Kingswood has already accrued a solid record, placing in the Gr.3 Gallinule Stakes (2011m) at the Curragh in Ireland as a 3-year-old before continuing his racing career in Australia last year where he had two starts for Maddie Raymond before joining Bedggood\u2019s barn. <\/p>\n
He won his first two starts for the Cranbourne horseman last spring, including the Gr.3 Coongy Cup (2000m) at Caulfield, before a near 12-month hiatus from racing after he underwent surgery earlier this year. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe came back in the autumn and did three weeks\u2019 work and we weren\u2019t 100% happy with him,\u201d Bedggood said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe sent him off for an MRI and they found the very beginning of a hairline fracture. They put a screw in and he hasn\u2019t had an unsound day since.\u201d <\/p>\n
Kingswood resumed with a runner-up effort behind subsequent Group One performer Golden Path over 1700m at Flemington in September, and he returned to the iconic track on Melbourne Cup Day to win the Listed Kirin Ichiban Plate (1800m). <\/p>\n
\u201cHe was good there and he got perfect ground for him,\u201d Bedggood said. <\/p>\n
Kingswood has had just the one run since, finishing fourth in the Listed Ballarat Cup (2000m) on unsuitable footing. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe is a little bit of a Goldilocks, he doesn\u2019t want concrete ground and a track like Ballarat was too rain-affected for him,\u201d Bedggood said. <\/p>\n
Bedggood is now looking forward to testing his talent against some of NZ\u2019s best at Ellerslie next week. <\/p>\n
While he has yet to campaign a horse in NZ, racing on this side of the Tasman is nothing new for Bedggood, with the former jumps jockey having ridden at Ellerslie a little over 10 years ago, and he doesn\u2019t expect the right-handed track to pose any concerns for his charge. <\/p>\n
\u201cI came over 10 years ago to ride at the Northern meeting where I had a ride for Mark Oulaghan,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI have been there and had a look at the track before and it shouldn\u2019t pose any issues, the horse has raced in that direction in Ireland and Sydney.\u201d <\/p>\n
Bedggood will meet Kingswood at Auckland Airport on Sunday morning and he will base himself at Pukekohe in the lead-up to the Gr.1 Cambridge Stud Zabeel Classic (2000m) on Boxing Day. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe flies out late Saturday evening and arrives on Sunday morning,\u201d Bedggood said. \u201cI will come over for the week and hopefully we can get a result.\u201d <\/p>\n
Depending on his Boxing Day performance, Bedggood said Kingswood may stay in NZ in pursuit of other feature targets. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe will reassess after this one, but there is the Herbie Dyke (Gr.1, 2000m) at the beginning of February, which could be an option,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are also races for him through the autumn, which we would strongly look to come back for if he was competitive on Boxing Day.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u2013 LOVERACING.NZ News Desk <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kingswood has already accrued a solid record, placing in the Gr.3 Gallinule Stakes (2011m) at the Curragh in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[432,1975,2937,117525,2023,18399,124,53032,5972,8500,44661,209,8482,17702,117524,111,139,69,72726,6102,14040,213,4497,2224,1961,1529,8489,1533,10508],"class_list":["post-186677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-action","tag-at","tag-aussie","tag-bedggood","tag-boxing","tag-christmas","tag-could","tag-cranbourne","tag-day","tag-ellerslie","tag-gavin","tag-group","tag-huge","tag-invasion","tag-kingswood","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-prepares","tag-side","tag-spend","tag-sports","tag-start","tag-tasman","tag-this","tag-three","tag-trainer","tag-will","tag-winner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186677","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=186677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}