{"id":208712,"date":"2025-10-18T11:25:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T11:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/208712\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T11:25:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T11:25:10","slug":"kingman-claims-glory-in-a-thrilling-sportsbet-victoria-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/208712\/","title":{"rendered":"Kingman claims glory in a thrilling Sportsbet Victoria Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Emerging star Kingman capped a memorable dual-code double day of delight for owner Mick Harvey with victory in last night\u2019s $250,000 Group 1 Victoria Cup at Melton.<\/p>\n

Earlier, Harvey\u2019s emerging mare Vivy Air won a key race at Randwick\u2019s massive TAB Everest meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a day. That\u2019s one to bottle,\u201d Harvey said. \u201cAs big a thrill as Vivy Air\u2019s win was, Kingman\u2019s win means the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been lucky to be involved in some great horses, but Kingman is the most special. He\u2019s the first horse I\u2019ve bred.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Victoria Cup is such a great race and to win it with the horse I call my first born, it\u00a0is so special.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kingman overcame a huge early scare when he jumped a shadow and galloped briefly while challenging for the lead.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was heart in your mouth stuff, but lucky he got back down quickly and didn\u2019t lose much ground,\u201d trainer-driver Luke McCarthy said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s still a big effort to overcome that and win as well as he did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kingman took a trail on Queensland champion Leap To Fame in the middle stages, when he moved around to sit outside the leader, Hi Manameisjeff.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I pulled him out, he just went whoosh,\u201d McCarthy said.<\/p>\n

Kingman won by 1.8m from a gallant Hi Manameisjeff with Leap To Fame tiring late into third, another 6.7m away.<\/p>\n

It was the first time in two year\u2019s Leap To Fame has been beaten in consecutive starts as continued his Victoria Cup hoodoo as the only major eastern states feature to elude him.<\/p>\n

Earlier, brilliant young trotting mare Keayang Zahara made it 17 wins from just 18 starts with sparkling win in the Group 1 Bill Collins Trotters\u2019 Sprint.<\/p>\n

The four-year-old worked to the lead from exciting stablemate Jilliby Ballerini with a blazing 54.8sec last half, the fastest closing split ever run by a trotter at Melton.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust for a stride I thought \u2018Ballerini\u2019 was going to run her down, but she lifted and did it well. It shows much Ballerini has improved and how well Zahara has come back,\u201d co-trainer Paddy Lee said.<\/p>\n

The glamour pair beat the rest of their rivals by a staggering 26.6m.<\/p>\n

The Group 1 Victoria Derby was won in dominant style by Fox Dan, who ran a fantastic second in last month\u2019s $2.1mil TAB Eureka.<\/p>\n

Adam Hamilton is a paid contributor writing on harness racing for News Corp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emerging star Kingman capped a memorable dual-code double day of delight for owner Mick Harvey with victory in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-208712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}