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A beaming co-trainer Shaune Ritchie and winning jockey Logan Bates after Kumara Straight’s win in the New Zealand 2000 Guineas at Riccarton. Photo / Ajay Berry
A lack of local options could increase the possibility of New Zealand 2000 Guineas winner Kumara Straight being sold overseas.
The gelding won Saturday’s Group 1 at Riccarton at just a third career start and co-trainer Shaune Ritchie fielded a huge seven-figure offer immediately after the classic.
Ritchie owns half
of Kumara Straight but says ultimately any decision to entertain this or any subsequent offers will come down to his co-owners.
But if the son of Hellbent does stay in New Zealand he won’t be in our two richest 3-year-old races.
Having been purchased in Australia as a yearling Kumara Straight isn’t eligible for either the $1.5 million Karaka Millions Three-Year-Old or the $4.5m NZB Kiwi in March.
That would leave the New Zealand Derby, run the same day as the Kiwi on March 6, as his only big-money option here for the remainder of the season.
“Obviously it is a shame to be ineligible for those two big races so if he stays here, he will have to down the Derby path,” Ritchie says.
“I am sure he will make a Derby horse as he has staying blood on the dam’s side and I loved what I saw from him late yesterday [Saturday].
“I felt like he was always probably going to win from the 150m mark but not by much then in the last three strides he put half a length on them.
“That is the sign of a really good horse.”
The victory was the first Group 1 for Ritchie’s training partner Colm Murray but an anniversary and ironic reminder for Ritchie himself.
“The 2000 Guineas was actually the first Group 1 I ever won with Magic Cape in 2006,” Ritchie says.
“It is hard to believe that was 20 years ago, but I was talking to Shane Anderton at the races on Saturday and he told me it has been 41 years since he won the Guineas riding Random Chance and we finished third that day with Bonecrusher.”
Bonecrusher was trained by Ritchie’s father Frank and thrust the teenage Shaune into the racing spotlight as his strapper.
That Guineas defeat was Bonecrusher’s last as a 3-year-old as he won his next seven starts including the Bayer Classic, New Zealand Derby, Air New Zealand Stakes, Tancred Stakes and AJC Derby.
“To think Bonecrusher got beaten in this race and now this horse has been able to win it at just his third start goes to tell you not only how hard it is to win but says a lot about how much potential this horse has,” Ritchie says.
Kumara Straight is named after the West Coast road on which the famous Kumara racetrack is based and if he does go to the New Zealand Derby he might be seeing a few of those he beat on Saturday again.
This is very much a 3-year-old crop trying to work out its pecking order and Coniston (third), Excite (fourth) and Thunder In Motion (fifth) are all also ineligible for the Karaka Millions, with that market very much in a state of flux.
“If we go down that Derby path, we will try and find races for him at Ellerslie as much as possible to give him more experience on that track but when you are trying to get a horse like him ready for a Derby it is hard to find lead-up races before the Waikato and Avondale Guineas.
“I remember two years ago Willydoit having to start in a Rating 75 against the older horses on his way to the Derby and I think we could do with another 1600m three-year-old race in January, especially for those horses who aren’t eligible for the Karaka Millions who are trying to get set up for the Derby.”
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.
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