This was a Group 1. No small deal and yet for Leap To Fame, it was the \u201cother\u201d race he wanted to win this week.<\/p>\n
You could tell as much as co-trainer Trista Dixon got Larry ready to leave Addington, as well as herding the kids while husband Grant was out on a catch drive in the last race.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been a great week and obviously we didn\u2019t get the Cup but he still went so well, so we were really proud,\u201d says Dixon.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is lovely to pick up this race and show everybody he still has it, which we never doubt.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think he is looking to get home. He will fly to Sydney and have a night at Robbie\u2019s [Morris] stables and then be home by I think Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has been away from home for a long time and has done such a wonderful job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leap To Fame looked like a horse who had been away from home for ages. We all know how it feels.<\/p>\n
You get tired, miss your routine, things just become that little bit harder.<\/p>\n
And sitting parked for 3200m in a New Zealand Cup wouldn\u2019t have done a lot for his sense of humour, either.<\/p>\n
So yes, we didn\u2019t see the absolute best of Leap To Fame in the Free-For-All on Friday. <\/p>\n
But even below his peak, tired after Tuesday and ready to go home, he won a Group 1, beating the best pacer in New Zealand this spring and the Free-For-All defending champion.<\/p>\n
He achieved most horses\u2019 career highlight as an afterthought.<\/p>\n
Thanks for coming Larry, get home safe.<\/p>\n
Got The Chocolates is too good<\/p>\n
There isn\u2019t much Robert Dunn hasn\u2019t achieved in his career.<\/p>\n
He was winning the biggest pacing cups decades ago, and Diamond Racing started adding big trotting success to their arsenal just a few years ago.<\/p>\n
But now, when he should be in the twilight of his career, the man known as \u201cRJ\u201d has found another special horse, this time to share with daughter-in-law and training partner Jenna and his son John.<\/p>\n
Because Got The Chocolates is the real deal.<\/p>\n
He has to be, because he shouldn\u2019t have been able to do what he did in The Velocity at Addington on Friday, sit three wide, then parked, and go on to beat a very good horse in Marketplace.<\/p>\n
And for good measure, he tore 1.4s off the 1980m mobile three-year-old national record, all after never seeing the marker pegs.<\/p>\n
It was the third straight time Got The Chocolates has bested Marketplace, after playing second fiddle to him for the first year of their careers.<\/p>\n
Make no mistake, there are no excuses and no arguments: Got The Chocolates is our best three-year-old pacer. Not by much, but by enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was very special because it was such a great race, what racing needs,\u201d said Dunn.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has always been a good horse but when he had no gate speed it made it so hard on him.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we added a nose roll to his gear, which helps him concentrate better behind the gate and that has helped him get handier early.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut of course he is also bigger and stronger. He is just a better horse than he used to be.\u201d <\/p>\n
The pair will clash again in next Friday\u2019s NZ Derby, for which Got The Chocolates is now incredibly the $1.45 favourite, with Marketplace at $3.20, odds which that have seemed impossible at the start of this campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are so thrilled to have a horse like him for Ross and Angela [Gordon, owners] and we will get him home tonight and get him into the surf tomorrow to help him recover.\u201d <\/p>\n
Providing he\u2019s safely through next Friday\u2019s Derby, Got The Chocolates could even tempt Team Dunn to look at a race like the Chariots Of Fire at Menangle in March, a track that would suit his racing style but might charge him some hefty tax for his lack of gate speed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t campaigned one in Australia for a long time but maybe this horse could change that,\u201d says RJ.\u2028Got The Chocolates\u2019 incredible form resurgence also suggests that whoever wins next Friday\u2019s Derby could be named New Zealand Three-Year-Old Pacer of the Year.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s just another unbelievable possibility this most wild of Cup weeks has raised. <\/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 Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald\u2019s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world\u2019s biggest horse racing carnivals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This was a Group 1. No small deal and yet for Leap To Fame, it was the \u201cother\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[92821,92822,6276,209,293,17453,92823,117,111,43,139,12908,69,10512,13807,2737,6123],"class_list":["post-135693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-consolation","tag-emerges","tag-gets","tag-group","tag-his","tag-larry","tag-loves","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nobody","tag-nz","tag-prize","tag-prizes","tag-star","tag-while"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135693","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=135693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}