The roar of the crowd soon turned to shocked silence and headshaking among industry insiders. The common question: \u201cHow good is she?\u201d<\/p>\n
Some suggested Well Written may be the best they have seen. <\/p>\n
That possibly depends on how many horses you have seen and recency bias is never far away on a racetrack full of happy punters.<\/p>\n
But she is very, very good with maybe the most important chapters of her story still to be written (excuse the pun).<\/p>\n
Trainer Stephen Marsh will now aim his darling at the $4 million NZB Kiwi, which raised the other questions on everybody\u2019s mind: <\/p>\n
How will they beat her in the Kiwi?<\/p>\n
What will she pay in that?<\/p>\n
Will any Aussie trainers want to bring horses over to take her on?<\/p>\n
Those questions don\u2019t have answers yet, but Marsh did confirm he won\u2019t start Well Written again before the mega-money slot race back at Ellerslie on March 7.<\/p>\n
If you like witnessing potential greatness, then get your tickets quick because Well Written may not have many more starts in New Zealand after that.<\/p>\n
She is staying in Marsh\u2019s stable regardless of how great she may become, but in reality she can race for $1m almost every start in Australia and often much more.<\/p>\n
While Saturday\u2019s race was 1600m, Well Written is so naturally fast it wouldn\u2019t surprise if she gets invited to the A$20m Everest in Sydney with her co-owners Yulong already having a slot.<\/p>\n
Questions, questions, questions.<\/p>\n
Questions for after-parties and Saturday night bars, sales day Sundays and the weeks and months ahead.<\/p>\n
But the answer to the most important question is simple: We just don\u2019t know how good Well Written really is yet.<\/p>\n
It is going to be fun finding out.<\/p>\n
Following her triumph, the Aussie summer of glory in New Zealand racing continued when Jigsaw led home a Victorian quinella in the $700,000 Sistema Railway to wrap up Saturday\u2019s glamour card. <\/p>\n
The Cindy Alderson-trained galloper sat outside leader Alabama Lass and cruised past her at the 300m before holding out Arkansaw Kid to add another Australian major race win to those of Dream Roca earlier on Saturday and Kingswood in the Zabeel Classic on Boxing Day.<\/p>\n
It was a no-argument performance and capped a stunning return home for ex-pat apprentice jockey Logan Bates, who rode Jigsaw.<\/p>\n
Bates, born in the South Island, punched the air as he rode a Group One winner with his parents, both jockeys, watching on.<\/p>\n
It does not bode well for what lies ahead for the locals in the next domestic Group One sprint, the BCD Sprint at Te Rapa on February 7.<\/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":"The roar of the crowd soon turned to shocked silence and headshaking among industry insiders. The common question:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[74,1975,1596,10748,2068,38244,31390,8500,16773,16420,5511,91125,4380,111,139,69,1118,29392,1562,145132,17146,12508,2515,7812,213,22858,61,4506,6436,6923,1316,13632],"class_list":["post-249493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-after","tag-at","tag-brain","tag-came","tag-cant","tag-compute","tag-demolition","tag-ellerslie","tag-great","tag-human","tag-just","tag-karaka","tag-millions","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-perfect","tag-plenty","tag-questions-there","tag-questions","tag-quite","tag-raise","tag-seen","tag-sports","tag-stays","tag-to","tag-usually","tag-well","tag-what","tag-when","tag-written"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249493","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=249493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}