Every one of the 10 races is worth the same amount, similar to the old jewels concept, but this time not only with the elite age group performers but the battlers who get their one shot at a $100,000 chance probably in their life.
So while the three-year-old race is the undoubted glamour event of the night and the higher-grade aged pace brings together Sooner The Better, Jolimont and Mach Shard, it will be the two lower-grade aged races, one each for trotters and pacers, where the fairtytales are made.
They bring together the “field fillers” who make Alexandra Park happen every Friday night, some of them even competing in amateur driver races along the way.
Some would question the worth of $100,000 races for those horses, whose connections would be thrilled to race for $50,000 or even $30,000?
But the way they boosted fields week in, week out at Alexandra Park meant more turnover and even some meetings being saved.
They deserve their over-inflated shot at the title, the irony being that in both races the combined market value of the horses involved probably wouldn’t add up to the total $100,000 stakes.
But that is if you could buy them, which in many cases you couldn’t.
They are somebody’s sweetheart, somebody’s family pet. And this Friday night two of them are going to become somebody’s $100,000 race winner.
And they will be undoubtedly the two most celebrated races of this new harness racing feature night.
Duchess Megxit opened the hottest favourite of the night when the markets were released on Tuesday morning, the last-start Queen Of Hearts winner rated a $1.65 chance to beat the boys in the Three-Year-Old race.
She has barrier 3 under the preferential draw system based first on the sex of the horses, then money won.
The biggest surprise in the markets was her stablemate Meant To Be not being the hottest favourite of the night in the two-year-old trot.
Clearly the best of his age in the country, Meant To Be had been $1.35 in the futures markets for weeks but opened $1.80 in the final field market even though he is unruly so was always going to draw the outside barrier, regardless of who was in the race.
He was quickly backed in from $1.80 to $1.65 and is more likely to start $1.30 by race time.
The open-aged pace sees Sooner The Better rated a $2.50 hope from barrier 6, not a bad price for a horse who in March ran second to Leap To Fame in the Miracle Mile and loves short course racing.
Golden Gait Night
When: Friday, first race 5.16pm
Where: Alexandra Park, Auckland.
What: New race meeting with 10 races each worth $100,000.
Conditions: All mobile miles.
Who: Eligible horses must have had a certain number of starts at Alexandra Park in 2024: six for three-year-olds and older, four starts for juveniles.
The punt: TAB continued its vastly improved harness racing fixed odds service with all markets opened on Tuesday morning.
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.
