La Crique will enter that phase of her career the winner of nine races, two of them Group 1s and over $2.1 million in stakes. <\/p>\n
And with an army of fans, a lovable little mare who never backed down from a fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been a bit of a battle for her for much of the last two years,\u201d says Simon Alexander.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe had a problem in that hoof two years ago and it might have affected her on and off since.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has gone some wonderful races since then at a really high level but she maybe never really came back to her absolute best.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhich goes to show how brave she is. She has been beaten noses and short margins in our best Group 1 races in that two-year period all when maybe not at her peak.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce we had the hoof x-rayed and realised that would ruin most of her summer the decision to retire her has been pretty easy.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t want to see a mare as special as her going around for the sake of it and really, what else does she has left to prove?<\/p>\n
\u201cBut that doesn\u2019t mean it will be easy to have her leave the stable.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has been with us for over five years and you get very attached to a horse like her.\u201d<\/p>\n
La Crique, by Rich Hill stallion Vadamos, started her career with a brilliant 3-year-old summer, winning the Desert Gold Stakes by four-and-a-half lengths and the Avondale Guineas by three-and-three-quarters before being a slightly luckless second in the NZ Derby.<\/p>\n
At 4 she won her first Group 1 in the Arrowfield Stud Plate, one of two times that spring she beat the champion mare Imperatriz, before starting favourite when fourth in the Empire Rose at Flemington during Cup week.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was below her best that entire Melbourne trip,\u201d says Alexander.<\/p>\n
She raced in a tough era, with placings that season behind Imperatriz, Levante and Prowess before struggles in her 5-year-old season were turned around when she beat Aegon, Desert Lightning, El Vencedor and Ladies Man in her second Group 1 victory, the \u014ctaki-M\u0101ori Classic.<\/p>\n
She capped that season winning the A$500,000 ($576k) National Mares Classic at Eagle Farm before returning home to win the Auckland Thoroughbred Breeders Stakes last year and then embark on an incredible streak of seven Group 1 placings in a row before her fourth in the Zabeel on Boxing Day.\u2028<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been a battle the last two years and Katrina has done an amazing job with her,\u201d says Alexander.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could bring her back up again but the only thing she could possibly achieve now to boost her broodmare career would be a Group 1 win in Australia and that isn\u2019t an easy thing to achieve.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe can let down into a broodmare and her owners have plenty of time to think about stallion choices.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it has been very special to have her as part of our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
While La Crique gets set to leave the stable the Alexanders appear to have a horse who will keep taking them at our best race meetings for a while yet, with Rise Companions a stunning winner of the Stella Artois Final on Boxing Day.<\/p>\n
A monster with a huge stride he looks a Group 1 miler in the making.<\/p>\n
But he has big shoes, worn by a little mare, to fill.<\/p>\n
La Crique<\/p>\n
Breeding: 7m Vadamos-Destiny Cove.<\/p>\n
Owners: John and Jan Cassin.<\/p>\n
Trainers: Katrina and Simon Alexander.<\/p>\n
Record: 30 starts, nine wins, 16 placing for $2,128,972 in stakes.<\/p>\n
Highlights: Arrowfield Stud Plate and Otaki-Maori Classic (both Group 1), Avondale Guineas and Auckland Breeders Stakes (both G2), A$500,000 Magic Millions National Classic at Eagle Farm.<\/p>\n
Remarkable: As well as winning two Group 1 races was placed in another 11 at the highest level.<\/p>\n
Winning jockeys: Craig Grylls (four wins), Shaun McKay, Vinnie Colgan, Matt Cameron, Michael McNab and James McDonald (all one win).<\/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":"La Crique will enter that phase of her career the winner of nine races, two of them Group…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1244,1558,89438,125881,14134,17438,305,55623,12514,101,117,111,43,139,16546,69,1118,15147,3512,46440,6652,61,65508,102,14443,80],"class_list":["post-206205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-beauty","tag-been","tag-brave","tag-crique","tag-decision","tag-easy","tag-have","tag-la","tag-leave","tag-left","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nothing","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-prove","tag-racing","tag-retire","tag-retires","tag-to","tag-watching","tag-with","tag-wont","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206205","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=206205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}