{"id":116313,"date":"2025-11-03T21:57:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T21:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/116313\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T21:57:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T21:57:10","slug":"nearly-half-of-melbourne-cup-field-have-kiwi-connections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/116313\/","title":{"rendered":"Nearly half of Melbourne Cup field have Kiwi connections"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MichaelMichael Guerin<\/a><\/p>\n

Racing Editor\u00b7NZ Herald\u00b7<\/p>\n

3 Nov, 2025 04:00 PM2 mins to read<\/p>\n

Subscribe to listenAccess to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.Subscribe now<\/p>\n

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Smokin Romans is one of the New Zealand-bred horses in today’s Melbourne Cup.<\/p>\n

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While New Zealand won\u2019t be adding to our proud Melbourne Cup record with a Kiwi-trained winner of the Melbourne Cup today, there are still plenty of New Zealanders with winning chances.<\/p>\n

\n Expat trainer Chris Waller, who is now based in Sydney, trains five of the 24 starters \u2013 Buckaroo,
\n Land Legend, More Felons, River Of Stars and Valiant King \u2013 with River Of Stars heavily backed to win the race by big punters yesterday.\n <\/p>\n

Another former New Zealand trainer, Bjorn Baker, trains 40-1 chance Arapaho.<\/p>\n

Kiwi superstar jockey James McDonald will ride Meydaan after having ridden the winners of over A$16 million ($18.3m) worth of races in the last 10 days, while former Hawkes Bay jockey Mick Dee, who is now based in Melbourne, rides Furthur.<\/p>\n

Smokin Romans and Torranzino were both bred in New Zealand, while Athabascan was bred in France but is by the stallion Almanzor, who now stands at Cambridge Stud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Guerin Racing Editor\u00b7NZ Herald\u00b7 3 Nov, 2025 04:00 PM2 mins to read Subscribe to listenAccess to Herald…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[16745,31578,33658,10542,19345,2964,305,194,82665,123,11692,111,139,69,1118,1562,21692,1974,213,6100,684,1865,6123,10508,18457,102,14443,80,24750],"class_list":{"0":"post-116313","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-adding","9":"tag-chances","10":"tag-connections","11":"tag-cup","12":"tag-field","13":"tag-half","14":"tag-have","15":"tag-kiwi","16":"tag-kiwitrained","17":"tag-melbourne","18":"tag-nearly","19":"tag-new-zealand","20":"tag-newzealand","21":"tag-nz","22":"tag-of","23":"tag-plenty","24":"tag-proud","25":"tag-record","26":"tag-sports","27":"tag-still","28":"tag-there","29":"tag-today","30":"tag-while","31":"tag-winner","32":"tag-winning","33":"tag-with","34":"tag-wont","35":"tag-zealand","36":"tag-zealanders"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}