By MIKE DILLON
Ken Browne winning the Auckland Cup is a little like Colin Meads doing ballet - not completely impossible, but hugely incongruous.
Browne is used to winning big races at Ellerslie, but generally it's the $100,000 Mercedes Great Northern Steeplechase.
If Blazing wins today's $350,000 Westbury Stud Auckland Cup it will be New Zealand's leading jumps stable winning the country's biggest flat race.
And it will be a triumph for Ann Browne as much as for her husband.
"We've got this horse because of Ann," Ken Browne said yesterday. "He's from the same family as the only two stakes winners we've trained, Awesome Ways and Brown Jumper, and naturally we were always going to look at him at the sales.
"He had terrible legs, but Ann was determined to buy him, and she does all the work on him. I wouldn't have been on his back in the last two months."
"About $3000" is not much for a horse who rates as New Zealand's most improved stayer in the past six months.
Browne warned punters to take no notice of Blazing's sixth placing in his last start, the Waikato Cup.
"He wasn't suited by the pace that day. It was a sit and sprint, and to finish as close as he did was a good run. He is twice the horse now he was that day."
Browne was delighted with the way Blazing finished his final serious workout on Friday morning.
"He did a gallop which exhausted other horses, but he pulled up with a low, low heart rate like a horse who had just done pace work.
"I couldn't believe how good his work was."
Browne recalled starting only Brown Jumper in an Auckland Cup.
No one would be more pleased to win the cup than Trudy Collett, who went close on Shugar when her then husband Jim Collett beat her in a photo finish aboard Star Harvest in 1991.
Rain in Auckland on Saturday night and yesterday morning made the Ellerslie track 2.8 easy yesterday afternoon.
"The track will cut out, but if we don't get a lot more rain it shouldn't be too bad," ARC chief executive David Lloyd said.
Today's cup field will be led out by Mark Todd riding his dual Olympic gold medal-winning mount Charisma.
Racing: Browne hopes to get jump on field
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