Akuta is heavily favoured to win the New Zealand Trotting Cup.
There is a word for what Akuta has going for him in today’s $750,000 IRT New Zealand Trotting Cup at Addington.
That word is: everything.
There is also a word for the thing that can undo Akuta in the Cup.
That word is: Swayzee.
For all the talent of the 15 starters and the people who have honed them for what is still New Zealand harness racing’s Holy Grail, today’s Cup may be just that simple; the Kiwi horse with everything versus the Aussie horse with nothing to lose.
Suggesting today’s $2.20 favourite has everything going for him could be confused for parochialism but Akuta ticks every New Zealand Cup box, including some you hadn’t even thought of.
●Trainers: Mark Purdon has won eight New Zealand Cups.
●Driver: Purdon, again, has won six New Zealand Cups, including four of the last nine.
●Breeding: His sire Bettors Delight has sired five of the last nine New Zealand Cup winners.
●Dam sire: Christian Cullen mares have left four of the last seven New Zealand Cup winners, all sired by Bettors Delight, so Akuta is bred on the Cup’s most golden cross.
●Lead-up form: In the past decade, the two most important New Zealand Cup form references have been the Ashburton Flying Stakes and Kaikoura Cup. Akuta won both.
●Manners: Akuta has the highest standing start winning percentage (62.5 per cent) in the Cup.
●Racing pattern: Almost all of Akuta’s major wins have come when he has settled back and then been put into the race, his most likely scenario from today’s second line draw.
●Barrier: If you are worried about that second line draw, in the last 10 Cups, only three winners have drawn inside barrier seven.
Akuta looks so much like a New Zealand Cup winner, the engraver at Addington might have considered popping ‘Akuta’ on the trophy in secret last night so he could pop along and enjoy today like everybody else.
If it wasn’t for Swayzee, it might have been worth the risk.
While Akuta has been clearly superior to his compariots this campaign, Swayzee has been equally dominant, albeit not always in the absolute best company, since emerging over the Brisbane winter.
He has been machine-like since joining trainer Jason Grimson eight starts ago and he has the services of the brightest new star in Australian harness racing in driver Cameron Hart. Together, Grimson and Hart have shown they know how to win the biggest races at home and bring their best form to New Zealand.
They won a Group 1 New Zealand Messenger at Alexandra Park and have finished second in three of the country’s biggest races, including
last year’s Cup. Perhaps tellingly, two of those seconds were to Purdon-trained horses.
Swayzee is big and fast and will be incredibly hard to catch should he work his way from his second line draw to the lead.
That early battle between Swayzee and Akuta to control their nervous energy, step cleanly and then balance up to launch their attack may decide today’s Cup. With Swayzee’s non-existant standing start form and both favourites drawn the second line, predicting which gets to seek control first is largely guess work.
But Akuta, slow but steady away, has done a lot more of this type of racing than Swayzee, and if the Aussie spends even five seconds working out what New Zealand Cups are about, this one might be over.
There is quality enough in Old Town Road, Krug, Republican Party and even BD Joe to ensure this is a story with more than just two possible endings, but in these days of brutally-hard run Cups, formlines trump fairytales. And formlines don’t get much better than Akuta today.
Michael Guerin’s top picks:
1 Akuta
2 Swayzee
3 Old Town Road
4 Republican Party
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.
Melbourne Cup day is here.