Since arriving Kennedy has been a sensation, winning the NZ jockeys' premiership in his first full season here and winning a stack of black-type races, including last season’s 2000 Guineas with Crocetti.
Crocetti and Warren Kennedy (light blue) winning the $700,000 Sistema Railway. Photo / Kenton Wright
That would have been more than enough for Nakhle, the sort of guy who never expects a favour returned.
However, Kennedy paid him back handsomely last night by riding Crocetti to victory in the Railway (1200m) at Ellerslie.
There was something special about this win, different from last season.
Last year Crocetti always felt like he was going to win those 3-year-old races but this summer, racing sometimes flatter than expected, he needed to be honed, tuned.
Kennedy suggested to trainers Danny Walker and Arron Tata they put blinkers on. They did and his pre-Railway work suggested they had lit a fire in the big boy. So it proved.
“He had been floating in his races and not getting his head right down,” said Kennedy.
“The blinkers made him concentrate and allowed him to remind everybody how good he is.
“Everybody knows how much that means to me after all Daniel has done for us.
“So to all work together to win this race is very special.”
The Railway means so much to Nakhle as it is Ellerslie’s premier sprint and Nakhle is a former Auckland Racing Club director, one of the most regular and popular faces at Ellerslie.
Crocetti has to be good to get that holy grail too as he was giving weight to an exceptional 3-year-old filly in Alabama Lass, who all but justified her favouritism.
She was out of the gates quickly to sit outside Babylon Berlin and surged to the lead at 300m before Kennedy pierced Crocetti through a gap at the 100m mark and while the filly fought, Crocetti had the momentum and the strength.
Both equine athletes were fantastic and either would have been a worthy winner.
The same could be said of third-placed Luberon, trapped three wide and never shirking her task. In a touch of irony, she is usually ridden by Kennedy for his other major supporters, Cambridge Stud owners Brendan and Jo Lindsay.
Crocetti is now likely to head to the BCD Sprint at Te Rapa on February 8, a race that brought him his first defeat last year, with a shot at revenge.
If he does make his way there to take on Grail Seeker and Savaglee the 1400m Group 1 promises to be one of the races of the season.
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.
