Friday’s Group 1 Zabeel Classic at Ellerslie has attracted a small but select field, with no fewer than five elite-level winners set to contest the 2000-metre weight-for-age event.<\/p>\n
A total of 10 horses were paid-up for the race, however, Whangaehu has subsequently been withdrawn.<\/p>\n
Among the field of nine are Waitak, El Vencedor, Dark Destroyer, La Crique and Legarto, all already winners in top company.<\/p>\n
Australia will be represented by Gavin Bedggood’s G3-winning six-year-old Kingswood. He will jump from barrier six under Rory Hutchings. The Kiwi jockey won the race back in 2014 aboard the Graeme and Debbie Rogerson-trained Soriano.<\/p>\n
Bedggood has hatched a plan to win a G1 with Kingswood in New Zealand, with a view to him standing at stud in the country.<\/p>\n
The pre-race favourite is Waitak, who has the services of Craig Grylls. The last-start G1 Mufhasa Classic runner-up will begin from stall eight.<\/p>\n
Melbourne-based Kiwi jockey Michael Dee, who returns home for a working holiday, will partner the Stephen Marsh-trained El Vencedor. That pair will break from the outside gate (nine).<\/p>\n
Simon and Katrina Alexander’s star mare La Crique (Masa Hashizume) has barrier seven, while Ken and Bev Kelso’s Legarto (Ryan Elliot) will take her place in stall six.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, gun filly Well Written has drawn gate five for the G2 Auckland Guineas (1600m), where she will be handled by Matthew Cartwright. The Marsh-trained daughter of Written Tycoon is unbeaten in three outings and was most recently seen winning the G1 NZ 1000 Guineas (1600m) at Riccarton on November 8.<\/p>\n
In October, Yulong purchased a 50 per cent share in Well Written and the filly races in the stud’s green and white silks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Friday’s Group 1 Zabeel Classic at Ellerslie has attracted a small but select field, with no fewer than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-199976","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199976","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=199976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}