Upper Cut, who with jockey Daniel Miller clinched the Manawatu Steeples a fortnight ago, is in a line-up of eight others in the feature 4400m race of the Hawke's Bay Hunt raceday which lures some of the best jumps horses from around the country.
The five jumps and six flat races meeting starts at 10.30am but the gates will open half an hour earlier with a $10 admission charge, although under-18s are free.
Upper Cut's favouritism will come under scrutiny against the likes of Bay trainer/co-owner Paul Nelson's No Quota and Yorkie as well as Evan and JJ Rayner-trained Mr Mor, who finished a long neck behind Upper Cut in the Manawatu Steeples on a heavy 11 track.
The Ormsbys, of Waipukurau, are uncomfortable about their horse lugging the favourite's tag but it is what it is for the horse who has earned more than $62,000 from 20 starts.
"Last year, he [Upper Cut] went out as favourite at Ellerslie [Auckland] and fell on the third to last fence," she says of the horse who may have another attempt at this year's Great Northern Steeplechase. "Things can change in a flash in jumps races."
Despite a soggy southerly-swept day tomorrow on the heels of a persistent drizzly week, the 1700m left-turn Hastings course is unlikely to get any worse than a slow track.
Michael, who is the Waipukurau Jockey Club treasurer and life member, says they bought Upper Cut as a 3-year-old and broke him in but it took them a year to get him going.
"He won two steeplechases and then, a year later, broke down while he was being pre-trained and took another two years to come back," says the Hatuma cattle farmer of the bay gelding who has won three jumps and a flat race.
Awapuni trainer Mark Oulaghan and the Feilding trio of Aroha Duncan, Jim Speedy and Warren Scott also have shares in the horse pencilled in for the $75,000 Grand National at Riccarton on August 8.
Says Helen Ormsby, who has share in another syndicated horse, Rocky: "When you win a jumps race there's no bigger thrill on earth.
"You can't say you've made it until you get to the post. It's very stressful."
She hails from a horsey background, "cutting my teeth on racecourses".
Her father, John "Jack/Ginger" Pettit, was keen on racing and was a good friend of fellow CHB farmer and Nelson's father, Punch Nelson.
Not surprisingly Helen and Paul Nelson are also friends, forging an alliance through the "I See Syndicate" several years ago with a few others.
"I rode as a child on a horse my father bought off Paul's father," says Helen who claims her love of everything equine rubbed off on hubby Michael after they got married.
The couple didn't want to go down the path of breeding horses.
"It's one way to send money down the gurgler," she says, pointing out Michael and Duncan raced Miniskirt in the late 1990s to 2002.
"She died five minutes after giving birth to a foal. It is very sad but she saved us a bit of money so we don't want to be breeders," says Helen of flat performer Miniskirt who won them five races.
Adds Michael: "Only 4 per cent of horses pay their keep."
Chimes in Helen: "You don't go into racing to make money."
