five separate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[162655,162656,36727,2348,9348,21021,1327,45907,254,13788,1071,79,5598,90546,16,15,6495,78495,9642],"class_list":{"0":"post-493966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-blacktype","9":"tag-busiest","10":"tag-historic","11":"tag-history","12":"tag-horse","13":"tag-mick","14":"tag-monday","15":"tag-nobody","16":"tag-on","17":"tag-planned","18":"tag-racing","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-the","21":"tag-thoroughbred","22":"tag-uk","23":"tag-united-kingdom","24":"tag-week","25":"tag-welcome","26":"tag-zealand"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115362084070177007","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}