One of those foals was Ultimate Habit, a filly by Embellish out of the Bachelor Duke mare Queens Habit, who survived the ordeal by sheer guts and with the help of the Roddicks\u2019 close neighbour, Reece Roberts.<\/p>\n
\u201cReece went in with his kayak and rounded the horses up and got them to swim over the broken fences and back to dry land,\u201d Isabell Roddick said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was an absolute hero, and without him we probably would have lost the lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
The horses managed to get to a hill section, where they stayed for several days, while the Roddicks were left with a lake surrounding their house.<\/p>\n
An example of the damage on Swamp Rd after Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo \/ Warren Buckland<\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t go anywhere,\u201d Isabell recalled.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember, at one stage, looking out the window and thinking we have lost the lot, all the horses and the property.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the floodwaters subsided enough, the Roddicks then had to find agistment facilities for their horses and Isabell said they would be forever grateful to their good friend Roz Rowe, who offered them a paddock where all the horses stayed for the next three months.<\/p>\n
The Embellish filly was then sent to a northern property for 10 months before New Plymouth trainer Robbie Patterson took her into his stable, where she is now based.<\/p>\n
Ultimate Habit was still a maiden and having only her fourth start when she lined up in Saturday\u2019s 2100m feature.<\/p>\n
She had shown a glimpse of her ability when finishing sixth in the Group 3 $200,000 Desert Gold Stakes (1600m) at Trentham on January 17.<\/p>\n
That run gave Patterson the confidence to step her up in distance and take on race winners and more experienced horses last Saturday.<\/p>\n
The filly certainly had to be good to win as she only had four horses behind her, in a strung-out field, for most of the race.<\/p>\n
Rider Craig Grylls started to improve her position starting the last 600m, but she was the widest horse rounding the home turn and was still giving the leaders a big head start.<\/p>\n
When Grylls gave her a crack with the whip half-way up the home straight, Ultimate Habit wanted to lay in but once he changed the whip over to his left hand she straightened up and showed great acceleration to score a dominant length win.<\/p>\n
Patterson prepared Leica Lucy to win last year\u2019s Lowland Stakes before she went on to win the Group 1 New Zealand Oaks (2400m) and he is now looking to try and complete the same double with a late entry fee now being paid to get Ultimate Habit into the Oaks, run at Ellerslie on February 21.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are definitely going to go to the Oaks on that,\u201d Patterson said after Saturday\u2019s win. \u201cIt is going to be a lot trickier going the other way around at Ellerslie, but she is such a laidback filly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ultimate Habit races in the Roddicks\u2019 purple and yellow colours and they have retained a racing share in the filly along with another Hawke\u2019s Bay couple, Barbara Nonu and Adrian Wilson.<\/p>\n
Patterson arranged for several other Taranaki people to take a share and the filly has now earned more than $107,000 in prize money.<\/p>\n
Isabell Roddick bred the champion galloper Rough Habit and Ultimate Habit is closely related to that 11-time Group 1 winner.<\/p>\n
Rough Habit was out of the Ashabit mare Certain Habit, who was the grandam of Queens Habit.<\/p>\n
It is also the family of the Group 1 winners Molly Bloom and Addictive Habit and Group 1 performer Citi Habit.<\/p>\n
Rough Habit raced in the Roddicks\u2019 colours in his early career, winning his first race at Waipukurau before going on to take out the Queensland Derby (2400m) the following year. He was then sold and went on to become one New Zealand\u2019s most successful thoroughbreds of the modern era.<\/p>\n
When the Roddicks were forced to remove all of their bloodstock from their flooded property, they sent Ultimate Habit\u2019s dam, Queens Habit, to Hawke\u2019s Bay-based Okawa Stud, where she was mated with Rock \u2018N\u2019 Pop.<\/p>\n
The resultant foal is a colt and so they now have a yearling half-brother to Ultimate Habit coming on.<\/p>\n
They also have two other yearlings from the Certain Habit family, a colt by King Of Comedy out of On Eagle Wins and a filly by Wrote out of Flying Habit, which they intend to syndicate and race.<\/p>\n
Cup success part of a significant week for HB jockey<\/p>\n
A delighted Kate Hercock salutes the judge as she brings Manzor Blue back at the head of the field following their upset win in last Saturday\u2019s Wellington Cup.<\/p>\n
Hawke\u2019s Bay jockey Kate Hercock capped a truly memorable week when she posted the most important win of her career aboard outsider Manzor Blue in last Saturday\u2019s Group 3 $400,000 Wellington Cup.<\/p>\n
Three days earlier, Hercock, who juggles a successful riding career with training a small team of thoroughbreds from her Otane base, trained and rode Zaravela to an emotionally-charged win in a 1650m maiden race at Waverley.<\/p>\n
Zaravela deserved the win after recording nine minor placings from her previous 23 starts but, more importantly, the six-year-old Time Test mare was co-bred and co-owned by Hercock\u2019s late partner Danny Champion, who died suddenly in November 2024.<\/p>\n
Champion was a former jumps jockey who turned his hand to training and produced 139 winners, most of them when he was based in the Canterbury area.<\/p>\n
He made the move to join Hercock in Hawke\u2019s Bay in early 2024 and they produced several winners together in a short space of time.<\/p>\n
Zaravela was a horse Champion brought with him when he made the move north, the mare having been placed several times on South Island tracks.<\/p>\n
She is out of the Saperavi mare Orovela, who Champion trained to win the 2013 Listed Canterbury Belle Stakes (1200m) at Riccarton.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe [Zaravela] was Danny\u2019s pride and joy,\u201d Hercock said after the mare\u2019s win.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe had gone some very good races and been a bit unlucky so it was good to see her get one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hercock started race-riding back in the 1994-95 racing season but had a 10-year injury-enforced break from 2010 to 2020.<\/p>\n
She has been kicking home a steady stream of winners since returning and is presently in the top 15 on the Jockeys\u2019 Premiership for this season.<\/p>\n
She got a big thrill when teaming up with Marotiri Molly to win the Group 2 $150,000 Manawatu Challenge Stakes (1400m) at Trentham, in December 2024, but adding her name to the winners\u2019 list in the prestigious and time-honoured Wellington Cup is certainly the highlight of her career to date.<\/p>\n
She was also delighted that she got to share her Wellington Cup success with Awapuni trainer Lisa Latta, who has been one of her biggest supporters.<\/p>\n
Hercock has been Manzor Blue\u2019s regular rider for the past 12 months and has been aboard the Latta-trained mare in all three of her wins.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough she\u2019d only won two, she\u2019s such an honest little mare,\u201d Hercock said.<\/p>\n
\u201cLisa said to me what about the Wellington Cup and I said I\u2019m not riding anything else. I\u2019ll stick with her and I\u2019m not getting off.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always thought she\u2019d get the two miles.\u201d<\/p>\n
The five-year-old daughter of Almanzor had previously only raced up to Rating 75 grade and punters thought the step up to Cup class was a bridge too far, letting her drift out to an 86 to 1 outsider.<\/p>\n
From her outside draw she was taken straight to the back by Hercock and was a clear last for the first half of the race but enjoying an economical trip in the marathon 3200m event.<\/p>\n
Turning for home, the pair had a wall of horses in front of them, but Hercock was able to weave a passage through the pack and Manzor Blue stuck her head in front with 50m to go and held on to her advantage to win by a short neck over Crouch, with a further half-length back to her stablemate Be Real in third.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said to Lisa if she gets back we will ride her for luck,\u201d Hercock said. \u201cFrom about the half mile we were getting in carnage, at the 600m we were in a lot more carnage, and then I rolled back to the inside and she has got such a phenomenal turn of foot on her day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Latta said Manzor Blue had been plagued by back problems this season and she was pleased to overcome them and build towards the Wellington Cup, with Hercock\u2019s advice proving to be the difference of her pressing on towards the Trentham feature.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe only ran sixth here a fortnight ago and I said to Kate \u2018should we press on to the Wellington Cup?\u2019 And she said \u2018press on, I think she\u2019s back\u2019.\u201d Latta said.<\/p>\n
Manzor Blue carried New Zealand syndicator Go Racing\u2019s silks to victory and Latta was pleased to get the result for her loyal clients.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo Racing has been fantastically loyal to me,\u201d Latta said. \u201cThey do a fantastic job syndicating their horses. The last big winner I had for them was Sentimental Miss when she won the 2019 New Zealand Oaks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Latta believes Manzor Blue has a bright future among New Zealand\u2019s staying ranks.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe is only a five-year-old mare, she has got it all in front of her,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have ironed out a lot of niggles and learned a lot about her this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bred by Milan Park principal Tony Rider, Manzor Blue is out of Zabeel mare Turquoise Coast, a half-sister to Group 3 winner Island Life.<\/p>\n
Manzor Blue was offered at the 2022 Karaka yearling sales where she was purchased by Go Racing for $130,000 and has now earned just shy of $280,000 in prizemoney.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of those foals was Ultimate Habit, a filly by Embellish out of the Bachelor Duke mare Queens…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[153052,33959,145084,57483,2082,33960,14568,78,424,111,139,69,7798,213,153051,1361,6202],"class_list":["post-269915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-153052","tag-cyclone","tag-floodwaters","tag-foal","tag-for","tag-gabrielle","tag-horse","tag-in","tag-life","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-race","tag-sports","tag-swam","tag-that","tag-wins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269915","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=269915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}