Justaskme shakes up Manco Easter race at Te Rapa with topweight entry

A horse who almost certainly can’t win has changed the complexion of the rescheduled $150,000 Manco Easter at Te Rapa on Saturday.

The Group 3 mile was to have been held at Ellerslie last Saturday but was cancelled after the horses had already made their way to the front parade ring, part of two races that were abandoned because of a horse slipping in Race 6.

Auckland Thoroughbred Racing has since transferred its last Ellerslie meeting of the season on May 25 to Pukekohe to allow renovations of the new StrathAyr track to begin immediately.

That meant the Manco Easter had to take new entries on Tuesday and draw a new field yesterday and while the field looks almost identical, there is one glaring difference.

Taranaki trainer Allan Sharrock had added winter warrior Justaskme to the field and that has seen a dramatic reduction in the weights to be carried by several of the favourites.

Justaskme might start at $30 on Saturday but because of his largely winter heroics in recent years he carries an official rating of 101 and becomes the new Easter topweight, a position held in last week’s version of the race by his stablemate Tavattack.

With every two rating points worth an extra kilogram in weight, Justaskme will carry the 59kg topweight but Tavattack, who has a 93 rating, has to carry 4kg less so he will carry only 55kg.

That also means Easter defending champion White Noise will now carry just 53.5kg, only 0.5kg above the minimum so while he is a rating 90 horse he carries only fractionally more than the rating 72 horses in the race.

So the surprise inclusion of Justaskme has to aid the chances of Tavattack, White Noise and Rudyard, the latter not looking well weighted last week and now in a luxurious position.

How that all pans out could be determined by the Te Rapa track and whether the Easter races like a summer mile or an autumn one.

The addition of the historic race means Te Rapa will hold an outstanding meeting also including the $150,000 Travis Stakes for fillies and mares and a very deep version of the $100,000 Inglis Breeders Stakes in one of the strongest cards staged this late in the season in recent years.

Before then, thoroughbred fans get a couple of doses of black-type racing today, one at Ōtaki and another with Kiwi interest at Flemington.

The Ōtaki meeting, which can’t start until after 1pm out of respect for Anzac Day, hosts the $80,000 TAB Anzac Mile with former Group 1 winner Dark Destroyer as the topweight but plenty of talent on the 53kg minimum in Islington Lass, The Fearless One and Mr Mojo Risin.

The latter’s trainer Andrew Forsman also sends impressive debutante winner Yaldi across the Tasman for the A$175,000 Anzac Day Stakes, a listed race, at Flemington.

Yaldi was stunning winning at Pukekohe but has drawn barrier 12 in the two-year-old race full of New Zealand-bred chances.

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.