By Mike Dillon
If Ed wins Saturday's $300,000 Wellington Cup it probably won't be the greatest performance ever recorded in the race, but it will be the most remarkable.
Two horses have won three Wellington Cups, Great Sensation and Castletown, but neither won them in patchwork style two years apart and neither broke down twice before they won their third.
Great Sensation won successive Cups in 1961, 62 and 63 and Castletown won in 1991, 92 and 94.
Ed won in 1995 and 1997, which means to win it on Saturday he has to carry a skin full of 9-year-old bones.
Perhaps even more remarkable, he will have won one of racing's toughest trebles with three different trainers.
Veteran Cecil Beckett prepared him in 1995, Noel Eales picked up the trainer's cheque two years later and Beckett's 48-year-old son Tommy will be tightening the saddle on Saturday.
And if Ed's been there before, Southland-based Beckett says he'll have to get someone to show him where Trentham is.
"I've never raced a horse there before," he said from Otaki where he has had Ed stabled for the past few days to take advantage of beach training the assist the veteran's dicky legs.
Southlanders have to be versatile to stay in the racing game and Beckett has not only had a dual galloping and harness trainers' licence for years, he brought a trotter, Ezi Dollar, with him to the North Island.
"It wasn't just to race, he's Ed's mate and Ed sulks when he's away from him, so I thought I may as well bring him up and see if he can earn his feed with a race or two.
"Ezi Dollar went up to Roxburgh to race recently and old Ed packed a sad all day until he returned."
Unfortunately Ezi Dollar bruised a foot, which may mean his trip is pure holiday.
Ed does the biggest percentage of his training behind the sulky pulled by Ezi Dollar.
The only horse of anything like Ed's age to win the Wellington Cup was Great Sensation, who won the second time aged nine and was at double figures when he took it again the following year.
Beckett doesn't see the old bloke's age as a factor.
"He certainly doesn't know how old he is. He hasn't lost any of his speed, not that he ever had much.
"He's a stayer and age seems to be less of a factor with horses like him because it doesn't diminish stamina quite so much.
"He's certainly fit enough. Three or four days a week he does 35 to 40 minutes of jogging and cantering behind Ezi Dollar's cart. He's done the miles."
Ed will be ridden by Jim Collett.
Jockeys have always been an interesting sidelight to Ed's Wellington Cup attempts. Melbourne's Damien Oliver won the 1995 Cup, when there was a suggestion Lance O'Sullivan had been offered the ride, but he said yesterday he couldn't remember if that was true.
O'Sullivan rode him in the Cup Trial in 1997 and was so unimpressed he told Noel Eales the horse would need to improve four lengths to win the Cup the following week. He took the Cup ride only after Eales assured him the four lengths would be found.
O'Sullivan said last week that he wouldn't mind being on Ed this time, but Jim Collett had already been engaged.
Temperament won't be a problem at Trentham on Saturday, but Beckett claims Ed is a "grumpy old bugger at home.
"But then so am I going into a big race.
"I suppose tension does funny things to you."
They'll pull the Trentham grandstand down if Ed pulls that old frame of his up to the leaders at the 300m on Saturday.
The only sad feature will be that his old owner Bert Crooks won't be there to see it.
He died only four weeks ago.
Horse Racing: Veteran Ed tilting at third Cup
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.