{"id":50970,"date":"2025-08-07T19:01:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T19:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/50970\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T19:01:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T19:01:14","slug":"horse-racing-stamina-the-key-to-west-coasts-grand-national-four-peat-attempt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/50970\/","title":{"rendered":"Horse racing: Stamina the key to West Coast\u2019s Grand National four-peat attempt"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe were pretty happy with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWillie quite liked him and he\u2019s confident that he can improve on Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to his National haul, West Coast has two Great Northern Steeplechase (6500m) crowns on the mantelpiece, so the marathon journey is nothing new.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think that\u2019s his strong point, once he gets over those longer distances, he just seems to be able to grind it out,\u201d Oulaghan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the last couple of years, we\u2019ve picked his races and he hasn\u2019t had hard seasons, so I think consequently, he\u2019s been able to carry on a bit longer and focus on these better races.\u201d<\/p>\n

The extra kilometre of the Hospitality NZ Canterbury 135th Grand National Hurdles (4200m) will also come to the benefit of his stablemate Berry The Cash, who has been running on late to place in each of the Hawke\u2019s Bay Hurdles (3000m) and Sydenham Hurdles (3100m).<\/p>\n

While his older counterpart is shooting for a record four crowns, Berry The Cash will be chasing a three-peat of his own in the hurdle, off the back of a tidy effort behind Dictation in the Sydenham.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt was a good run by him under the weight and at the distance, so we\u2019re happy with him too,\u201d Oulaghan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a grinding type of horse and finishes it off, so the extra distance is suitable for him. There is a bit of rain forecast for Friday down there, which wouldn\u2019t worry him, while one or two of the others might not be too keen on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

While his star pair spend the week in Christchurch, Oulaghan is back at home in Awapuni preparing for an entirely different feature assignment with Jack Morrison.<\/p>\n

The son of Darci Brahma has racked up six victories from eight attempts on his local synthetic track and, for the first time, he\u2019ll venture further afield to chase the big prize at Cambridge in the $100,000 TAB Polytrack Championship (2000m).<\/p>\n

Oulaghan had been hopeful for Friday\u2019s contest, with Amber Riddell to reduce his impost to a comfortable 58kg, but was less so after seeing Jack Morrison has drawn unfavourably in 11.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve kept him relatively fresh, he hasn\u2019t had a run for a while and we were hopeful of a good draw up there but that hasn\u2019t quite panned out,\u201d Oulaghan said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt is a big help there if they draw well. <\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t spoken to his owner, and I think we\u2019ll still go, but it will certainly make it more difficult from out there. We\u2019ll have to see what happens rather than being overly confident. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe weight is a bit of a help, I\u2019m surprised it\u2019s actually a claiming race so with Amber on, he gets a couple more kilos off.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u2013 LOVERACING.NZ News Desk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe were pretty happy with it. \u201cWillie quite liked him and he\u2019s confident that he can improve on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[28257,28251,18578,457,27088,28260,28248,28254,28253,28250,28249,14805,1293,22581,13673,978,17384,28261,16413,17440,7106,28252,28259,28256,3004,28262,22970,101,28247,28258,1777,1850,28255,56,54,55,21913,11556],"class_list":["post-50970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-150th","tag-attempt","tag-attempts","tag-books","tag-champion","tag-coast","tag-coasts","tag-distance","tag-extreme","tag-fourpeat","tag-grand","tag-hands","tag-history","tag-hoping","tag-horse","tag-hotel","tag-into","tag-jumper","tag-key","tag-mark","tag-national","tag-oulaghan","tag-play","tag-racecourse","tag-racing","tag-rewrite","tag-riccarton","tag-sports","tag-stamina","tag-steeplechase","tag-the","tag-to","tag-tomorrows","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-west","tag-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50970","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=50970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}