Just as it looked to be a two-horse fight, race favourite Gigi joined in at the 150m and the trio slugged it out to the finish, with Sharp \u2018N\u2019 Smart putting his head down to edge Gigi with The Odyssey just a head away in third. <\/p>\n
Co-trainer Debbie Rogerson cut an emotional figure as she waited for her charge to return to the birdcage. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so proud of this horse and the team behind this horse as it has been a great journey,\u201d Rogerson said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI set him for this race in my hometown as we just wanted to win it. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a good run and he was tough, a credit to the horse. <\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone has been knocking the horse but they don\u2019t know what has been wrong with him. He had an horrific bacterial virus and it took him 12 months to get over it. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe gave him a good spell and we knew this time in he was getting back to his best, so it might be back to the Melbourne Cup next year. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe might look at the Queen Elizabeth [Group 3, 2400m] next and then the Auckland Cup [Group 2, 3200m].\u201d <\/p>\n
Rooke was also thrilled with how well his mount fought right to the line. <\/p>\n
\u201cI knew we had to be more positive today and it has taken me three or four times to get it right with him,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe just hit that flat spot about half a mile out and I thought I\u2019d rather commit too soon than not soon enough and he has just out-battled them to be honest. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen The Odyssey came alongside I was a bit worried but when I fought him off I thought it was going to take a good one to get past him. <\/p>\n
\u201cThen I saw Gigi and thought \u2018oh no\u2019, but he stuck his head down and got it done.\u201d <\/p>\n
Bred by Gerry Harvey, Sharp \u2018N\u2019 Smart is out of a half-sister to Absalon, who won five races, including two Listed victories in Brisbane. <\/p>\n
He was a $55,000 purchase from Westbury Stud\u2019s draft in Book 2 at Karaka 2021, and was then passed in for $90,000 at the Ready to Run Sale later that year. <\/p>\n
He has now won more than $3.44 million in prizemoney from his seven career victories. <\/p>\n
\u2013 LOVERACING.NZ News Desk <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just as it looked to be a two-horse fight, race favourite Gigi joined in at the 150m and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[17248,115847,115846,74,1863,30705,47738,23436,5071,18984,2740,6288,78,30607,111,139,69,36062,12971,1439,203,8529,15362,213,21707,199,1361,64347,55469,9087,1524,10508,16566,80],"class_list":["post-182612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-17248","tag-2400m","tag-32month","tag-after","tag-back","tag-circle","tag-derby","tag-drought","tag-feature","tag-finish","tag-former","tag-hamilton","tag-in","tag-n","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-rapa","tag-returned","tag-scene","tag-sharp","tag-skycity","tag-smart","tag-sports","tag-staying","tag-take","tag-that","tag-threeway","tag-thrilling","tag-triumph","tag-waikato","tag-winner","tag-winners","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182612","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=182612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}