Michael Pitman revealed post-race that it hadn\u2019t been a smooth year for Mystic Park since he won last year\u2019s Listed Stewards Stakes (1200m) at the Cup carnival, making the result all the more satisfying. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a bit of a cliche I suppose, but I set him for this race 12 months ago,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s our third time winning the race and they\u2019ve all been with really nice horses. <\/p>\n
\u201cPeople don\u2019t know this, but the reason he didn\u2019t end up running in the Telegraph [Group 1, 1200m] was because he broke his tail just after he won the Stewards. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy wife, my son and my staff deserve so much credit, they put so much work in and we were so confident, especially after Ocean Light ran second [earlier in the meeting over 2000m]. Diane [wife] said if he could run second, this horse could win and win easily.\u201d <\/p>\n
Matthew Pitman had lost his voice cheering trackside and expressed how much the horse means to their stable. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a stable favourite for the team, he\u2019s a favourite of mine, he just tries super hard,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a long-term plan to have him ready for this. We got in at a good weight and his closing sectionals leading up to it were brilliant. I couldn\u2019t believe what he was paying a week ago. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to pivot with Sam [Weatherley, regular rider] getting suspended, we sent an SOS to Dan and he\u2019s come over and rode him a treat. I\u2019ve lost my voice yet again, it\u2019s a day that means a lot to us and I\u2019m just rapt with the win. <\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t thank my staff enough, it\u2019s been a massive effort by the team and our trackwork riders Donovan Cooper and Brett Murray.\u201d <\/p>\n
A $40,000 purchase out of Kilgravin Lodge\u2019s draft at the 2021 National Yearling Sales, Mystic Park has won over $390,000 for connections with eight wins from 19 starts. <\/p>\n
It was a successful homecoming for Stackhouse, who grew up in Ashburton and rode more than 100 winners on home soil before making the move to Victoria over a decade ago, where he is a frequent figure in metropolitan races. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great to get the monkey off the back and win the big one for the day,\u201d Stackhouse said. <\/p>\n
\u201cMichael rang me and said to look at his replays, which I did, and he rang a few times after to make sure I\u2019d watch them. After watching them I was pretty keen to come over, he was definitely the best chance that I had today so it\u2019s nice to get the job done. <\/p>\n
\u201cI just made sure he relaxed over the mile, he jumped okay and I just left him alone. The favourite [Sir Albert] was three-deep and I was happy to park in behind that. He relaxed nicely, his breathing and action were good and he travelled well. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe just wanted to run off a lot going around the circle, you could see me pulling him around to make sure he got on to his inside leg then he straightened up and when I went for him he kept drifting out, but he was the class horse of the race and won dominantly. <\/p>\n
\u201cI had my fingers crossed [at the line], I was wasting a lot of ground running outwards and probably went for him a bit early as well, but I was just rapt to see South Canterbury back on the big screen. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fantastic, it\u2019s great to be home and having friends and family here as well. It\u2019s good to catch up with everybody and ride at the same time.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u2013 LOVERACING.NZ News Desk <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Pitman revealed post-race that it hadn\u2019t been a smooth year for Mystic Park since he won last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5837,5432,5071,69366,209,1345,78,20829,42782,90622,111,139,69,1118,8143,90621,74836,40438,213,46687,55469,22974,23280,9977,1680,6027],"class_list":{"0":"post-131717","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-battle","9":"tag-between","10":"tag-feature","11":"tag-galloper","12":"tag-group","13":"tag-home","14":"tag-in","15":"tag-locals","16":"tag-mile","17":"tag-mystic","18":"tag-new-zealand","19":"tag-newzealand","20":"tag-nz","21":"tag-of","22":"tag-park","23":"tag-pitmans","24":"tag-prevailed","25":"tag-riccarton","26":"tag-sports","27":"tag-tab","28":"tag-thrilling","29":"tag-track","30":"tag-trainers","31":"tag-tussle","32":"tag-wednesday","33":"tag-win"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131717","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=131717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}