CHAMPION pacer Leap To Fame returns to the trials on Thursday as he prepares to headline the strongest raid Australia has sent to New Zealand’s iconic Cup Week.
Leap To Fame will be joined by at least seven other Aussie horses, including his arch-rival and sibling Swayzee, to chase a string of feature races across two mega days (November 11 and 14) at Addington.
Swayzee is already the first Aussie pacer to win two NZ Cups and his quest for a hat-trick would see him join just three other horses to win the iconic race three times. Terror To Love (2011, ’12 and ’13) was the most recent, but False Step (1958, ’59 and ’60) and Indianapolis (1934, ’35 and ’36) did it, too.
This will be Leap To Fame’s first run in the NZ Cup, having fallen ill and having his trip aborted just days before crossing the ditch last year.
Leap To Fame and Swayzee are likely to be the only two Australians in the $1mil NZ Cup, but four or five other Aussie horses will also chase feature races.
The biggest of them is the $NZ400,000 Group 1 Dominion Trot, NZ’s premier trotting race, where newly crowned Inter Dominion champion Arcee Phoenix will lead the Aussie charge.
The underrated Parisian Artiste, who beat Arcee Phoenix in a heat of that Brisbane Inter Dominion series in July, and one of Marg and Paddy Lee’s trotting stars will join Arcee Phoenix.
Team Lee has freakish young mare Keayang Zahara, last year’s Inter Dominion runner-up Keayang Chucky and the much-improved Jilliby Ballerini all nominated.
Keayang Zahara, who has won 15 of her 16 starts, would be the dream scenario after she romped home in all three feature targets during last year’s NZ Cup Week as a three-year-old filly.
The trotting flavour runs even deeper with Australia’s two best three-year-old trotting fillies, Gatesys Gem and Tracy The Jet, landing slots in the $NZ500,000 The Ascent, a slot race Keayang Zahara won so easily last year.
Gatesys Gem, who won the Group 1 NSW Oaks and Derby double in May, will sharpen-up for her racetrack return with a Melton trial on Tuesday.
She is headed for a clash with Tracy The Jet in the Group 1 Victoria Trotters’ Oaks at Melton on October 18.
Leap To Fame’s trainer-driver Grant Dixon also looks set to take his triple Group 1 winning three-year-old Fate Awaits to Addington.
Leviathan owner Kevin Seymour bought a slot in the $NZ500,000 Velocity and Fate Awaits is the logical runner.
The huge Victoria Cup meeting at Melton on October 18 will be a dress rehearsal for most of the Aussies bound for Addington.
Along with the trotting Oaks, Leap To Fame and Swayzee will clash in the $250,000 Group 1 Victoria Cup.
On the same card, Arcee Phoenix, Parisian Artiste and Keayang Zahara will tackle the Group 1 Bill Collins Trotters’ Sprint.
Adding to the Aussie flavour, champion WA driver Gary Hall Jr will represent Australia in the World Drivers’ Championship, which culminates during NZ Cup Week.
