Mark Walker’s top horses face winter challenge at Ruakākā Breeders Stakes

Bellatrix Star will begin her campaign at Caulfield.

Mark Walker launches the first wave of an army of good horses tomorrow but like many an army before them their greatest enemy could be winter.

Walker and training partner Sam Bergerson are fresh off another premiership win and while they scored the occasional winter win, particularly over the jumps in Victoria, they only started rolling out the new season horses last weekend.

That steps up a level tomorrow when talented youngsters Maracatu and When Stars Align clash in the $100,000 Cambridge Stud Northland Breeders Stakes at Ruakākā, the Group 3 having drawn a very even field.

The stable also have Popthebubbles in the $80,000 Interprovincial at New Plymouth and have sent Bellatrix Star to Victoria to join their Cranbourne stable and she will start her campaign at Caulfield.

“We think she is best at 1000m or 1100m and we don’t have any decent 3-year-old races at that trip here,” explains Walker.

“It is hard to take on the Australian spring sprinting 3-year-olds and not many Kiwis have been successful doing it but we think this is the best option for her.

“She did beat both Move To Strike and Velocious [subsequent Group 1 winners] at Pukekohe last year so we will give her her chance.”

Bellatrix Star can handle a wet track so it might actually aid her against the Aussie fillies in the Group 3 Quizette Stakes, the first of three consecutive Group races the stable will chase in Victoria in the next fortnight.

“We have Sans Doute ready to go in another group race next weekend and then Quintessa the weekend after that,” says Walker.

He is dividing his time between then two stables, with Cranbourne’s 30-horse barn full and another 40-horse barn being built so the stable could have 70 horses in work there before the end of the year.

Closer to home the Walker/Bergerson machine has had plenty of horses trialling but Walker admits wet tracks blunt his confidence.

“We have some lovely horses ready to go starting this weekend, Taupō next week and a good team lined up for the first day at Hastings [September 7].

“But it is hard to be confident when you don’t know what the tracks are going to be like.

“Ruakākā is usually pretty good but it was as bad as I have seen it last time they raced there and if they get rain it won’t suit our horses as much as some of the others.”

Walker says Maracatu may slightly have the edge over When Stars Align but he will reserve his judgement on their winning chances until he sees tomorrow’s track conditions.

“It is going to be the case for quite a few of ours. We will start getting a lot more idea about their chances once the tracks get better.”

A potential yielding track isn’t the only issue for the Te Akau pair tomorrow as the Breeders Stakes has plenty of horses with winter form who will have an obvious fitness advantage.

And the pair Walker and Bergerson send north aren’t their perceived 3-year-old A-team, which should be headed by Move To Strike this spring.

Away from the Breeders Stakes at Ruakākā one of the other key spring pointers will the open 1400m which is loaded with resuming stayers including potential Melbourne Cup runner Maharajaan, Trust In You, Nereus and Remutaka Classic winner The Odyssey.

Walker will be happy if the New Plymouth meeting is just held, let alone them winning the Interprovincial.

“They called off the last meeting there because of the weather but the mare we are sending down, Popthebubbles, at least has wet track form and no weight.”

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.